062. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon: French community shelters Jews during the Holocaust

André and Magda Trocmé

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a village on the Vivarais Plateau in the Auvergne, a hilly region of south-central France. During World War II, even as the Germans were occupying France and other parts of Europe, the residents of Le Chambon (along with those of the surrounding villages) did something remarkable: From December 1940 to September 1944, they provided refuge for an estimated 5000 people, including 3000–3500 Jews, who were fleeing from the Germans.

Rescue and refuge

The rescue and refuge operation was led by Pastor André Trocmé of the Reformed Church of France, his wife Magda, and his assistant, Pastor Edouard Theis. The residents of Le Chambon and the neighbouring villages offered shelter to the refugees in private homes, in hotels, on farms, and in schools. They forged identification and ration cards for the refugees, and in some cases, guided them across the border to neutral Switzerland. These rescue actions were unusual during the Holocaust because as they involved the majority of the population of an entire region.

Motivation

What motivated the villagers to undertake the risky operation? As Huguenot (Calvinist) Protestants, they had been persecuted in France by the Catholic authorities from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and later they provided shelter to fellow Protestants escaping discrimination and persecution. The collective memory of their own suffering as a religious minority created a strong suspicion of authoritarian governments and sympathy for the persecuted Jews. In June 1940, a pro-German Vichy government was established in France. Most Huguenots in the area refused to cooperate with the Vichy government. André Trocmé, a committed pacifist, embarked on a campaign of peaceful civil disobedience against the authorities. While the Trocmés and Theis were the principal catalysts of non-violent rescue activity on the Vivarais Plateau, the effort involved many others, including Protestant pastors in nearby parishes, as well as Catholics, American Quakers, Jews, Swiss Protestants, Evangelicals, students of various faiths, and non-believers.

Rescue operation

The organized rescue effort began during the winter of 1940, when Pastor Trocmé established contact with the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) in Marseilles in order to assist in providing relief supplies to the 30,000 foreign Jews held in internment camps in southern France. Trocmé initiated a working relationship with Burns Chalmers, a leading American Quaker, who told him that while the Quakers might be able to get internees released from the camps, there was no place for them to go, since no one was prepared to offer them shelter.

Trocmé assured Chalmers that his village, Le Chambon, would take in refugees. Chalmers was able to negotiate the release of many Jews, especially children, from some of the southern camps. In addition to those who arrived in Le Chambon as a result of this organized rescue effort, Jews and others in danger also found their way to the town as individuals or in small groups, once word of mouth identified the Vivarais Plateau as a hospitable place of refuge.

Keeping the refugees safe

The refugees were mostly foreign-born Jews, who did not hold French citizenship. A majority of them were children. They were dispersed among the small isolated villages and farms in the mountainous region surrounding Le Chambon. The Quaker organization, American Congregationalists, the Swiss Red Cross, and even national governments like Sweden contributed funding to maintain the houses. The refugees received food, clothing, and false identity documents. The sheltered children even attended school and took part in youth organizations. In order to maintain an appearance of normalcy and to conceal the presence of Jews in the communities, the children frequently attended Protestant religious services. Nevertheless, Trocmé also encouraged these Jews to hold clandestine Jewish services.

Whenever the villagers got wind of impending visits by the Vichy police or German Security Police raids, they moved the refugees further into the countryside, escorting some to the Swiss border. Hunted by the Vichy authorities and the Germans, other refugees followed the Jews to Le Chambon, seeking sanctuary. Among them were Spanish Republicans who had fled internment camps, anti-Nazi Germans, and many young Frenchmen seeking to avoid deportation to Germany for forced labor. The region also sheltered members of the French resistance, which became active in the region in 1942.

Under German Occupation 

The Germans occupied southern France in November 1942. On February 13, 1943, French police arrested Pastors Trocmé and Theis, as well as the headmaster of the local primary school, Roger Darcissac, and interned them at a camp. Released after 28 days, they continued to operate rescue activities until late 1943, when rumours of re-arrest sent them into hiding themselves. At that point, Magda Trocmé took over the leadership of the rescue enterprise.

The rescue operation had its share of tragedies. On June 29, 1943, the German police raided a local secondary school and arrested 18 students. The Germans identified five of them as Jews, and sent them to Auschwitz, where they died. The German police also arrested their teacher, Daniel Trocmé, Pastor Trocmé’s cousin, and deported him to a concentration camp, where the SS killed him. Roger Le Forestier, Le Chambon’s physician, who was especially active in helping Jews obtain false documents, was arrested and subsequently shot on orders of the Gestapo.

Le Chambon and the region were liberated by the Free French First Armored Division on September 2-3, 1944.

This is what Elizabeth Koenig-Kaufman, a former child refugee in Le Chambon said: “Nobody asked who was Jewish and who was not. Nobody asked where you were from. Nobody asked who your father was or if you could pay. They just accepted each of us, taking us in with warmth, sheltering children, often without their parents—children who cried in the night from nightmares.”

Afterword: For this story, I have drawn heavily from the Holocaust Encyclopedia. Several books have been written on this story including A Good Place to Hide: How One French Community Saved Thousands Of Lives During World War II by Peter Grose; Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There by Philip P. Hallie; and Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France by Caroline Moorehead. Pierre Sauvage made a documentary entitled Weapons of the Spirit.