[1] Andrée Madeleine Jacob was born on 22 July 1906[2] in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris into a family of shopkeepers who had converted from Judaism to Catholicism in the previous generation.

[2] Following the Fall of France in the Second World War, Jacobs lived under an assumed name, Marie-Thérèse Bourdon, to avoid having to wear the yellow star and the anti-semitic persecution, deportation and murder which people with Jewish ancestry suffered under the Vichy Regime.

Jacob managed to smuggle her parents out of Paris into the Free French zone, where they were able to live in the home of Éveline Garnier's family.

Jacob helped to save Jews from The Holocaust in France and was very active in the NAP (Noyautage des administrations publiques) network, an arm of the French Resistance which aimed to infiltrate the Vichy Government.

[7] Andrée Jacob became head of the archives department at the ministère des Anciens combattants (Ministry of Veterans' Affairs).