Born: 13 March 1912, China
Died: 1 August 2008
Country most active: Belgium
Also known as: Siou-Ling Tsien de Perlinghi
Qian Xiuling was a Chinese-Belgian scientist who saved nearly 100 lives during World War II. While her town of Herbeumont was occupied by German forces in June 1940, a Belgian youth blew up a military transport train by burying a mine under the railway, and was sentenced to death. Qian had met General Alexander von Falkenhausen – now head of the military government controlling Belgium – when he was working in China as part of the Sino-German cooperation. She wrote a letter and traveled to see Falkenhausen, convincing him to use his authority to spare the boy for humanitarian reasons.
On 7 June 1944, Qian was contacted again because the Germans had taken 97 Belgians prisoner under sentence of death in revenge for three Gestapo officers being killed in the nearby town of Ecaussinnes. Although she was pregnant with her first child, she again traveled to see Falkenhausen and asked him to intervene. Though reluctant, he eventually agreed to release the people, although he was disobeying an order. Qian later testified on he behalf when Falkenhausen was tried as a war criminal; he was sentenced for twelve years for executing hostages and deporting Jews, and deported to Germany to serve his sentence. After three weeks, when the minimum sentence according Belgian law had passed, he was pardoned by German chancellor Adenauer and retired.
The Belgian government awarded Qian the Medal of Belgian Gratitude 1940–1945. Her story was adapted into a sixteen-episode Chinese TV drama, Chinese Woman Facing Gestapo’s Gun; a novel of the same title was published in 2003. She reportedly never told her family in China of her story, but in 2003 her granddaughter, Tatiana de Perlinghi, made a documentary film entitled Ma grand-mère, une héroïne? (My grandma, a heroine?). There is also a street named Rue Perlinghi in her honour in Ecaussinnes.