Nadine Hwang pictured with her lover, Nelly Mousset Vos (second in from left) and other friends at a New Year’s party in their apartment in Caracas, Venezuela circa 1965.
via the Every Face Has a Name Initiative
Nadine Hwang (1902-1972), the daughter of a Chinese diplomat father and Belgian mother, was one of the first female Chinese pilots and was an honorary colonel in the Chinese army in the 1920s. In the 30s, Hwang moved to Paris and became the chauffeur and lover of influential writer Natalie Clifford Barney. Hwang may have worked with to help the French Resistance. In 1944, Hwang was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp as a “political prisoner.” On Christmas Eve, a prisoner in the same camp began singing Christmas carols for other French speakers. Hwang requested a song from Madame Butterfly, and the prisoner sang Un Bel dì Vedremo for her. The prisoner was Nelly Mousset Vos, a singer had had worked as a courier for the Belgian Resistance against the Nazis. The two women quickly fell in love. A few months later, Mousset Vos was transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp where she almost died. After the war ended, the two women reunited and moved to Venezuela. They lived there together for twenty years, then moved back to Belgium where they spent the rest of their lives together.
Sources: This article from the Europa Creativa Media Desk Andalucia and this page from the Every Face Has a Name initiative website.