Fourteen Belgian citizens who hid and gave shelter to Jews during the Nazi occupation received posthumously the medal of the '' Righteous Among the Nations '' awarded by the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem.

The medals of honor and recognition diplomas were presented by Israel's ambassador to Belgium, Simona Frankel, to the children and grandchildren of those who saved Jews from deportation and death, during a ceremony at the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region.

The families came from different cities in Belgium, Israel and the Netherlands.

Brussels Parliament Speaker Charles Picqué opened the ceremony attended by several MPs, personalities of the Jewish community as well as students from two Brussels schools.

66,000 Jews were living in Belgim when the country was occupied by the Germans in May 1940. Only 10 % of them had Belgian citizenship, the rest were immigrants and refugees. When the deportations to the death camps began in summer 1942 the foreign Jews were deported first and a year later those who had Belgian citizenship were rounded up.

28,000 Jews from Belgium perished in the Holocaust.