Gorren-Gelernter family. Collection

Hinda (Henriette) Gelernter, in some documents also named Gelentern, was born in Warsaw, Poland on 23 May 1908 as the daughter of Szyja Gelernter and Sura Dwojra Grinbaum. She was able to enrol at university where she befriended a communist girl from Warsaw whom inspired Hinda to become a free thinker. In November 1929 Hinda obtained a visa for Belgium. She settled in Forest, Brussels, in December 1929 and subsequently enrolled in a bacteriology course at the medical department of the Université Libre de Bruxelles or ULB (Free University of Brussels). On 9 April 1932, Hinda married Jean Baptiste Antoine Gorren, born on 13 January 1896 in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, Brussels. Jean Gorren was a university professor, a mathematician and a Marxist philosopher. He and Hinda had met when she participated in a conference with some communist friends where Jean was one of the main speakers. In 1935 Jean would become one of the founders of the Université Ouvrière de Bruxelles and as of 1938 he was one of the leaders of the Fourth International. However, Jean Gorren resigned permanently from the Communist Party at the time of the German-Soviet pact (also Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, 23 August 1939). Jean Gorren and Hinda (Henriette) Gelernter still lived in Brussels when Nazi-Germany invaded Belgium on 10 May 1940. In 1942, the couple decided to take in Hinda’s niece Esther Granek (born on 7 April 1927 in Brussels). Jean and Hinda hid the child until the summer of 1943. On 3 July 1943, Hinda Gelernter was interned at the Dossin barracks after refusing to give her address to the German who addressed her in the street. At the barracks, she was registered as detainee E81 (Entscheidung, the group of prisoners whose case was to be examined). Her marriage to the non-Jewish Jean Gorren protected Hinda from deportation. Meanwhile Jean collected documents proving his own catholic descent in order to help his wife and in July 1943 he addressed the secretary of Queen Elisabeth to obtain Hinda’s release. Hinda was allowed to return home on 27 August 1943. She, her husband Jean and their niece Esther all survived the war. In 1947, Hinda and Jean had a daughter named Edith who became a painter and moved to France. Jean Gorren passed away in 1971, Hinda Gelernter in Aillas, France, on 28 December 2005.

Edith Gorren, daughter of Jean Gorren and Hinda (Henriette) Gelernter, kindly provided Kazerne Dossin with digital copies of her family collection in 2018. Jean Gorren and his sister had destroyed almost all documents and photos of Hinda Gelernter upon her arrest in 1943, in order to hide Hinda’s Jewish roots, leaving only a hand full of items to survive the war. Copies of documents from the Gorren case file were obtained from the Archives of the Royal Palace in Brussels.

Edith Gorren, daughter of Jean Gorren and Hinda (Henriette) Gelernter, 2018