Reysa Verhaeghe (known as Bernson)

Les Petits Bonhommes for which her parents paid a subscription in 1912. Thistypo3/youth publication, created the previous year by the Ligue ouvrière de protection de l’enfance (Worker’s League for the Protection of Children), perfectly reflected the values espoused by Désiré Verhaeghe and Dweira Bernson[1]. Reysa Verhaeghe’s parents separated, but never divorced, probably after the Great War. From this time on, the young woman seemed to prefer to use her mother’s surname rather than her birth name.

Passing on a taste for astronomy

Passionate about astronomy, Reysa Bernson was admitted as a member of the French Astronomical Society at the age of 16, at the society’s meeting on 5 May 1920. She was sponsored by Camille Flammarion, the society’s founder, and Maurice Ballot, its librarian. Four years later, at the age of 20, Reysa Bernson founded the Nord Astronomical Association. She explained the genesis of her project in the magazine L’Astronomie in 1925: ‘It was during a short stay in Paris, at the end of December 1922, that I came up with the idea of creating an Astronomical Society in Lille. When I visited the French Astronomical Society, I realised how much amateurs could benefit from a shared observatory and library, when few could have done it alone. My first idea had been to bring together the existing enthusiasts in Lille, but this idea soon changed and, in addition to working with other insiders, I started to bring the subject to a wider audience; that’s when I knew I had to do something official. The inaugural meeting of the Nord Astronomical Association took place on 20 December 1923 at the Nord Industrial Society, in the presence of the rector of the Lille education authority, Albert Châtelet, who himself helped found the association. The association was registered with the prefecture on 14 February 1924, and was based at the Lille Institute of Physics, 50 rue Gauthier-de-Chatillon. Professor Georges Bruhat, Director of the Institute of Physics, made the Institute’s terrace, a room and a photographic laboratory available to the association. In its first year of existence, the Nord Astronomical Association already had 140 members, two telescopes, a newsletter and offered regular classes and lectures.

Animated Astronomy Diagrams, which was designed to meet school curriculum expectations, at the 6th Scientific Cinema Congress in Paris. For several years now, Reysa Bernson had split her time between Lille and Paris, as required by her activities. On 2 June 1940, just a few days before the arrival of German troops in Paris, Reysa Bernson joined other members of the French Astronomical Society who had come, as they did every year, to the park of the Juvisy-sur-Orge Observatory to pay their respects at the tomb of Camille Flammarion. Reysa Bernson, who had been such an active figure, disappears from the sources during the Occupation. We only know that she deposited objects at the Paris Observatory and that she moved to the Nord Astronomical Association in 1943. There was no further trace of her until 1944, when she was arrested in Dreux on 23 February along with her mother Dweira Bernson. The reason for their arrest was their Jewish origin. Taken to the Chartres prison, they were transferred the next day to the Drancy camp. Convoy 69 left Drancy for Auschwitz on 7 March 1944. Their family’s efforts to save them came too late. Her cousin, Madeleine Malengé-Dorchies, and her husband, Émile, were unable to send Désiré Verhaeghe’s baptismal certificates in time. She and her mother Dweira never returned from Auschwitz. A committed, brilliant and tireless promoter of astronomy, it took over 70 years for the City of Lille to pay tribute to her by naming an alley in the Saint-Maurice – Pellevoisin district after her.