Less than a week after September 11, 2001, Nelly Trocmé Hewett, daughter of André and Magda Trocmé, recalled that what set her parents apart was that "they knew how to think for themselves, even if this meant defying a government’s decrees." Their compassionate thinking brings us back to the original meaning of "radical": rooted. André Trocmé and his flock in Le Chambon were rooted in the teachings of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the peacemakers; blessed are those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail. In keeping with their empathy and keen sense of justice, they simply opened their hearts and their homes to Jewish refugees of the Nazi regime. To them, this were the simplest, most natural way a human being could respond, even in the face of great danger. May we see the events of our own times with equal clarity, and like the people of Le Chambon be living representatives of God's great mercy. -- Patricia Carlson

"Nonviolence was not a theory superimposed upon reality; it was an itinerary that we explored day after day in communal prayer and in obedience to the commands of the Spirit."

In Israel there are trees planted in honor of the "righteous gentiles" who risked their lives to save Jews during the "epoch of extermination." One of them bears the name of André Trocmé, Protestant pastor of a small French village called Le Chambon. During the years of the Nazi occupation the citizens of Le Chambon quietly organized to offer a haven to thousands of Jewish refugees who were thus saved from certain death.

Just as remarkable as the courage and generosity of the people of Le Chambon was the fact that they did not regard their own actions to be in any way remarkable; they were simply the most obvious expression of human decency. The full story of Le Chambon must give credit to the many hundreds of persons who took part in this "conspiracy of goodness," but there is little doubt of the key part played by Pastor Trocmé.

He was born on April 7, 1901, to an ancient family of Huguenots. The sense of belonging to a once-embattled minority in Catholic France was an element in Trocmé's character, just as the experience of having been an impoverished refugee during World War I helped him identify with the downtrodden. But at the core of Trocmé's ministry was a literal commitment to the Sermon on the Mount and a conviction that the essence of the gospel lay in the love of God and neighbor. From the time in 1934 when he arrived in Le Chambon with his wife, Magda, and their four children, these were the principles Trocmé labored to install in his flock. Within a few years he had succeeded to a remarkable degree.

The test came with the fall of France in 1940. Though Le Chambon fell within the formally independent domain of Vichy France, it was not long before the values of ultranationalism and chauvinism were insinuated throughout the countryside. From the beginning, through small acts of defiance, Pastor Trocmé made it clear that his village would not submit to the spirit of fear and hatred. As word of the village spread, Le Chambon became a magnet for refugees and others fleeing the net of persecution.

When in 1942 the order came to deliver all Jews for deportation, the village entered into a much more momentous and dangerous form of resistance. In an organization centered around the presbytery and a core of church elders, the village became a safe haven for Jewish refugees, operating under the noses of the Vichy police and, later, of the Gestapo themselves. Trocmé himself was at one point detained and later went into hiding. Still the sheltering of Jews continued.

During the years of war and occupation it is estimated that as many as twenty-five hundred Jews were protected in the village and its surrounding farms. Beside the vast slaughter of those years -- even beside the twenty-eight thousand Jews deported from Paris alone in the summer of 1942 -- the numbers of persons rescued in Le Chambon are modest. But the achievement is extraordinary when one considers that for Jews in thsoe years this small village in France was perhaps the safest place in all of occupied Europe.

The lives of those twenty-five hundred and their descendants are the legacy of one man. Trocmé so invigorated the faith and conscience of his flock that they willingly risked their own lives to protect the lives of persons who had been labeled disposable "outsiders."

Trocmé died in 1971. The following year his wife, Magda, attended the ceremony in Israel in which her husband was posthumously awarded the Medal of Righteousness. At the top of the citation there appears a saying from the Baal Shem Tov, "In remembrance resides the secret of redemption."

Sincere thanks to Robert Ellsberg
for permission to use this chapter from his book All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses From Our Time . "Since soon after it came out; I have used this book for daily spiritual reading and still find it inspiring." —Br. David

Additional Resources
See: Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There (New York: Harper & Row, 1979).

-- Visiting Le Chambon

-- A Village Remembers