By Joe Spier
JERUSALEM– As I walk the grounds of Yad Vashem, I approach the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles. At the entrance stand three plaques placed in an honored position. Raul Wallenberg, whose exploits in saving over 100,000 Jewish lives are well known, Irena Sendler, not so well known, saved 2,500 Jewish children from the certain death of the Warsaw Ghetto and Andre & Magda Trocme, names unknown to me. This chance encounter led me to discover the amazing story of an entire village that in “a conspiracy of goodness” saved as many Jews as its total population.
In 1934, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a mostly Protestant, poor, French farming village, with a population of about 5,000, located roughly 350 miles south of Paris, was in need of a new pastor. They found him in 33 year old, avowed pacifist, Andre Trocme who moved to the village with his wife, Magda and their four children.
Soon after arriving in Chambon, Andre Trocme, through charisma and enthusiasm, gained the love of its citizens. He became the village’s moral and spiritual leader and was greatly successful in passing on to his flock his fundamental principle of “love of God and neighbor”. He preached a doctrine of peace and non-violence and lettered on the gates of his church the simple credo, “Love One Another”.
Following France’s surrender to Germany in 1940, France was divided into two zones, the Northern zone occupied by Germany and the so-called unoccupied zone in the South, governed by the collaborationist Vichy regime headed by Marshal Phillipe Petain who enforced all anti-Semitic Nazi doctrines and laws. Chambon fell under Vichy control.
The day after France’s surrender, Andre Trocme delivered a sermon; “We will resist whenever our adversaries will demand of us obedience contrary to the orders of the Gospel. We will do so without fear but also without pride and without hate”. Initially the villagers conducted small acts of peaceful defiance. They refused to salute the Vichy flag, they would not sign a loyalty oath to Marshal Petain and they rejected instructions given to all French towns to ring church bells in celebration of the anniversary of Vichy power.
And then late one night in the winter of 1940 everything changed. Someone knocked on the door of the Trocme home, a cold, hungry Jewish woman who had fled from Germany. Thinking that the local pastor might understand her plight, she sought shelter. Realizing the danger that the woman faced, Magda Trocme asked a village family if they might hide her. They agreed. That was the beginning. A few more Jews made their way to Chambon and the peasants gave them refuge. As word spread more and more Jews were pulled to the village; they kept coming.
Andre Trocme was the conscience of the village preaching that “the people of the Bible” must be sheltered. His wife, Magda, was the organizer. Under Andre’s moral leadership and Magda’s implementation, families were located willing to hide Jews (some for as long as four years), false identity papers and food ration booklets were procured, trains were met by villagers who then spirited refugees to safe houses in private homes, farms and public institutions. Many Jewish refugees were children who were educated in schools alongside the village children. Those who could not be concealed were guided, as part of an underground railroad, past hostile French police and Nazi troops to safety in Switzerland.
From December 1940 until liberation in September 1944, some 5,000 Jews were given haven among the 5,000 Christians in Chambon. No one was refused sanctuary. Not one was turned over to the police or denounced by a single villager. These brave peasants risked their lives in this dangerous mission, as a rescue operation of this magnitude could not go unnoticed by the authorities.
Early on the Vichy authorities who knew what was going on demanded of Andre Trocme that he cease shielding Jews. Trocme responded, “I don’t know what a Jew is. I only know human beings.” Frequently, security agents were sent to perform searches for Jews within the village. Most times the villagers were warned of an impending search by sympathetic Vichy employees and the Jews were spirited out of the village and hidden in the adjacent forest. As soon as the soldiers left, the peasants would go into the forest and sing, the signal that it was safe to return. Villagers denied to the authorities that they were hiding Jews; any newcomers in their homes were merely “cousins.” All searches were unsuccessful. Nor did the stress of the searches lessen the resolve of the Trocmes or of the villagers to continue their protection.
In July 1942, as the Jews of Paris were being deported to the death camps, Andre Trocme took to his pulpit and delivered his sermon: “The Christian Church should drop to its knees and beg pardon of God for its cowardice”.
A particularly harrowing search occurred in August 1942. Two police buses, accompanied by Vichy Government officials and the Gestapo, arrived at the village with instructions to purge the village of its Jews. The police captain demanded from Andre Trocme, under threat of arrest, the names of all Jews being sheltered in the village. Trocme refused. The next day, a Sunday, the gendarmes searched every house in the village but each was empty. The entire village, including the Jews, had crowded Trocme’s church. In his sermon, Andre Trocme urged his flock “to do the will of God, not of man.” The police stayed for three weeks as the Jews were moved from one hiding place to another. They found no one and the buses, completely empty, eventually left.
As hazardous as the work was, it turned decidedly more dangerous in November 1942 after German forces swept into the Southern Vichy zone of France and occupied the area of Chambon.
It is February 13, 1943. Magda Trocme hears a knock on her door. Inside, four German Jews rush into hiding in the attic and the cellar. Magda opens the door and is confronted by two police officers with orders to arrest Andre, who is not home. They wait and when Andre arrives, place him under arrest. But supper is ready and Magda insists that all eat. The police officers, perhaps touched by this simple act of naive kindness, cannot eat. Meanwhile word of the impeding arrest has spread. As Andre is led away, the villagers line the street and sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Also arrested that night are Andre’s assistant and the principal of the public school. The three are placed in an internment camp. The villagers send food, which is shared with the other camp inmates. Andre conducts worship services and even the non-believers begin to attend. The thrust of Andre’s sermons are, “Was Jesus a pacifist?” and “How does God deal with evil?” After five weeks, the three are offered their release provided they sign a pledge to follow Government orders regarding Jews. The principal signs and is immediately freed but Andre and his assistant refuse. Shortly thereafter, Andre and his assistant are inexplicably released conceivably because the authorities viewed the religious services that they were conducting as a threat to the order of the camp.
Upon his release, fearing re-arrest, Andre went into hiding until liberation. However, his absence did not deter the villagers of Chambon from their courageous work. Under the direction of Magda who took over leadership of the rescue operation, they continued Andre’s legacy.
Chambon did not survive the occupation unscathed. On June 29, 1943, betrayed by a German army chaplain, the Nazis raided a secondary school (the only safe house ever uncovered in Chambon) and arrested eighteen students, five of them Jewish who were then sent to their deaths in Auschwitz. Also arrested was the leader of the school, Daniel Trocme, cousin of Andre, who could have escaped but stayed to try to protect his students. Daniel was shipped to Majdanek where in April 1944, at the age of 34, he perished in its gas chambers. Andre, overcome with grief, in a letter to Daniel’s parents, wrote that Daniel died “for something greater than liberty – for love.”
In the summer of 1944, Chambon’s doctor, Roger Le Fortier, active in helping Jews obtain false documents, was arrested and tortured but refused to betray anyone. On orders from the Gestapo, Le Fortier was shot on August 20, 1944 his corpse piled on a heap with other resistance fighters and burnt.
Free French forces liberated Chambon on September 2, 1944. By that time some 5,000 Jews had been saved by the courageous citizens of Chambon, a number equal to its population.
Andre Trocme died in 1971 and Magda Trocme in 1996.
In 1990, Chambon became the first of only two communities honored by Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations.” Of the 2,000 French citizens recognized as Righteous Gentiles, 40 are from the village of Chambon.
Why is it important to tell the story of the good people of Chambon? Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate who passed away on July 2, put it eloquently:
“Let us not forget, after all, that there is always a moment when the moral choice is made. Often because of one story or one book or one person, we are able to make a different choice; a choice for humanity, for life. And so we must know these good people who helped Jews during the Holocaust. We must learn from them, and in gratitude and hope, we must remember them.”
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Spier is a retired lawyer with a keen interest in Jewish history. You may contact him via joe.spier@sdjewishworld.com. Comments below MUST be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and his or her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)