NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN
After completing a degree at St. Quentin University in 1918, Trocmé went to Paris to study religion at the Sorbonne. During his six years there, he was increasingly drawn to the beliefs of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), an ecumenical pacifist organization founded in response to the horrors of the recent war in Europe, and in 1923 Trocmé helped establish IFOR’s French chapter. In 1925, seeking a course of study that emphasized social action as well as theology, he enrolled at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. Upon his return to France the following year, he took a pastorate in a northern mining village. There he brought out his pacifist beliefs in full force, giving sermons on the subject, hosting pacifist youth groups, and giving testimony at trials of conscientious objectors. 1901-1971 Called to task by the Reformed Church for violating their express ban against preaching nonviolence, Trocmé decided “These people came here for help and to take his cause somewhere that would be for shelter. I am their shepherd, and a more sympathetic to his beliefs and less shepherd does not forsake his flock,” visible to church authorities. Le Chambon André Trocmé told Vichy authorities in was the perfect spot—a small village that 1942, calmly defying their orders to stop had provided refuge for Huguenots fleeaiding the Jewish refugees who were mak- ing Catholic persecution three centuries ing their way into his village in south before. Trocmé became pastor to the central France.The Protestant pastor knew Protestants of this village, and in 1938 he that he was risking both his freedom and and a university friend, Edouard Theis, his life, but his conscience gave him no established a pacifist Christian high school other way to respond. As many as 5,000 called College Cevanol, which was soon Jewish lives would eventually be saved drawing students from around the world. because of the unshakable moral convic- Comfortably dividing his time between tions of this remarkable man and the the flourishing school and his pastorate, village he served. Trocmé had no inkling of the role he and Trocmé had arrived with his wife, his quiet village would soon be playing. Magda, and their four children in the In 1940 Nazi Germany invaded France small mountain village of Le Chambon and set up a puppet regime (the Vichy sur Lignon eight years earlier. He had government) under Marshal Petain. Antideliberately sought a remote parish where Semitic doctrines and laws were soon in he could quietly pursue his belief in place throughout the country. Petain pacifism, a belief for which he had already signed a treaty with the Nazis, agreeing gotten in trouble with the leaders of his to hand over all Jewish refugees requestReformed Church denomination and ed by the Germans. The day after Petain a belief which had been taking root in put his signature to the treaty, Trocmé him since childhood. preached the following words to his
André Trocmé
PRISM 2007
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congregation: “Tremendous pressure will be put on us to submit passively to a totalitarian ideology... The duty of Christians is to use the weapons of the Spirit to oppose the violence that they will try to put on our consciences. ... We shall resist whenever our adversaries demand of us obedience contrary to the orders of the gospel. We shall do so without fear, but also without pride and without hate.” With these words Trocmé defined the extraordinary role that the village would take over the next few years. The first line in the sand was drawn when Trocmé and his colleagues at the high school refused to pledge their loyalty to the Vichy regime. Trocmé then met with leaders of the American Friends’ Service Committee and agreed that Le Chambon would become a safe haven for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. Homes, shops, and even public buildings became hiding places for the refugees who began arriving in hordes when word got out that Le Chambon offered sanctuary. When the Nazis or their French collaborators made sweeps through the area, the Jews were spirited away to the countryside and hidden on the farms. Not a single Jew was ever turned over to the authorities by a villager. Staff and students at the high school forged identification and ration cards for the refugees, and other villagers risked their lives to smuggle these displaced persons across the Swiss border. Le Chambon was often called the “Village of Children,” for the simple reason that it became a haven for Jewish children whose parents were rounded up by the Nazis. In July of 1942, 28,000 Jews were deported from Paris alone, and many of the children left behind were brought to Le Chambon by the Quakers and other Protestant denominations. Trocmé’s cousin Daniel set up group homes for them, and the children were educated right alongside the Continued on page 5.