Died 1991 | ||
Fela Perelman (1909-1991) worked to help Jewish people in Belgium during World War II.
She was born in Poland and studied history at the Université libre de Bruxelles. She wrote a doctoral thesis on the Belgian Revolution and Poland in 1830 which was published by the Office de Publicité in 1948.
The Comité de Défense des Juifs was founded in her house in 1942. She ran a center in Belgium for Jewish children, originally a school, where the children were hidden from the Nazis and given to Catholic families. She also helped to establish Belgian refugee houses after World War II, and helped Jewish people going to Palestine through her work as a Mossad operative. She was also important in Alyah Bet. She supported and was on the board of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and received an honorary doctorate from them; she was also appointed to the baronage in Belgium in 1983.
She wrote Dans le ventre de la baleine (In the Belly of the Whale), published in 1947. She had also written a first novel that she was taking to Charles Plisnier, but which she lost the manuscript of in May 1940.
She was married to Chaïm Perelman.