Nestor Hochglaube (later Hobe, 1939- ) was born on April 16, 1939 in Brussels to Simon Hochglaube and Frymetta Hochglaube (née Feinmesser). Simon and Frymetta Hochglaube, a Jewish couple originally from Warsaw, Poland, moved to Belgium in the 1930s. They had three children, Jacques (b. 1937), Nestor (b. 1939), and Leon (b. 1944).
In 1940, in anticipation of the German invasion of Belgium, Frymetta Hochglaube placed her sons, Jacques and Nestor, in a children’s home in Uccles. During the occupation, the boys were several times. After leaving the home in Uccles, they lived in the home of a German maid in the countryside for a few months. They rejoined their parents in hiding in the suburbs of Krainem. A few weeks later, following a roundup in a nearby neighborhood, the family moved into an attic of a Belgium named Guillaume Meulemans on Francois De Smedt Street in Brussels. When Meulemans voiced concern about hiding children in the attic, in the boys were sent to the Red Castle in nearby Linden. The Red Castle was organized by Mademe Sorel and housed approximately fifty Jewish children at any one time. In August 1942, the boys were sent to the Mes Enfants boarding school in Brugmann Avenue in Brussels where their cousins Bettie and Bobbie Kipper were hiding. Payments to the school were handled by the Vanzeegenbroek family who served as the Hochglaube’s messengers.
Nestor and Jacques remained at the boarding school even after liberation since it provided better food and heating for the children. However, after the British authorities issued a currency reform, Simon Hochglaube no longer had sufficient funds to keep his children at the boarding school. They returned to their parents. The same night the boys left, a stray V-1 rocket hit the school, killing about half of the children, including the Hochglaube’s two cousins.
Frymetta Hochglaube became pregnant during the last winter of the occupation. Refusing to undergo an abortion, her youngest son, Leon, was born in November 1944.
