Maria Floryn-Hernalsteen
Maria Floryn was born on 1 September 1901 in Molenbeek/Brussels.

She moved to Tervuren with her husband, Léon Floryn. Maria was baptised as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses on 15 July 1939. Her husband also belonged to the religious community. He had already been arrested by the Gestapo on 8 June 1941.1WTA Kraainem, Hernalsteen-Floryn, Maria, database; repatriation card; WTA Kraainem, Floryn, Célestin, report on his mother, 22-11-1995.
Under the German occupation of Belgium, Maria carried on with her preaching work underground. She established a small group of fellow believers in Antwerp, where they endeavoured to spread the faith at their peril. She made an undergarment for the preaching work, in which she could hide a Bible, five booklets and three original magazines.


Maria was arrested by the Gestapo on 23 May 1942. Both of her children, then six and ten years old, were left to fend for themselves. On top of the psychological pain of worrying about her children, she also suffered physical maltreatment by the Aachen State Police in the German prison. On 11 November of that same year, Maria was deported to the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück. There she was given the registration number 14981 and was assigned to block 12, where German, Polish and Dutch Jehovah’s Witnesses were housed. In Ravensbrück she was put to work outside the camp.
When Maria was transferred to camp St. Lambrecht in May 1943, her husband Léon had already been in a whole series of concentration camps. He had been transferred from Natzweiler concentration camp in France to Stutthof in Poland, and afterwards to Dachau concentration camp.2Léon Floryn’s prisoner registration number was 46.522 (WTA Selters i.T., Doc. 08/01/44). At the beginning of January 1944 he sent a letter from Neu-Ulm Unterfahlheim to his wife, Maria, at the St. Lambrecht camp. This letter shows that Léon was put to work in this sub-camp of Dachau in a SS school for cabinet makers.3WTA Selters i.T., Doc. 08/01/44.

In St. Lambrecht, Maria was set to work cleaning part of the camp as well as the female SS guard’s room. It was also one of her duties to keep the ceramic wood stove burning. Furthermore, she voluntarily knitted a jumper for camp commandant Schöller.4PA, interview Huisman, Gerdina, 15-10-2002; interview Hoogers-Elbertsen, Jans, 16-10-2002.
On 9 May 1945, mayor Pirker of St. Lambrecht confirmed Maria Floryn’s liberation from the concentration camp. Maria probably bade farewell to her German and Polish sisters in the faith at Klagenfurt on her return journey and travelled further via Udine, Verona and Bolzano to Dornbirn, where she arrived on 21 June 1945.

The route took her further to Mulhouse, Paris and Lille. Having reached her home country, Belgium, she travelled through Tournai and Brussels to Tervuren, where she finally arrived on 29 July 1945. In March 1950 she was granted the status of a person politically persecuted by the Nazi regime.5WTA Kraainem, Hernalsteen-Floryn, Maria, Carte de Prisonnier Politique. Maria visited St. Lambrecht one more time and returned to those places where she had been put to forced labour. Maria Floryn died in hospital in Leuven (or Louvain), Belgium, in 1986.

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