Abstract: At the time of the Nazi invasion in May 1940, Belgium was a Catholic country with linguistic divisions between north and south. The Catholic Church was the only institution untouched by the German occupiers. Therefore many hunted Jews sought the Church's help, which was spontaneously extended by the lower clergy. The book is based on unstructured interviews with formerly hidden children, with nuns who sheltered them, and with two surviving escorts who worked for the Committee for the Defense of Jews resistance network and took the children from their families to convents willing to hide them. The interviews detail from the point of view of both nuns and children how the children were integrated into daily convent life and how they reacted to Catholic rituals and socialization. The lives are framed by their historical context. The chapter on the escorts and on the Committee for the Defense of Jews leads to a general discussion of the different facets of the Belgian resistance. A chapter on memory and commemoration then traces the emergence of the concept of the hidden child and the construction of collective memories. The chapter also addresses the formal recognition of rescuers as “Righteous Among the Nations” and offers an in-depth interpretation of Yad Vashem, the memorial institution of Israel. At the same time, it uncovers how gender initially played a major role in the recognition of priests and nuns who were rescuers. The struggle for the souls of some orphaned Jewish children who were baptized during the war and whose return to the Jewish community was contested is discussed as a particularly painful episode. This book contributes to Holocaust literature written in English about Belgium, a country given relatively too little attention. With its focus on commemoration, the book also adds to the understanding of how memory is institutionalized and reinforced by mnemonic practices.

Keywords: Catholic Church, lower clergy, Jewish children, hidden children, escorts, memory