Andree de Jongh

Andree de Jongh (born 1916) was a member of Belgian Resistance who organized a Comet Line for escaped Allied soldiers during the World War II.

Andree de Jongh was born 1916 in Schaerbeek, Belgium to a family of headmaster Frederich de Jongh. She trained as a nurse but was working as a commercial artist when the German troops invaded Belgium in 1940.

De Jongh moved to Brussels and established an escape network called the Comet Line for captured Allied soldiers with the help of her father. In August 1941 she appeared in a British consulate in Bilbao with ah British soldier and two Belgia volunteers and requested support for her escape network. Request was Granted and Comet Line begun.

Comet line went from Brussels to Pyrenees through France and there to British consulate in Madrid and to Gibraltar. They helped maybe 400 Allied soldiers and Andree accompanied 118 of them herself.

Gestapo captured Frederich de Jongh in June 1943 in Gare du Nord and later executed him. Many other members of the Comet Line were also captured and 23 executed. Andree was captured in January 1944. Unwilling to believe she could have organized the network herself, Gestapo let her live. She was sent first to Fresnes prison in Paris and eventually to a Ravensbruck concentration camp. She was released by advancing Allied troops in April 1945.

Andree de Jongh was awarded American Medal of Freedom. After the war she moved first to Belgian Congo and then to Ethiopia to work in a leper hospital in Addis Abeba. Later she was made a Belgian Countess. As of this writing, she is retired and lives in Brussels.