Marie Bouffa

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Marie Rachel Eudoxie Bouffa (19 January 1882 – 1 February 1945) was a Belgian woman who helped people resist the Nazis during World War II and was named Righteous Among the Nations.

She was born in Comblain-au-Pont, Belgium, to Nicolas Joseph Adolphe Bouffa and Clarisse Catherine Josèphe Antoine. In 1942, at 58, she owned a guest house called La Ferme de la Chapelle on her estate near La Reid, Liège.

That year, the Belgian Secret Army asked her to help form a local resistance group, and she joined as the first member on 1 December 1942. Bouffa sheltered many people hunted by the Nazis, including resistance fighters, those fleeing forced labor, escaped prisoners, and Allied airmen. She provided safe hiding places, fake documents, and helped show escape routes. She also printed and shared underground news, sent military information, and stored weapons.

From August 1942 she hid a Jewish family, the Sluchny seven, who had fled Antwerp. They stayed with her, but a neighbor warned of an approaching Gestapo raid. She moved them to a nearby village and, after the danger passed, brought them back to a hidden place behind a wall on her estate. On 17 February 1944 another raid occurred; the family escaped to other hiding places, but Bouffa was arrested by the Gestapo.

She was taken to Ravensbrück, a women’s concentration camp in northern Germany, where she was executed on 1 February 1945. On 30 July 2008 Yad Vashem honored her as Eudoxie Bouffa, recognizing her as a Righteous Among the Nations for saving Jews during the Holocaust.