Background
Born as Hortense Daman to parents Jacques and Stephanie Daman in the Belgian town of Leuven (Louvain in French) in 1926 where her mother ran a grocery shop.
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Hortense Clews
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Career
She became involved in the Belgian Resistance when she was 13 after the Nazis had invaded Belgium in 1940. She mainly worked as a courier which involved carrying messages, explosives and weapons beneath the upper layer in her cycle pannier whilst pretending to be carrying out grocery deliveries for her mother. Betrayal and arrest
On the 14 February 1944, the Gestapo raided the family home after someone informed on the family"s resistance work.
She was sentenced to death without trial and moved to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany with her mother.
Her father was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. Concentration camp inmate
Whilst at Ravensbrück, Hortense was subjected to experiments including infecting her leg with gangrene (the German doctors deciding not to amputate) and sterilisation.
Whilst at Ravensbrück, her life was saved by the actions of British secret agent Violette Szabo, who was also a prisoner there. Sixteen years later, despite the experiments that had been carried out at Ravensbrück, she gave birth to daughter Julia and, seven years later, son Christopher.
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Born
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Died
December 18, 2006 (aged 80) -
Nationality
Belgium