Marie and Emile Taquet

Who was Marie and Emile Taquet?

Marie Taquet-Martens and Émile Taquet were a husband and wife team who saved Jewish children from the Holocaust. She was born in Luxembourg in 1898; they married around 1918.

They ran a residence for children in Belgium, and hid significant numbers of Jewish children among the general population of the school.

One source describes the residence as a school for the children of Belgian military families, and her husband as a Belgian Army officer. That account says that he was the school's administrator, and she the headmistress. It says that the Gestapo visited. It calls the school "Reine Elizabeth Castle", and places it in Jamoigne, Belgium.

Another source describes the residence as a home for disabled children, which does not preclude it from being a home/ school for the children of Belgium officer's children. This source calls it the Queen Elisabeth Home, and says it was in the Chateau du Faing, in the village of Jamoigne-sur-Semois. The castle was said to belong to the Sisters of Charity of Besancon. In "Rescuers", with an interview with Mrs Taquet, 1988, the school is described as "the Castle of Jamoigne, a school for boys whose fathers were in the military."