The Blonde Beer of Leffe

I wrote this today on September 11, 2008. Not international news, not news at all, but for me true history about WW2, the Home de Leffe and the blonde beer of Leffe.

 
 In the year 1942 the Gestapo find out that thirty Jewish children were hiding in the ‘Home de Leffe’, near Dinant (Belgium).The children, with the help of the priests and one of the teacher, Mr. Toulemonde (I remember), manage to  escape from the ‘Home de Leffe’. Mr. Toulemonde asked me if I want to go with him. I say yes. So I arrived in a dark night to the family  Willy Kelner in Awagne, were I stayed until the end of the war (1945).

The escape from the ‘Home de Leffe’

Awagne hiding

Many years later, in 2002, after an opening of an exhibition in Tel Aviv, a few of us where thirsty, so we invade a neighbour pub to drink something. I saw that one of my friends was drinking a blonde beer in a beer glass with the imprint ‘Home de Leffe.” Looking at the bottle I immediately recognise the Home de Leffe where I hide for a year from the Nazis, in 1942.

I am not a beer drinker and know nothing about beer, only that it has a bitter  taste. But this time I ordered a beer from the “brewery of the Home de Leffe“ and to my great surprise the taste was nor bitter but sweet. In some unknown way, I realised that my sejour at the Home de Leffe has many reminiscences of this actual sweetness of the beer.

 And here is the beer:

And here are Leffe beer glasses:

 Source see here.

On Belgian beer see here.