No Decision to Make

It was 1940, in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a village on the Vivarais Plateau, in the Haute-Loire, in France.

On June 23, the village's two pastors, André Trocmé and Édouard Theis, spoke. Their message came down to one idea: in the face of violence, Christians would answer with "the weapons of the Spirit."

That same year, on a cold, dark evening, someone knocked at the door of the parsonage.

It was a Jewish woman from Germany. She was fleeing.

Magda Trocmé, the pastor's wife, opened the door. And let her in.

She was the first of many.

More refugees came, then more still. Many were Jewish children. Seven houses were funded to shelter them. Families on the plateau made room. Others helped make false papers. Guides led those in greatest danger to the Swiss border, 300 kilometres away.

Nobody asked who was Jewish and who was not.

In August 1942, André Trocmé urged his congregation to do the will of God, not of men. Gendarmes came to the village. They left without arresting anyone.

Yad Vashem has kept these words of the pastor: "I do not know what a Jew is. I know only human beings."

The danger was real.

In February 1943, André Trocmé, Édouard Theis and the schoolteacher Roger Darcissac were arrested and interned. The pastor was pressed to sign a promise to obey every government order. He did not sign. A few weeks later, they were released.

On June 29, 1943, the Gestapo raided a school, the Maison des Roches. Five Jewish students were sent to Auschwitz, where they died. Daniel Trocmé, who ran it, was arrested too. He died in deportation in April 1944. He was 34.

The door stayed open.

How many people passed through the plateau? We will never know exactly. Thousands.

In 1990, Yad Vashem gave the village a diploma of honour.

Magda Trocmé, for her part, refused to call it a feat. Those who took in the first refugees, she said, did what had to be done. Nothing more complicated.

Then, on December 25, 2020, a man died at 90. His name was Eric Schwam.

His family had arrived in Le Chambon in 1943. They were hidden in a school until the end of the war. They stayed until 1950.

Eric Schwam left his fortune to the village. About two million euros, according to the former mayor. He asked for one thing: that the money go to young people, to their education, and above all to scholarships.

In Le Chambon, no one saved anyone alone. There were the pastors, the teacher, the families on the plateau, the guides, the people who made the papers. Ubuntu puts it in its own way: a door opened by one person always ends up opening many others.

One evening in 1940, a woman knocked at a door.

Eighty years later, that door was still opening, this time onto the future of the village's young people.