It is remarkable what you can learn from street art. It’s not an art form often thought of as educational, but a recent encounter in Leuven was eye-opening. On the side of a house was a mural of a young woman carrying flowers, a bike in the background, clothes from the 1940s. Her name is Hortense Daman and her story of bravery and endurance is utterly extraordinary, unbearably tragic and heartwarmingly uplifting.
It’s the sort of story that leaves you wondering why she isn’t better known, or why her story hasn’t made it to the cinema screen: a teenager and her family who, when confronted by war and occupation, risk everything and pay an enormous price defending what they believed in. Hortense was born in August 1926 in Pleinstraat, one street away from the mural. Her story though begins in May 1940.
Aged 13, Hortense witnessed the aerial bombing of Leuven as the German army swept into Belgium. Her family became refugees and walked to Lille in France to escape the fighting. The war though had already overtaken them and they were sent back to Leuven. Hortense’s brother, Francois, who had served in the Belgium army, became a member of the Resistance. Through him, Hortense joined the Resistance as well.
Still a teenager, her courage helping Allied airmen escape and delivering messages, food, forged papers and weapons to the Resistance on her bike became legend. A young girl cycling around town and countryside wasn’t suspected by the German soldiers, but she had some close escapes. The consequences of being caught by the Gestapo were terrible and in 1944, as the Allies prepare to invade, the worst happened.
Hortense’s family was betrayed to the Nazis. Only Hortense and her parents were home when the house was raided. They were violently beaten before being taken to prison and routinely tortured. Worse was to come. Hortense and her mother were amongst a group of Belgian women shipped to Ravensbruck concentration camp just north of Berlin in a cattle wagon. Here, Hortense was subjected to Nazi medical experiments.
In the barbaric conditions of the camp, she was forcibly sterilized with radiation and injected with gangrene. Death was everywhere, but Hortense and her mother survived Ravensbruck. Liberated by the Russians and taken first to Sweden and then to Belgium, you might think this was the end of the story. Not quite. In post-war Leuven Hortense met and later married a British soldier and moved to live in Britain.
Despite believing she could never have children after being sterilised in Ravensbruck, she and her husband went on to have two children. You can find a fuller account of her life at the Discovering Belgium website. Had we taken a different route to walk to the Abdij van Park, the green space surrounding a 900 year-old abbey, I’d still know nothing about Hortense and her family. Such is fate.
Founded in 1129, the abbey once owned all of the current park, which today makes for a lovely walk before going into the historic centre of Leuven for lunch. I’ve written about Leuven before, and it is one of those places that continually draws us back. It has immense history dating back to the 9th century, it’s Golden Age coming in the medieval period on the back of cloth production and the founding of a university in 1425.
Despite serious destruction in the two World Wars, that history is still visible in Leuven, as a walk through the UNESCO listed Groot Begijnhof and around the 15th century town hall – one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture in the country – prove. Leuven though is also a major cultural centre and feels lively thanks to all the students. It definitely gets tourists but feels nothing like the swamped streets of Bruges.
It is also a hotbed of street art. One day I’ll come back and hunt out more street art, but even just wandering around you discover a lot. It also has a hefty beer making heritage. While the ubiquitous Stella Artois is based here, there are other local brewers producing delicious Doubles and Triples. These can be sampled around town, in particular in the Oude Markt, known as the ‘longest bar in the world’. A visit is a must to find out why!
