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Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon was a village in France that helped save Jews. They created a refuge for Jews that were escaping the clutches of the Vichy Authority and the Germans.

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"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."
—Elizabeth Koenig-Kaufman, a former child refugee in Le Chambon

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Describe the Impact to the world/their country:

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Describe the Impact to the world/their country:

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Le-Chambon-Sur-Lignon had an impact on France in later years because in 1990, the state of Israel realized what Le-Chambon-Sur-Lignon had done for the Jews ( giving them refuge giving them fake documents etc ) and as of 2007 gave 40 individuals from Le Chambon and its environs the designation of “Righteous.”

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The whole village was involved but Pastor André Trocmé was the one who offered shelter in private homes, in hotels, on farms, and in schools.

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Explain what happened after the act(s) of resistance.  What was the final impact, or result?

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Explain what happened after the act(s) of resistance.  What was the final impact, or result?

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After the acts of resistance, the Jews lived a happy life until the Germans occupied southern France in November 1942. They stopped notifying the people when they were going to visit and after a while of this, French police arrested Pastors Trocmé and Theis, as well as the headmaster of the local primary school, Roger Darcissac who mainly lead the group.

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"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."
-Elizabeth Koenig-Kaufman, a former child refugee in Le Chambon

From December 1940 to September 1944, the inhabitants of the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon (population 5,000) and the villages on the surrounding plateau (population 24,000) provided refuge for an estimated 5,000 people. This number included about 3,000-3,500 Jews who were fleeing from the Vichy authorities and the Germans.

Led by Pastor André Trocmé of the Reformed Church of France, his wife Magda, and his assistant, Pastor Edouard Theis, the residents of these villages offered shelter 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 actions of rescue were unusual during the period of the Holocaust insofar as they involved the majority of the population of an entire region.

Background

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a village on the Vivarais Plateau in the Haute-Loire départment of the Auvergne, a hilly region of south-central France. Until November 1942, it lay in the Unoccupied Zone of France. The history of Le Chambon and its environs influenced the conduct of its residents during the Vichy regime and under German occupation. As Huguenot (Calvinist) Protestants, they had been persecuted in France by the Catholic authorities from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and later provided shelter to fellow Protestants escaping discrimination and persecution. Many in Le Chambon regarded the Jews as a "chosen people" and, when they escorted those who were endangered 300 kilometers to the Swiss border, the guides were aware that they were following the same route that their persecuted Huguenot brethren had traveled centuries earlier.

On the Vivarais Plateau, the collective memory of their own suffering as a religious minority created a strong suspicion of authoritarian governments. Most Huguenots in the area refused to cooperate with the Vichy government, refused to take an oath to Marshal Pétain (chief of state of the Vichy regime), and refused to ring church bells in his honor. After the Vichy government was established in June 1940, André Trocmé, a committed pacifist, embarked on a campaign of peaceful civil disobedience against the authorities. Trocmé, who often preached against antisemitism, protested the mass roundup of Jews in Paris at the Vélodrome d'Hiver in July 1942 in a public sermon on August 16, stating that "the Christian Church must kneel down and ask God to forgive its present failings and cowardice."

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

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, including Gurs, Les Milles, and Rivesaltes. 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.

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. OSE (Oeuvre de Secours Aux Enfants, Children's Aid Society), a French-Jewish child care agency, played an important role in escorting children to Le Chambon and placing them in private homes, boarding houses, and in seven houses funded specifically to shelter them.

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. The CIMADE (Comite Inter-Mouvements Aupres Des Evacues, Committee to Coordinate Activities for the Displaced), a Protestant refugee organization, was especially active in finding escape routes to Switzerland. One common underground route led from Le Chambon to Annemasse and over 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 unity and solidarity of the local population compelled the Vichy authorities to proceed with caution in the region. Sometimes Vichy police officials gave the villages informal warnings before conducting searches. This pattern changed, however, after 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 in Saint-Paul d'Eyjeaux, near Limoges. The French authorities released the three men after 28 days, and they continued to operate rescue activities until late 1943, when rumors of re-arrest sent them into hiding themselves. At that point, Magda Trocmé took over the leadership of the rescue enterprise.

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 the Lublin/Majdanek 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 August 20, 1944, in Montluc prison on orders of the Gestapo in Lyon.

The Vivarais Plateau was liberated by the Free French First Armored Division on September 2-3, 1944.

Recognition

In 1990, the State of Israel recognized all of the inhabitants of Le Chambon and those of nearby villages collectively as " Righteous Among the Nations." In addition, as of December 2007, the Israelis have awarded 40 individuals from Le Chambon and its environs the designation of "Righteous." French President Jacques Chirac officially recognized the heroism of the village during a visit there on July 8, 2004. In January 2007, the French government honored the inhabitants of Le Chambon at a ceremony in the Pantheon in Paris.

The village of Le Chambon and its neighboring villages offer an exceptional example of a collective rescue effort during the Holocaust.

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"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."

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Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon resisted by helping the Jews get out of Germany. They also gave the escaped Jews a place to stay. This happened during the winter of 1940. They helped 30,000 Jews held in internment camps.

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All over Europe, a small number of individuals tried to save Jews. But in Le Chambon, a village in southern France, the entire community became involved in rescue. Le Chambon was a Protestant village in a predominantly Roman Catholic region, which before and even during the war was a center of tourism. Now its residents turned their tiny mountain village into a hiding place for Jews from every part of Europe. Between 1940 and 1944, Le Chambon and other nearby villages provided refuge for more than 5,000 people fleeing Nazi persecution, about 3,500 of whom were Jews. Magda Trocmé, the wife of the local minister, explained how it began.

Those of us who received the first Jews did what we thought had to be done-nothing more complicated. It was not decided from one day to the next what we would have to do. There were many people in the village who needed help. How could we refuse them? A person doesn't sit down and say I'm going to do this and this and that. We had no time to think. When a problem came, we had to solve it immediately. Sometimes people ask me, "How did you make a decision?" There was no decision to make. The issue was: Do you think we are all brothers or not? Do you think it is unjust to turn in the Jews or not? Then let us try to help!

Almost everyone in the community of 5,000 took part in the effort. Even the children were involved. When a Nazi official tried to organize a Hitler Youth camp in the village, the students told him that they "make no distinction between Jews and non-Jews. It is contrary to Gospel teaching."

The majority of the Jewish refugees were children. The villagers provided them with food, shelter, and fake identity papers. They also made sure that those they sheltered were involved as much as possible in the life of the town, in part to avoid arousing suspicion from other visitors. Whenever residents of Le Chambon learned of an upcoming police raid, they hid those they were protecting in the surrounding countryside. The values of the village were perhaps expressed best by its minister, André Trocmé, who concluded his sermons with the words, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Go practice it."

In February 1943, the police arrested André Trocmé and his assistant, Edouard Theis. Although they were released after 28 days, the Gestapo continued to monitor their activities. In summer 1943, the Gestapo offered a reward for André Trocmé's capture, forcing him into hiding for ten months. Many knew where he was, but no one turned him in.

Historian Marianne Ruel Robins notes:

The fact that an entire community participated (or watched and said nothing) is remarkable indeed. The silence observed by the people of the Plateau was an important condition for its success, not simply because it sheltered Jews from external threats, but also because it minimized internal dissent. To refrain from talking meant that one would not shame one's neighbor for his lack of participation; it also meant that different rationales for behavior would not conflict with another, be they commitment to pacifism, nationalism, Christian charity or judeophilia. Silence did not necessarily imply that everyone implicitly agreed on the reasons for hiding Jews, but rather that most people came to agree that something ought to be done.

The rescuers of Le Chambon also drew support from people in other places. There was an extensive network of sympathizers throughout the region who could be called upon for help with communication and organization. Jewish rescue organizations brought Jewish children to the area for protection. Church groups, both Protestant and Catholic, helped fund their efforts. So did the World Council of Churches. Also, a group known as the Cimade led hundreds of Jews across the Alps to safety in Switzerland.

When Magda Trocmé reflected on her choices years after the war, she said, "When people read this story, I want them to know that I tried to open my door. I tried to tell people, 'Come in, come in.' In the end I would like to say to people, 'Remember that in your life there will be lots of circumstances where you will need a kind of courage, a kind of decision on your own, not about other people but about yourself.' I would not say more."

Le Chambon: Una Aldea Que Opone Resistencia

Por toda Europa, un pequeño número de personas trataron de salvar judíos. Sin embargo, en Le Chambon, una aldea al sur de Francia, toda la comunidad intervino en el rescate. Le Chambon era una aldea protestante en una región predominantemente católica romana, que antes de, e incluso durante, la guerra era un centro turístico. Ahora bien, sus residentes convirtieron la pequeña aldea en la montaña en un escondite para los judíos de cualquier parte de Europa. Entre 1940 y 1944, Le Chambon y otras aldeas cercanas sirvieron de refugio a más de 5,000 personas que huían de la persecución de los nazi, de los cuales, aproximadamente, 3,500 eran judíos. Magda Trocmé, la esposa del pastor local, explica cómo empezó todo.

Quienes recibimos a los primeros judíos hicimos lo que pensamos que se debía hacer; nada más complicado. No se decidió de un día para otro lo que teníamos que hacer. Había muchas personas en la aldea que necesitaban ayuda. ¿Cómo podíamos rehusarnos? Una persona no se sienta y dice: voy a hacer esto, y esto, y lo otro. No teníamos tiempo para pensar. Cuando se presentaba un problema, teníamos que resolverlo de inmediato. A veces, las personas me preguntaban: "¿Cómo tomó la decisión?". No había una decisión que tomar. El asunto era: ¿Creen que somos hermanos, o no? ¿Creen que es injusto entregar a los judíos, o no? ¡Entonces, tratemos de ayudar!

Casi todos en la comunidad, de 5,000 habitantes, participaron en este esfuerzo; incluso los niños estuvieron involucrados. Cuando un oficial nazi trataba de organizar un campamento de Juventudes Hitlerianas en la aldea, los estudiantes le decían que ellos "no hacían distinción entre judíos y no judíos porque es contrario a las enseñanzas del evangelio".

La mayoría de los refugiados judíos eran niños; los aldeanos les proporcionaron comida, refugio y documentos de identificación falsos. También se cercioraron de que aquellos que habían refugiado intervinieran al máximo en la vida del pueblo, en parte para evitar despertar sospechas de otros visitantes. Cuando los residentes de Le Chambon se enteraban de una redada de la policía, escondían a aquellos que estaban protegiendo en la zona rural circundante. El que mejor expresaba los valores de la aldea fue, quizás, su pastor, André Trocmé, quien concluía sus sermones con las siguientes palabras: "Amarás al Señor tu Dios con todo tu corazón, con toda tu mente y con toda tu fortaleza y amarás a tu prójimo como a ti mismo. Vayan a practicarlo".

En febrero de 1943, la policía arrestó a André Trocmé y a su asistente, Edouard Theis. Aunque fueron liberados después de 28 días, la Gestapo siguió vigilando sus actividades. En el verano de 1943, la Gestapo ofreció una recompensa por la captura de André Trocmé, obligándolo a esconderse durante diez meses. Muchos sabían dónde estaba, pero nadie lo entregó.

La historiadora Marianne Ruel Robins señala:

El hecho de que toda la comunidad participara (u observara y no dijera nada), en realidad, es extraordinario. El silencio observado por las personas de la meseta fue una condición importante para que tuvieran éxito, no solo porque protegían a los judíos de amenazas externas, sino también porque minimizaban el disentimiento interno. Abstenerse de hablar significaba que uno no avergonzaría a su vecino por su falta de participación; también significaba que distintas razones de comportamiento no entraban en conflicto entre ellas, ya fuera su compromiso con el pacifismo, el nacionalismo, la caridad cristiana o la judeofilia. El silencio no necesariamente implicaba que todos estuvieran de acuerdo con las razones para esconder a los judíos, sino que la mayoría de las personas estaban de acuerdo en que algo debía hacerse.

Los rescatadores de Le Chambon también recibieron ayuda de personas de otros lugares; había una extensa red de simpatizantes en toda la región a quienes se podía acudir en busca de ayuda con respecto a la comunicación o a la organización. Las organizaciones de rescate de los judíos trajeron niños judíos al área para protegerlos. Grupos religiosos, tanto protestantes como católicos, ayudaron a financiar los esfuerzos; al igual que el Consejo Mundial de Iglesias. Además, un grupo conocido como la Cimade llevó a cientos de judíos a través de los Alpes hasta sitios seguros en Suiza.

Cuando Magda Trocmé reflexionó sobre sus decisiones años después de la guerra, dijo: "Cuando las personas lean esta historia, quiero que sepan que traté de abrir mi puerta; traté de decirles a las personas: 'Sigan, sigan'. Finalmente, me gustaría decirles a las personas: 'Recuerden que en sus vidas habrá muchas circunstancias en las que necesitarán algo de coraje, algo de determinación propia, no con respecto a otras personas sino con respecto a ustedes mismos'. No diré más".

1. Draw an identity chart for the people of Le Chambon. What parts of their identity might the people of Le Chambon have drawn upon when they chose to act?

2. What do you think allowed the people of Le Chambon to act successfully and decisively to help Jews even though, as Magda Trocmé says, they had "no time to think"? Compare Trocmé's description of having "no time to think" to that of the professor in the reading No Time to Think. He, too, says he had no time to think, but his response was very different from Trocmé's. How do you account for that difference?

3. In the reading, historian Marianne Ruel Robins mentions other factors that may have influenced individual villagers' choices to participate in the rescue of Jews, besides exceptional moral behavior. What were some of those reasons? Do they make the villagers' actions any less admirable?

4. Elie Wiesel has said, "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." Why do you think Wiesel thinks we should remember these stories? What were the stories that might have inspired the people of Le Chambon to act? What stories do you know and value that could inspire you to act in a difficult time?

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All over Europe, a small number of individuals tried to save Jews. But in Le Chambon, a village in southern France, the entire community became involved in rescue. Le Chambon was a Protestant village in a predominantly Roman Catholic region, which before and even during the war was a center of tourism.