Yvonne Jospa

Who is Yvonne Jospa?

Yvonne Jospa, née Have Groisman was a cofounder and leading organizer with her husband Hertz Jospa of the Comité de Défense des Juifs in September 1942, which saved over 3,000 Jewish children from deportation and death. Yvonne Jaspar was her pseudonym in the Belgian Resistance.

Born in a well-to-do Bessarabian Jewish family, Jospa attended the Jewish gymnasium in Chişinău, coming to Belgium with the intention to study at the University of Liège, in the Philosophy and Letters section. However, she changed direction, studying to become a social worker. In 1933 she married Hertz Jospa, and they both became activists, first in the Belgian Communist Party, then in 1936 in the anti-racism organisation Ligue contre le racisme et l'antisémitisme, the Belgian section of the Ligue internationale contre l'antisémitime. She took part in hosting child refugees from the Spanish Civil War and in arranging secret passage through Belgium of volunteers for the International Brigades.

Jospa's husband, Herz Jospa was arrested in June 1943, detained in Fort Breendonk, then deported to Buchenwald concentration camp in May 1944. She thought he had died there, but he came back on May 8, 1945, after the camp was liberated by American troops.