Andrée de Jongh

Andrée de Jongh (30 November 1916 – 13 October 2007) was a member of the Belgian Resistance who organized the Comet Line for escaped Allied soldiers during World War II.

Andrée de Jongh was born 1916 in Schaerbeek (Belgium), her father Frédéric de Jongh was a headmaster. When German troops invaded Belgium in 1940, De Jongh moved to Brussels and established an escape network called the Comet Line for captured Allied soldiers with the help of her father. In August 1941, she appeared in the British consulate in Bilbao with a British soldier and two Belgian volunteers and requested support for her escape network. Request was granted and the Comet Line begun.

The Comet Line went from Brussels to the Pyrenees through France to the British consulate in Madrid and on to Gibraltar. They helped around 400 Allied soldiers and Andrée accompanied 118 of them herself.

The Gestapo captured Frédéric de Jongh in June 1943 and later executed him. Many other members of the Comet Line were also captured and 23 in all were executed. Andrée was captured in January 1944. Unwilling to believe she could have organized the network herself, the Gestapo let her live. She was sent first to Fresnes prison in Paris and eventually to Ravensbrück concentration camp. She was released by the advancing Allied troops in April 1945.

Andrée de Jongh was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom and the George Medal by the King George VI of the United Kingdom, and was granted the honorary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Belgian Army. After the war she moved first to the Belgian Congo and then to Ethiopia to work in a leper hospital in Addis Abeba. Later she was made a Belgian Countess.

References

• Template:Fr icon Gubin, E., "DE JONGH, Andrée dite Dédée (1916– )" in E. Gubin, C. Jacques, V. Piette & J. Puissant (eds), Dictionnaire des femmes belges: XIXe et XXe siècles. Bruxelles: Éditions Racine, 2006. ISBN 2-87386-434-6