“Death creates an economy that makes life precious. One of the ways of naming that preciousness is friendship.”
Stanley Hauerwas

Rescue and resistance on the plateau: Why an isolated French community saved thousands of Jews during World War II

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Motivations

The Faith Factor

A major motivator of action for those involved in the rescue was their Christian faith. At the heart of this was a particular understanding of what it meant to be obedient to God. Eva Fogelman’s study of religious rescuers has found that the belief that they were accountable to a higher authority was the most salient aspect of their rescuing identity:

  It overcame anti Semitism, transcended fear and impelled them to action …The moral dilemmas that rescuers grappled with were dealt with through prayer and study of Scripture and through this they became convinced that their work demonstrated God’s love and compassion for those suffering under Nazism.  

Many villagers referred to the Parable of the Good Samaritan when asked for the reason why they rescued. This parable acted as the foundation on which the rescue operation was grounded – a faith that reveals itself in action. Unlike the religious leaders of the parable who turned their faces from those in need, the inhabitants of the plateau saw and acted. They made it their business to be informed of events and questioned what they were being told by their government. A major reason why they were able to see is that rescuers chose not to fall for stereotypes but saw people as people. As Klempner notes:

  Nazi’s sought to stereotype Jews as subhuman, dangerous parasites whose destruction was necessary for the greater good of Europe. They asked Europeans to exclude Jews from their obligation to care. The success of the ‘Final Solution’ depended to a large extent on the cooperation or at least the passivity of what are now known as the  bystanders.  

The reflections of a Jewish girl who had travelled across Europe hounded from place to place fleeing the Nazis highlights the difference she found in the people of Le Chambon:

  Nobody asked who was Jewish and who was not. Nobody asked where you were from. Nobody asked who your Father was and if you could pay. They just accepted us, taking us with warmth, sheltering children, often without their parents; children who cried in the night from nightmares..”  

The people of Le Chambon understood well the point of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. When it comes to having mercy there are no limits. And rescuer research has shown that it was this attitude to ‘the other’ that distinguished rescuers from bystanders. 
 
A shaping history

Fundamental to the rescue was a collective memory of persecution,  which gave the villagers empathy for those suffering a similar fate. Many of the rescuers of the plateau were descendants of French Huguenots  who had fled there during periods of severe persecution at the hands of their own government during the French Wars of Religion 1685-1789. The Huguenots referred to this period as le désert
– identifying themselves with the Old Testament Israelites and their time of wilderness wandering. The area became known as La Montagne Protestant -  The Protestant Mountain. Never part of the establishment, they encouraged each other to “Régister” - or resist pressure to recant their faith. 

The area had a history of providing refuge for the persecuted and needy. From the 1890’s a Protestant Pastor established boarding houses for impoverished children from the mining town of St Etienne.

Catholic priests sought refuge there during the French Revolution, as did refugees from the Spanish Civil War who arrived in the 30’s.

Extensive research into people who sheltered Jews during World War II has found that rescuing was an extension of pre-war character. Patrick Henry sums it up well.
   
The villagers had a faith ... forged through the fires of persecution		  
 

  This explains in large measure why so many of the rescuers felt that what they did hardly warranted attention, much less praise. It seemed ordinary to them, for it was their normal way of relating to others. They simply continued to act humanely at a time when to do so could have cost them their life.  What they did (feed hungry people, give a bed or barn for someone to sleep in etc…) was simply decent, not heroic. But when they did it rendered their actions extraordinary.  

The villagers had a faith that had been forged through the fires of persecution, and it formed the core of their identity. Many of them read their bibles daily and sought to obey what they read. They were influenced by Calvin’s ideas of resisting tyranny as well as his emphasis on Jews as the ‘chosen people’.

Their theology stood in stark contrast to the Lutheran church in Germany, which equated obedience to God with obedience to the state. A sermon given by Trocmé and Theis on June 23, 1940 to a packed church the day after the armistice was signed with the Nazi’s shows that it was clear to them that what they and their congregation faced was competing allegiances:

  Tremendous pressure will be put on us to submit passively to a totalitarian ideology … The duty of Christians is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on our consciences with the weapons of the spirit.  We appeal to all our brothers in Christ to refuse to cooperate with this violence …

 Loving, forgiving and doing good to our adversaries is our duty. Yet we must do this without giving up, and without being cowardly. 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. 		 

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