Laure Grandmaison Najman collection

Laure Grandmaison was the proprietor of a hostel in Brussels, the Pension Internationale, located on the rue de Pont Neuf 7, in that city. Following the German occupation of Belgium in 1940, she began sheltering Jews, mostly emigres, who were threatened with arrest by the Nazis. When the occupation authorities learned of this, they shut down the pension in 1942. By that time, however, she had married one of the emigres who she had sheltered, Samuel Najman, originally of Chrzanow, Poland. Their daughter, Michèle, was born in 1942. Later in the war, the Najmans also sheltered a young Jewish girl, Marion Adler, who had been left in their care, and whose father returned for her after the war. Laure Grandmaison Najman died in 1974, at her daughter's home in La Roche-en-Ardenne, Belgium, and Samuel Najman died in 1986.