Cloth sheet with three unused Star of David badges owned by a Catholic rescuer

Jeanne Daman was born in Belgium on November 14, 1918, to a Roman Catholic family. In May 1940, Germany conquered and occupied Belgium. They instituted anti-Jewish laws and regulations. When Jewish children were barred from attending public schools, Fela Perelman invited Jeanne to join the staff of Nos Petits, a Jewish kindergarten in Brussels, which enrolled over 300 children. Perelman was a leading figure in the organized rescue efforts for Jewish children. Jeanne agreed to teach there and eventually became headmistress.

In 1942, the Germans began organizing mass arrests and deportation of Jews to concentration and forced labor camps. As Jeanne saw children suddenly go absent from school or become orphaned because their family was rounded up, she began to work to help find hiding places for them. The decision was made to close the school and focus on the rescue work of finding Belgian families to care for the children. Jeanne began working with ONE: L’Oeuvre Nationale de l’Enfance [National Child Welfare] and other Belgian officials. Once all the school children were placed, she continued her rescue efforts, working closely with Fela and Chaim Perelman and underground Belgian and Jewish resistance groups.

Ever-increasing numbers of children were abandoned as the deportation efforts intensified. Jeanne would accompany them to their hiding addresses. She traveled all over Belgium, visiting other rescuers, such as Father Rausch near the French border, who had taken in fifty of these children. Her work expanded to include adults, as the news of terrible conditions in the camps, such as Auschwitz in Poland, became known. Jeanne would provide false identity papers and ration cards and she placed Jewish women in Belgian households as maids. She tried to keep in touch with those she helped and let separated parents and children know about family members in hiding elsewhere. Perelman introduced Jeanne to Albert Domb of the Jewish underground, who asked her to assist with the liquidation of collaborators. She was asked to coordinate the timing of the acts and to find out the location of the targets. Jeanne used different identities, sometimes acting as a social worker with the Secours d’Hiver [Winter Help], a welfare organization set up by the Germans. Towards the end of the war, she was involved with the illegal work of the MRB [Mouvement Royal Belge / Royal Belgian Movement], transporting weapons for them on her bicycle. As an Intelligence agent, she also was active in the Brussels corps of the Armée Belge des Partisans [Belgian Partisans Army].

After the war, she assisted in returning young Jewish orphans to their families and in providing special care for the children who returned from the camps. In 1946, she left for the United States and helped with fundraising for Israel through the UJA [United Jewish Appeal]. She married Aldo Scaglione and they settled in North Carolina. She became a US citizen in 1954. Jeanne rescued over 2000 children and many adults. In 1971, she was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. On October 12, 1980, she was honored with the Entraide [Mutual Aid] medal from the Belgian Jewish Committee 1940-45, under the patronage of the King of Belgium. Jeanne passed away, age 67 years, in June 1986.