Andrée de Jongh and the Comet Line

One of the most successful World War II rescue operations was created by a 23 year-old woman named Andrée de Jongh.

De Jongh was born in 1916 in German-occupied Belgium and was raised in the shadow of what was then called the Great War.  Long before she reached adulthood, De Jongh’s schoolmaster  father made certain his daughter was well-versed in Belgium’s wartime history, both its villains and its heroes. Topping the list of the latter were two women executed in Brussels by the Germans: Belgian spy Gabrielle Petit and British nurse Edith Cavell.