Marie-Jeanne Borghmans. Collection

Marie-Jeanne Borghmans was born on 18 May 1937 as the only child of Jozef (Jef) Borghmans and Alice Deleu. As youngsters Jozef and Alice had been neighbours. After their wedding in 1934 the young couple first lived at Gemeentestraat in Kessel-Lo, near Leuven, and later at Albrecht Rodenbachstraat. Jozef Borghmans earned a living as a postman in the Leuven area (mainly the Kessel-Lo district). Upon the invasion of Belgium by Nazi-Germany on 10 May 1940, he and his colleagues were evacuated to France. After six weeks the men were able to return home. Jozef re-joined the Belgian postal services. During the war, the Borghmans family remained in Kessel-Lo even though it was dangerous to live there: both the allied forces and the Belgian resistance attacked the nearby depot and staging yard of the National Railway Company of Belgium (NMBS/SNCB). However, since Jozef had connections to the resistance, he was often informed about upcoming attacks, thanks to which he could avoid any eminent danger. Jozef Borghmans was also the regular postman of the Jewish Rothschild-Florsheim family which had moved to Kessel-Lo in March 1941. At least at once occasion Jozef, in secret, transported a parcel for the family. Around late Spring or early Summer 1943 the Rothschild-Florsheim family asked Jozef to house a Russian-Jewish couple for the night: Lazare Galperin (born on 24 August 1892 in Proskurov, Russia, today Khmelnytskyy in Ukraine) and Freide alias Frieda Engelmann (born on 13 February 1897 in Lwow, Poland, today Lviv, Ukraine). Freide Engelmann was a distant cousin of Mathilde Tirtza Rothschild’s fiancée Josef Schreiber. Lazare and Freide Galperin-Engelmann would eventually stay hidden in the attic of the Borghmans family home for nine months. Jozef’s wife Alice Deleu cooked for them, did their laundry and even took Freide Engelmann to a doctor in secret after Freide miscarried while in hiding at the Borghmans family home. During the time of hiding, there was a constant fear of being discovered, especially because one of the neighbours was a known collaborator (on whom a successful assassination attempt was made). After a bombardment on Leuven by allied airmen in Spring 1944, Jozef and Alice decided that the situation had become too dangerous. Lazare and Freide Galperin-Engelmann were sent back to the Rothschild-Florsheim family which found them a new hiding place in Kessel-Lo. Unfortunately, Freide Engelmann and four others (Flora Florsheim, her daughter Hannah Rothschild, their servant Lotte Weissmann and visitor Max alias Marcel Marinower) were arrested on 28 March 1944 when the Rothschild-Florsheim family home was raided by members of the German Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst. Freide Engelmann had just stopped by for a short visit. Freide Engelmann was deported from the Dossin barracks to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport XXIV on 4 April 1944 and did not survive. The other four persons arrested at the Rothschild-Florsheim family home survived deportation. Freide’s husband Lazare Galperin survived the war in hiding in Kessel-Lo, as did both their daughters, and all members of the Borghmans-Deleu family. Lazare Galperin passed away on 25 November 1963, Jozef Borghmans on 23 April 1993, Alice Deleu on 31 July 1975 and Marie-Jeanne Borghmans on 18 November 2018.

A few months before she passed away on 18 November 2018, Marie-Jeanne Borghmans wrote down her memories of the Second World War, including her recollections of her parents hiding Lazare and Freide Galperin-Engelmann in their attic. In 2024 Marie-Jeanne's children Griet, Bart, Jo and Nele Van der Herten donated the original manuscript to Kazerne Dossin.

Bart Van der Herten, son of Marie-Jeanne Borghmans