VILLAGES OFFERED UNIQUE HAVEN OF
P R O T E C T I O N A N D S I L E N C E
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a remote village on a pine-studded plateau in south central France, was an isolated town of about 2,000 people, which historian Leon Poliakov described in the 1940's as "distrusting all authority, listening only to their conscience - or their pastors."
One pastor they listened to was Andre Trocme, the Protestant pastor of Le Chambon, who with his wife Magda were instrumental in building a rescue network in Le Chambon and neighboring villages that ultimately provided safe havens for 5,000 Jews, many of them children, fleeing Nazi terror.
The refugees began streaming into the village as early as 1940. Some stayed long enough to secure a guide to Switzerland, but many remained, sheltered with families and boardinghouses. They kept pouring in until, as Poliakov said, "in some hamlets, there was not a single farm which did not shelter a Jewish family."
What attracted the refugees to Le Chambon? Writing years later, Magda Trocme explained: "Because we were in the mountains, because it was a Protestant place, because someone had spoken, perhaps, of a minister who at that time had funny ideas, who was a conscientious objector."
The Trocmes weren't alone is assisting the refugees. CIMADE, the Protestant relief agency, headed by Madeleine Barot, set up a family residence at the Hotel Coteau Fleuri, on the outskirts of the village. The Quakers, in cooperation with Pastor Trocme, established a boardinghouse for young children. And Secours suisse launched two farm-schools for older children of the refugees. In addition, nearby Catholic convents and monasteries also participated in the rescue effort.
But this clandestine activity didn't escape the attention of the French police. Early one morning in August, 1942, the police arrived in the village with three empty buses, and demanded that Pastor Trocme provide them with the names of the hidden Jews.
Trocme replied, "No, I cannot. First, I do not know their names - they often changed their names - and I don't know who they are. And second, these Jews, they are my brothers." The police searched the village for three days, but arrested only one refugee, an Austrian who subsequently was released because he was only half Jewish.
It was months later that Trocme was arrested and spent several weeks in a Vichy detention camp.
Recalling the rescue activity years later, Magda Trocme said: "The first thing is that we must not think that we were the only ones who helped during those times. Little by little, now that we speak of these things, we realize that other people did lot of things too."
OTHER VILLAGES IN OTHER COUNTRIES: Although Le Chambon justifiably looms large in the pantheon of hospitable villages that welcomed refugees, other villages in France and in other countries also provided a protective environment and a safe haven during the Holocaust years:
THIMORY, a French village of 350 inhabitants near Orleans, offered a shield of protection for a 20-year-old Auschwitz survivor identified only as Moschkovitch, and his family. They lived openly in the village, using their own name. He recalled: "All the people of Thimory knew that we were Jews, from the mayor and the school teacher to the last farmer, and including the sister of the priest. . . We were never denounced although there were many people there, not to say a majority, who thought well of Petain and his Vichy government."
NICOLE DAVID was a hidden child with a Catholic family in Belgium when she was six years old. In 1942, her father arranged for her to hide with him in Besine, a Belgian village of 150 residents. "The village was hiding at least 30 Jews," she wrote later. "Eudor Clobert, the mayor; and the priest, whose name I can't remember; and Maurice Pochet, who kept the village shop; saved many lives, providing Jews with false papers, food and communications. The whole village was very good."
THE CITIZENS OF SECCHIANO, a close-knit village in central Italy, banded together to shelter Wolf and Esther Fullenbaum and their four-year-old daughter, Carlotta. Their presence was common knowledge and even a source of pride among the 600 villagers. Housed on the second floor of a schoolhouse, the refugee family received food and supplies from storekeepers and neighbors. Even though the village priest was arrested for hiding other refugees, not one citizen ever betrayed the Fullenbaums, who remained in Secchiano for more than a year and survived the war.
RUTH RUBENSTEIN, another hidden child who spent some time in a Catholic convent in Belgium, was later placed with the DeMarneffs, a Belgian couple who had no children. "They lived in a village near Brussels and were very nice and kind to me," she recalled. "The DeMarneffs passed me off as a niece from Italy. Later I learned that the whole village knew I was Jewish and they all protected me."
GISELA KONOPKA, originally from Berlin, Germany, joined the anti-Nazi underground when she was a college student. She later married and with her husband escaped into France and strayed into Montauban, a village in northern France. "Montauban was like a miracle," she remembered. "Catholics, Protestants, the entire village opened its homes, gave us false papers, rations, all the things you needed. . . We ate blackberries and suet and bread, and the farmers gave us milk."
Commenting on this cocoon of goodness that the refugees found in towns and villages, Lucien Steinberg, French historian and researcher, observed: "I would like to emphasize that the majority of the Jews saved in France do not owe their rescue to Jewish organizations. The various Jewish bodies which worked with such great dedication managed to save only a few tens of thousands, while the others were saved mostly thanks to the assistance of the French population. In many cases, groups of Jews lived in small villages. Everyone of the Jews was convinced that no one in that area knew their true identity; after the war it turned out that everyone knew that they were Jews."
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