Thekla Velleman-Hertog

I was born in Amsterdam (Holland) but when I was four years old my parents moved back to Antwerp (Belgium) where they had lived before the First World War. I lived there for the next twenty years until the Germans invaded Belgium in 1940.

We left Antwerp on May 12, 1940, two days after the Germans invaded Belgium. My parents, my sister and I went first to La Panne on the Belgian coast, believing t…