The sister of Belgium’s most notorious Nazi leader hid three Jews in her home near Brussels during the Holocaust, according to one of the survivors.

Hanna Nadel, 86, said she, her mother and her niece were rescued by M. Cornet, the sister of Leon Degrelle, who as leader of the Belgian Nazi Rexen movement was responsible for deporting Jews to their deaths during the German occupation of Belgium.

Nadel’s account, related to the historian Jan Maes, appeared recently in the Belgian-Jewish monthly Joods Actueel.

The three, having escaped deportation orders, wandered with their suitcases around the town of Sint-Genesius Rode, where they happened upon a help wanted sign on Cornet’s door. The mother rang the doorbell and Cornet, without asking many questions, hired the mother as a cook and Nadel and her niece to work as chambermaids.

Cornet knew the three women were Jewish and promised them they would survive. Visitors associated with the Flemish Nazi movement would routinely dine at the house; the three Jewish women would hide in the basement. 

Nadel’s mother sometimes would cook gefilte fish, which the lady of the house advertised to her guests as “oriental fish,” Nadel recalled.

Nadel immigrated to Israel after the war. Degrelle left for Spain, where he died of old age in 1994. — jta