• On #73 Avenue Émile Verhaeren, Father Kiki, his sister Aunt Ninie, Mother Mouchette, and their daughters Dédée and Suzanne (as well as her stepchildren) made their home.
• School #8 on Rue Gaucheret was the address of the Elementary School Kiki de Jongh was the principal of.
• The Swedish Canteen on the Rue Ducale was the charity organization where Dédée met fellow-resistance workers.
• The Enclos des Fusillés commemorates the female Resistance Fighters who inspired Dédée to set up her Escape Line.
• The Saint Gilles Prison was the place where almost every member of the Resistance (including Dédée herself as well as her mother and sister) would end up if apprehended by the Nazis.
• The Sonian Forest is where Dédée would go to hike and think.

The Belgian Andrée or “Dédée” de Jongh (/Andrray/ or /Day-day da Young/) grew up in Brussels as one of two daughters of an Elementary School principal and a homemaker. She was an athletic “Little Cyclone” as her father called her and the brain behind what would later become the Comet Line. This was an Escape Line mostly for downed British pilots in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Northern France, which earned her another nickname; “the Postman” because she delivered what she referred to as “parcels” to the British embassy in Bilbao, Spain.

To see more about the “Comet Line,” check out the section under “Places > France > The Pyrenees.”

When the war broke out, Andrée de Jongh quit her job elsewhere in Belgium to go help the wounded from Dunkirk before returning to the home of her youth on number 73 Avenue Émile Verhaeren. Although she loved being back home surrounded by her loved ones, she soon became restless and started thinking about her “Great War” heroes, nurses Gabrielle Petit and Edith Cavell.

Belgian Red Cross nurse Gabrielle Petit had helped fugitives across the border to neutral Holland while delivering crucial intelligence to MI-9 in London. Similarly, the British Edith Cavell had been running a training school for nurses in Brussels when the First World War broke out and she turned the school into the starting point of a Holland escape line smuggling stranded British soldiers out of Belgium.

Both women were betrayed, were first sent to Saint Gilles prison, and were then executed at the National Shooting Range called “Tir National”(/Teer Nah-tsee-owh-nahll/) not far from where Dédée lived. This inspired her to start thinking about whether she couldn’t do something similar, but not via Holland which was now also occupied.

In 1963, the “Tir National” complex was demolished to make room for the “Enclos des Fusillés,” a cemetery commemorating those who had been murdered during both World Wars.

The more Dédée became involved with the Resistance, the more of a risk she ran to get apprehended. Unlike Holland, Belgium had a long history of a robust resistance network collaborating with British Intelligence. Groups like “La Dame Blanche” (referring to a German legend that predicted the downfall of the Hohenzollern dynasty) were legendary.

Sadly during both World Wars, many members of the Resistance ended up in the St. Gilles (/ Seyn Syeell/) star-shaped prison south of Brussels. At the beginning of WWII, Dédée’s friend Henri de Blique was imprisoned there. After she and Arnold Deppé met in front of the St. Gilles prison and decided to start their own Escape Line, Arnold also got caught and imprisoned in St. Gilles soon after.

Later in July of 1943, Dédée herself, her sister Suzanne, her aunt Ninie, and her mother Mouchette would all be imprisoned in the St. Gilles Prison. Ironically, being considered “less capable,” all the women survived. Still, especially the two sisters would pay a heavy price for their work with the Resistance. Democracy and freedom are not “free;” they need to be defended at all costs.