Education
Born in a well-to-do Bessarabian Jewish family, Jospa attended the Jewish gymnasium in Chişinău (present-day Moldova), coming to Belgium with the intention to study at the University of Liège, in the Philosophy and Letters section.
Born in a well-to-do Bessarabian Jewish family, Jospa attended the Jewish gymnasium in Chişinău (present-day Moldova), coming to Belgium with the intention to study at the University of Liège, in the Philosophy and Letters section.
Yvonne Jaspar was her pseudonym in the Belgian Resistance. However, she changed direction, studying to become a social worker She took part in hosting child refugees from the Spanish Civil War and in arranging secret passage through Belgium of volunteers for the International Brigades.
Jospa"s husband, Herz Jospa (d 1966) was arrested in June 1943, detained in Fort Breendonk, then deported to Buchenwald concentration camp in May 1944.
She thought he had died there, but he came back on May 8, 1945, after the camp was liberated by American troops. The Belgian branch was renamed in 1966 to Mouvement contre le racisme, l"antisémitisme et la xénophobie (MRAX, "Movement against racism, antisemitism and xenophobia").
She was a staunch communist but at the same time refused to endorse anti-zionist stances after 1947. In January 2003 Jospa"s name was given to a road in Brussels, rue Yvonne Jospa.
In 1964 Jospa co-founded the Union des Anciens Résistants Juifs de Belgique (Union of former Jewish resistance members of Belgium) of which she remained honorary chairperson until her death in 2000. She was made an honorary member of the L"Enfant Caché association ("The hidden child").
