Robert Maistriau (March 13, 1921- September 26, 2008) was an active member of the Belgian underground resistance and was recognized as a

Righteous Among the Nations Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sav ...

from

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

. Maistriau is known for his part in an operation against a deportation train to

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

Early life

Maistriau was born in

Woluwe-Saint-Lambert Woluwe-Saint-Lambert () or Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe (Dutch, ) is one of the nineteen municipalities in the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium. It is a prosperous residential area, with a mixture of flats and detached, semi-detached and terraced hous ...

on March 13, 1921. His father was a military doctor during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. In 1939, when he was 18, he started to study medicine. At age 22, Maistriau decided to join a Belgian resistance group called “

Comité de Défense des Juifs The Committee for the Defence of Jews (french: Comité de Défense des Juifs, or CDJ; nl, Joods Verdedigingscomiteit, JVD) was a group within the Belgian Resistance, affiliated to the Front de l'Indépendance, founded by the Jewish Communist Her ...

”.

Activity during WWII

On April 19, 1943, Maistriau and two other members of the resistance -

Jean Franklemon Jean may refer to: People * Jean (female given name) * Jean (male given name) * Jean (surname) Fictional characters * Jean Grey, a Marvel Comics character * Jean Valjean, fictional character in novel ''Les Misérables'' and its adaptations * Jean ...

( fr) and Maistriau’s childhood friend, Youra Livchitz ( fr), executed a plan to rescue Jews from the twentieth transport. They did so by stopping the train using a hurricane lamp covered in red silk paper at around half past nine at night, while it was dark outside. The driver of the train was tricked by the red light and stopped the train. One of them used a pistol to menace the train driver while the other two were trying to open the wagons. Maistriau managed to open one of them and he convinced several people who were there to jump out of the wagon. Then, he handed out money bills of 50 Francs to some of the Jews. As the fleeing people ran for cover, the Germans shot at them from every direction, killing 23 people and harming several others. In total, 231 Jews jumped out of the train and 17 of them fled owing to the help of the underground members. This operation is the only successful attack on a Jewish deportation train in Europe.

Honors

The rescue event was marked in Belgium in 1993, by having a ceremony located where the operation took place. Representatives of the Jewish community and the king of Belgium were present there. On June 3, 1993, soon after the ceremony, Radio Judaica applied for recognition of Maistriau as a Righteous Among the Nations. On August 31, 1994,

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

granted Maistriau the Righteous Among the Nations honorific.Maistriau’s honor diploma from Yad Vashem (November 7, 1994), Taken from: YAD VASHEM ARCHIVES, RECORD GRUP: M.31 (Files of the Department for the Righteous Among the Nations), FILE NUMBER 6174, ORIGINAL FILE NUMBER 8005, item number 41. In 2005,

Free University of Brussels University of Brussels may refer to several institutions in Brussels, Belgium: Current institutions * Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), a French-speaking university established as a separate entity in 1970 *Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), a D ...

granted him an Honorary degree. Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, his hometown, granted him honorable citizenship and named a public garden after him.

References

External links

Maistriau's work of rescuing Jews
on the Yad Vashem site
The attack on the twentieth convoy
on the Yad Vashem site (Hebrew)

on the Belgian Telenet site
Robert Maistriau, his life and work
on the Robert Maistriau website {{DEFAULTSORT:Maistriau, Robert Belgian Righteous Among the Nations 1921 births 2008 deaths Belgian resistance members People from Woluwe-Saint-Lambert