Figure 1.--Here is Pere Bruno duruing the German occupation of Belgium with some of the Jewish children he saved. Some of the children were easier to hide than others. Here some of these children would have been recognizable as Jewish. |
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Henri Reynders/Pere Bruno (1903-81) is one of the heroes of the Holocaust. He was a Catholic monk who when Belgium mobilized its Army after the German invasion of Poland (September 1939) became a chaplain with the 41st Artillery Regiment. When the Germans invaded Belgium, the country was overan in a few weeks. King Leopold surrenderd the Balgian Army to the Germans while the battle for Dunkirk was underway. Pere Bruno was iniured. He was interned for 6 months in German POW camps at Wolfsburg and Doessel, Germany. He acted as a chaplain there. After King Leopold met with Hitler, the Germans relased many Belgian POWs. Pere Bruno returned to his Mont-César Abby and resumed teaching. His anti-NAZI beliefs led him to contact the Resistance which gradually organized in Belgium. At first they worked to save downed Allied flyers and getting them back to Britain. With the completion of the NAZI death camps in Poland, the NAZIs began rounding up Jews and deporting them (mid-1942). Pere Bruno received permission from the Abbot to work as chaplain at a home for the blind in the village of Hodbomont. After arriving, he quickly realised that the home was being used to hide several Jews, both adults and children. They had been brought there by a group attempting to save Jews. The group was led by Albert van den Berg. Pere Bruno soon became a friend and colaborator. NAZI authorities were actively hunting Jews and there were many Belgian informers. Berg and Pere Bruno realised that the home was not safe. They closed the hope and dispersed the Jews there to families, mostly rural families. Pere Bruno retuned to to Mont-César and undetook the dangerous task of organising higing places for Jews. He is believed to have saved 400 Jews, many of them children.
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