of the firm under the so-called 'Arianization' process, and its management had been reluctantly taken over for the greater part by his son-in-law John Hennig, husband since 1933 of Meyer's daughter Kläre and with her a convert to Catholicism, in Hennig's case from Lutheranism. Emigration of the Meyers and the Hennigs In February 1939 Meyer was allowed to emigrate legally to Belgium, being married to a Belgian woman, and with the complicity of officials he knew. However, already in May Germany invaded the Netherlands and Belgium and the couple failed in an attempt to escape to France. They were now stranded as German Jews in German-occupied Belgium, a situation which lasted till the liberation by the Allies in 1944. Later that same year, in October 1939, Meyer's son-in-law Hennig emigrated legally to the Irish Free State to prepare a home there for his wife and children, who joined him a month later. Despite the separation and the many difficulties of these years, Felix Meyer and his wife Marguerite maintained a strongly affectionate relationship with their daughter and her family. Wartime Belgium In Aachen,Meyer had been a prominent public figure, well known among others to high-ranking army officers. In Nazi-occupied Belgium Something of this status remained and Meyer exploited it in favour of his fellow Jews. He showed remarkable strength of character and a courage that almost defies belief. His exploits included complaining in person to the Gestapo about illegal detention of Jews. In that strange mental world of ice-cold cruelty and pseudo-bureaucratic meticulousness, Meyer succeeded in having well over a hundred Belgian and foreign Jews released one by one, arguing in detail their cases. He also alleviated the conditions of others, sometimes adducing the rights implied by military decorations awarded prior to the advent of Nazism. A man of the world, Meyer exploited the rivalry between committed Nazis and other military and civilian personnel and perhaps, too, the fear that some of his interlocutors had of facing legal retribution after the war. Meyer's initiatives were far from being of benefit solely to small numbers of people, for he arranged shelter and medical care for hundreds. As to Felix Meyer's humanitarian activities in wartime Belgium, many testimonies are conserved at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem memorial site. The end of hostilities in Europe brought little immediate alleviation in general conditions, though Meyer fought for his humanitarian projects and at retrieving possession of his