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Reading the Bible in Occupied France: André Trocmé and Le Chambon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2010

Alicia J. Batten
Alicia J. Batten*
Affiliation:
University of Sudbury, Ontario
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Extract

Since the publication of Philip Hallie's book, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed,1 and the release of Pierre Sauvage's documentary, Weapons of the Spirit,2 many North Americans have become familiar with the rescue efforts carried out in the French Vivarais-Lignon plateau during World War II. It is difficult to know the exact number of persons sheltered, and indeed this statistic has become a point of contention among historians, with some arguing that 700–1000 Jews were rescued, while a few of those who experienced and contributed to the effort estimate 3500 (in addition to approximately 1500 others).3 It is true that during the war a variety of individuals and groups in France assisted people at tremendous risk, but the number saved in the plateau, even if it does hover around 1000, is nonetheless striking.4 The residents of this region welcomed individuals and families from throughout France and Europe, providing food, housing, and assisting many over the border into Switzerland, some 300 kilometers away. Moreover, some local residents participated in the manufacture and distribution of false papers, a crime under Vichy law, but the provision of which aided in the survival of hundreds of persons during the period.5 Although not all of the inhabitants of the plateau were active in the armed Resistance, they resisted nonetheless by resolutely disobeying the Vichy authorities as well as the Germans. These people were the minority throughout France, for while some citizens actively collaborated with the Germans, the vast majority simply waited out the war, neither collaborating nor particularly opposing the changes brought by the Vichy government and the subsequent German occupying forces.6

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 103 , Issue 3 , July 2010 , pp. 309 - 328
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Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2010

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References

1 Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed (London: Michael Joseph, 1979; repr., New York: Harper & Row, 1979; reprinted, New York: Harper Collins 1985, reprinted, New York: Harper Perennial, 1994).

2 Pierre Sauvage, Weapons of the Spirit (Los Angeles: Le Chambon Foundation, 1989).

3 Debates about the numbers of people assisted in the region can be found in the proceedings of the colloquium held at Le Chambon in 1990. See, in particular, François Boulet, “Quelques éléments statistiques,” in Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon. Accueil et Résistance 1939–44 (ed. Pierre Bolle et al.; Le Chambon-sur-Lignon: Société d'histoire de la Montagne, 1992) 286–98. Boulet estimates the number of Jewish refugees to be closer to 500 than 5000, also building off the work of Jacques Poujol, Cévennes, terre de refuge, 1940–44 (textes et documents rassemblés par Patrick Cabanel, Philippe Joutard, Jacques Poujol; Montpellier: Presses du Languedoc, Club Cévenol, 1988) 28–30. In the ensuing debate at the colloquium (see Le Plateau, 299–324) however, Oscar Rosowsky (also known as Jean-Claude Plunne), a French Jewish refugee from Nice who had manufactured false papers in the region during the war, indicated that he had furnished papers for approximately 5000 people (not all Jewish) and he criticized the manner in which the low numbers were developed, based as they were on French administrative documents, and pointed out that especially after 1942, records were not kept of who was where, particularly if the refugees were in hiding on remote farms. People simply did not always know where other people were. More recently, Patrick Henry (“Banishing the Coercion of Despair: Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the Holocaust Today,” Shofar 20 [2002] 74) reiterates that approximately 5000 people were helped throughout the region, including 3500 Jews. See also Patrick Henry, We Know Only Men (Washington: Catholic University Press, 2007) 16.

4 For the stories of people involved in rescue efforts throughout France, see Lucien Lazare, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Righteous among the Nations. Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust: France (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2003). Another notable example of rescue was in the area known as Cévennes, in the Languedoc region. 800–1000 Jews were sheltered in this region, thanks to the efforts of both Huguenot and Roman Catholic villages. See Patrick Cabanel, Cévennes. Un Jardin d'Israël (Cahors: La Louve, 2006) and Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust: The French and the Jews (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1993) 232–33.

5 The Vichy regime required numerous forms of identification, as well as official ration cards for food, provisions and tobacco. On the significance of the manufacture of false papers by the Jewish resistance, see Lucien Lazare, Rescue as Resistance: How Jewish Organizations Fought the Holocaust in France (trans. Jeffrey M. Green; New York: Columbia University Press, 1996) 166–71. In the Vivarais-Lignon plateau, Oscar Rosowsky became an expert forger and worked day and night producing, distributing and hiding documents with the aid of local residents, especially his friend, Samy Charles. See Rosowsky, “Les faux papiers d'identité au Chambon-sur-Lignon 1942–44,” in Le Plateau, 232–41. Various local residents also participated in producing false documentation. For example Gaby Barraud, an eighteen year old woman whose mother ran a boarding house for refugees, many of them children, and whose father was in the resistance, created and distributed papers when she could. For an account of her work, see Deborah Durland DeSaix and Karen Gray Ruelle, Hidden on the Mountain: Stories of Children Sheltered from the Nazis in Le Chambon (New York: Holiday House, 2007) 159–63.

6 See Philippe Burrin, France Under the Germans. Collaboration and Compromise (trans. Janet Lloyd; New York: New Press, 1996) 175–357.

7 In the preface to the 1979 version of Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, Hallie wrote that “I knew that I could not tell the story as thoroughly as a careful historian might tell it; I was neither trained nor inclined to report every detail I could find” (p. 7).

8 For example, Rosowsky has pointed out that one of the episodes narrated in Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, in which the head of the French Reformed Church, Mark Boegner, orders Trocmé to no longer assist refugees, is presented as occurring in 1943 when in fact nothing of the sort happened in that year. Trocmé had been reprimanded by the leaders of the French Reformed Church for his pacifist views, but before the war began. See “Communication d'Oscar Rosowsky” in Les Résistances sur le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, 1938–1945 (ed. Michel Fabréguet; La Société d'Histoire de la Montagne; Poulignac: Éditions du Roure, 2005) 43. Other contributions to Les Résistances sur le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon also criticize Hallie for overly relying upon Trocmé's then unpublished Autobiographie which is now held in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

9 See Bolle et al., Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon.

10 Annik Flaud, local historian in the area, as well as Gérard Bollon, a local official who knew Trocmé and who has published several books about the plateau, agreed that “catalyst” was an appropriate way to describe Trocmé's role. Patrick Henry also uses this word for Trocmé and his colleague, Edouard Theis (“Banishing the Coercion of Despair,” 72).

11 “La Cévenole” was a “hymne symbolique” for French Protestants, first sung in 1885 at the bicentennial of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

12 I am grateful to Jacques P. Trocmé, son of André Trocmé, for pointing out that the founding of the college was Magda's idea. Magda's autobiography, published in part in Pierre Boismorand, ed., Magda et André Trocmé. Figures de résistances (L'histoire à vif; Paris: Cerf, 2007) 105, also states this.

13 This school had many famous teachers, including the philosopher Paul Ricœur, who taught there from 1946–1948 before moving to the University of Strasbourg.

14 See Georges Menut (“André Trocmé, un violent vaincu par Dieu,” Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, 381), who knew Trocmé personally and cites the autobiography as well as others who knew Trocmé at the time.

15 As Trocmé wrote of the peasantry, “C'était une épaisse paysannerie qui était pour nous une terre hostile, une paysannerie alourdie par des siècles de traditions” (“it was a closed peasantry that for us was a hostile land; a peasantry weighed down by centuries of tradition”) (cited in Menut, “André Trocmé,” 381).

16 According to Menut (“André Trocmé,” 388) Trocmé claimed that because he was against the war in 1940, he was denounced as an agent of the Fifth Column, then as a secret Italian fascist because of his wife, Magda (who also had an international background with a Russian grandmother and an Indonesian grandfather).

17 Trocmé, “Mise au point. Concernant mon attitude en temps de guerre,” in Boismorand, ed., Magda et André Trocmé, 113.

18 See Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood, 56.

19 Trocmé, “Mise au point,” 114.

20 See Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood, 55-56.

21 Near the end of the war, St. Quentin itself became a battleground and its citizens had to flee.

22 Indeed, Trocmé wrote a text called “Le socialisme de la Bible,” (“André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” copyright Swarthmore College Peace Collection, undated) in which he explores the concept of Jubilee and Jesus as one who proclaims the redistribution of wealth.

23 Jean Lasserre's time at Union Theological Seminary in New York City overlapped with that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whom he knew and may have influenced. One of the founders of Christian socialism in France was the Protesant pastor, Élie Gounelle, who in 1933 was the first Protestant to publicly denounce Nazi anti-Judaism. See Patrick Cabanel, Juifs et Protestants en France, Les affinités électives. XVIe–XXIe Siècle (Paris:Fayard, 2004) 223–26.

24 On Jacques Martin, see Christian Maillebois, La Montagne protestante. Pratiques chrétiennes sociales dans la région du Mazet-Saint-Voy 1920–1940 (Lyon: Editions Olivétan, 2005) 177–78. Martin was defended by the famous socialist leader André Philip, who left France in 1940 to join Charles de Gaulle in London. Philip had been a professor of political economy in Lyon, and closely allied with the community in Le Chambon (for background on André Philip, see Jacques Poujol, Protestants dans la France en Guerre 1939–45. Dictionnaire thématique et biographique [Paris: Les Éditions de Paris, 2000] 256). When he went to England, his wife Mireille remained in Le Chambon where she was a leader of the Protestant rescue organization, the CIMADE. She assumed responsibility for taking small groups of Jewish refugees from Le Chambon to Switzerland. Such work required her to travel to Geneva to obtain Swiss entry visas, which she would do, disguised as a railroad mechanic. In 1943 she handed over her duties in the CIMADE to Pierre Piton and joined the French Resistance. See Lazare, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous, 439. The general secretary of the CIMADE was Madeleine Barot, who intervened at Vichy to improve conditions in the French detention camps, and who assisted in getting people out of the camps into safer communities, such as at Le Chambon. Barot was also one of the signatories of the “Thèses de Pomeyrol” (as was Roger Casalis, the pastor prior to Trocmé at Le Chambon), a series of statements produced by some French Calvinists that offered a theological response to questions by church members about the role of the church during a time of war. These “thèses” have been compared to the Barmen Declaration of the Confessing Church, and state, among other things, unequivocal opposition to the Vichy regime and to its policies concerning the Jews (theses 7 and 8). Moreover, thesis 5 addresses Romans 13:1–7 (obedience to authorities) by claiming that one should obey God more than humans. See Poujol, Protestants dans la France, 154–57 and 200–1.

25 On Roser, see Maillebois, La Montagne, 180–81 and Poujol, Protestants dans la France, 261. Thanks to historian Laurent Gambarotto for pointing out the importance of French Christian socialism for Trocmé.

26 See Menut, “André Trocmé,” 386.

27 Menut (“André Trocmé,” 388–89) claims that Trocmé was also influenced by the “Moral Rearmament” movement developed by the American Lutheran evangelist, Nathan Daniel Buchman, and its stress on purity, unselfishness, love, and honesty. Despite the fact that the ideas of Karl Barth were very popular among many French Protestants, Trocmé found Barth to be “dry” and also knew that Barth was opposed to conscientious objection. Several of Trocmé's relatives on his mother's side, however, were members of the Confessing Church, and Trocmé admired Martin Niemoller.

28 See Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood, 61–62.

29 See Zuccotti, The Holocaust, 229.

30 Menut, “André Trocmé,” 382. Nelly Trocmé Hewett, the oldest child of André and Magda Trocmé, recounted to me how parishioners in Le Chambon would gossip about the pastor's wife's refusal to take communion.

31 By the time that Trocmé went to Le Chambon, the Reformed Church in France had decreed that any pastor who held pacifist views should not be allowed to “spread propaganda” about his position. Trocmé was naturally frustrated with this rule, and was hoping he could have more freedom in a smaller parish. Roger Casalis, the incumbent pastor who wanted to leave Le Chambon, was a friend of Trocmé's and the name was put forward to the church council, which was fully informed of Trocmé's pacifist stance. After Trocmé presented himself to the church council and explained that he would not be able to keep his convictions quiet as he understood nonviolence to be central to the gospel, the council nonetheless voted unanimously to invite him to be their pastor. However, the national church leadership remained suspicious. The “Certificat de Confirmation” indicates that he was a “pasteur intérimaire” (“André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” Swarthmore College Peace Collection, 1936). Marc Boegner, the president of the Reformed Church in France at the time, even referred to him as “ce dangereux et difficile André Trocmé” (see Menut, “André Trocmé,” 385). In 1939, Trocmé offered his resignation because of the French Reformed Church's rejection of pacifism, but the parish of Le Chambon refused. However, before Boegner knew that Le Chambon did not want Trocmé to resign, he sent a letter to Trocmé indicating his relief about Trocmé's planned course of action, which never came to pass. The letter states that conscientious objection is a “grande erreur d'interprétation de l'Écriture Sainte et de doctrine chrétienne” (in Boismorand, ed., Magda et André Trocmé, 117).

32 During the war, over 70% of the people in the area were in agriculture. The landscape is mountainous and rocky, however, and thus these were by no means large or prosperous farms. The barn was attached to the house (which often consisted of only one or two rooms), and during the winter the barrier between the animals and the people would be removed such that the animals' bodies could warm the people. Today, most of the old farmhouses have been transformed into summer homes for the wealthy, and the farming population is reduced to about 10% of the population. The tradition of “accueil” (“welcome”) is still alive in Le Chambon, however, and refugees from throughout the world have continued to find support in this small town.

33 See Zuccotti, The Holocaust, 230.

34 This church, which dates back to the eleventh century, is still in Le Mazet Saint-Voy (another village populated primarily by Protestants) and is maintained by a community of Protestant diaconnesses (Communauté des Diaconesses de Reuilly).

35 See Gérard Bollon, Les villages sur la montagne entre Ardèche et Haute-Loire, le plateau, terre d'accueil et de refuge (Le Cheylard: Éditions Dolmazon, 2004) 14.

36 In 1940, some villages, such as Le Chambon and Le Mazet, were over 80% Protestant (2378 out of 2543 and 2211inhabitants out of 2256 inhabitants respectively) while others, such as Tence, which was larger, were about 30% Protestant (710 out of 2869 inhabitants). See Auguste Rivet, “Rapport général. L'État politique et la situation du Plateau avant 1940” in Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, 22–23.

37 See Bollon, Les villages sur la montagne, 32–37.

38 François Boulet, “L'attitude spirituelle des protestants devant les Juifs réfugiés,” Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, 423.

39 Boulet, “L'attitude spirituelle,”423.

40 Indeed Jean Calvin had plenty of negative things to say about the Jews and Judaism, but he did differ from some other reformers in stating that there are some elect among the Jews and that they are part of humanity (see Myriam Yardeni, “French Calvinism and Judaism,” Reformation and Renaissance Review6 [2004] 297). Yardeni goes on to point out that despite Calvin's critical comments, the ensuing persecution of Protestants in France during the Wars of Religion contributed to their identification with the Jews, thus developing among Huguenots a much more receptive and supportive attitude towards the Jews as fellow minorities, with whom they had much in common. Regarding Calvin, Yardeni even goes so far as to say that “one can distinguish in Calvin's theological writings elements that allow for the emergence of new and radically different conceptions and attitudes towards Jews and Judaism. Perhaps, one can even recognize that the roots of Chambon-sur-Lignon, the famous … village whose people saved the lives of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, are deeply grounded in Calvin's theology and the history of French Calvinism [!],” “French Calvinism,” 296.

41 Patrick Cabanel, Juifs et Protestants en France.

42 Cabanel, Juifs et Protestants, 314.

43 See Bollon, Les villages sur la montagne, 40.

44 Bollon, Les villages sur la montagne, 95.

45 Pierre Sauvage's interviews with some of the elderly inhabitants in Le Chambon in Weapons of the Spirit make this abundantly clear.

46 See “Débat” in Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, 434.

47 See Laurent Gambarotto, Foi et Patrie. La prédication du protestantisme français pendant la Première Guerre mondiale (Genève: Labor et Fides, 1996).

48 See Pierre Bolle, “Charles Guillon,” Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, 42-53.

49 During the war Charles Guillon worked with CIMADE and the YMCA in bringing refugees from the French internment camps to Le Chambon and on into Switzerland. See Lazare, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous, 291.

50 See “La vocation de l'Église dans le monde,” (Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, 662–64) written by a group of “Frères darbystes” on the occasion of the 1990 colloquium.

51 In a “Débat” of Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, Fadiey Lovsky points out that despite repeatedly hearing that the Jews (and the Roman Catholics, and all other Protestants) would be rejected, many “darbystes” welcomed the Jews and did not reject them (445–46).

52 Trocmé makes this comment in his autobiography, now published in part by Boismorand, ed., Magda et André Trocmé, 143. See also, Daniel Besson, “Les Assemblées des Frères, darbystes et ravinistes, et l'accueil des Juifs” in Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, 86–89.

53 Annik Flaud told me that Brottes might have been the first to shelter a Jewish refugee. Moreover, despite her group's tradition of not participating in politics at all, Brottes appears to have voted in 1945, when women first got the vote in France.

54 When the French Reformed Church directed all French pastors to read an official letter of the church aloud in their churches, a letter that counseled Protestants to be loyal to the Vichy government, Trocmé adamantly refused. In fact, he has scrawled “Pétainism!” at the top of his copy of the letter. See the “Message du Conseil Régional,” (“André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” Swarthmore College Peace Collection, 1940).

55 The tiny church caretaker, Amélie, a “darbyste,” refused to ring the bells, even when wealthy tourist women demanded that she do so. Amélie apparently kept her ground and blocked the door to the church such that the women could not enter, and given the pouring rain, then reluctantly had to abandon their quest. This story is recounted by Trocmé in his autobiography. See Boismorand, ed., Magda et André Trocmé, 143–44.

56 See Henry, We Only Know Men, 25.

57 As this man sat alone in the giant police bus, the townspeople filed by giving him food and presents for his journey.

58 For example, Trocmé's cousin Daniel Trocmé, a teacher who ran a children's home and home for young men (La Maison des Roches) was arrested with 20 of the Jewish young men (although he did have the chance to escape) and perished later in the gas chamber at Maidanek concentration camp in Poland. Second, the town doctor, Roger Le Forestier, was arrested when he was trying to intervene of behalf of two resistance fighters (Les Maquisards). Le Forestier was ordered to go to a German prisoner of war camp to care for people, but on the way there was killed in a massacre of people by the Gestapo just outside of Lyon.

59 A. Trocmé, “Étapes de la Non-Violence,” (“André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” copyright Swarthmore College Peace Collection, date unknown).

60 It is important to acknowledge that to some extent, many local French police were not eager to arrest people in the plateau. They would apparently “drag themselves” along the main road very visibly, and stop for a glass of wine at the local hotel, making it clear for whom they were searching. By the time that they arrived at the person's domicile, he or she would be long gone. Moreover, people in the area were usually tipped off if there was going to be a more dangerous raid by the French secret police (Milice) or the Gestapo. See Zuccotti, The Holocaust, 231.

61 See Roger Casalis, “Notes sur la Paroisse du Chambon, 1934” (“Andre and Magda Trocmé Papers,” Swarthmore College Peace Collection, 1934).

62 A. Trocmé, Autobiographie (“André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” copyright Swarthmore College Peace Collection, 1960's) 357.

63 Trocmé, Autobiographie, 356.

64 Trocmé, Autobiographie, 357. Hallie (Lest Innocent Blood, 173–74) claims that the “responsables” became the “nervous system” of Le Chambon.

65 For example, one undated paper found in the archives at Swarthmore, called “Comment lire la Bible?” describes three stages: 1) read the four gospels, Acts, James and 1 John and note down prayers, reflections and questions; 2) ask someone educated in the scriptures for a list of passages from both testaments that can be easily understood; 3) get a short “Introduction” to the Bible and follow the directions—read for edification every day, both the scriptures and the secondary text (André Trocmé, “Comment lire la Bible?” “André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” copyright Swarthmore College Peace Collection, date unknown). Another later text (1960s because it is after Trocmé published his book, Jesus and the Non-Violent Revolution, which was first published in French in 1961) stresses historical scientific study of the text, and emphasizes the need to have a concordance and critical scholarly publications and texts that describe the context of the writings (“Sept recettes pour étudier la Bible” [“André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” copyright Swarthmore College Peace Collection, undated]). Another published text, called “Estil vraiment nécessaire' de lire la Bible?” describes how biblical study is absolutely essential and how the word of God is “créatrice en nous d'une vie sainte” (“creator in us of a holy life”) (“André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” copyright Swarthmore College Peace Collection, [although where it appeared is not clear; date unknown]).

66 A. Trocmé, The Politics of Repentance. The Robert Treat Paine Lectures for 1951 (trans. John Clark; New York: Fellowship Publications, 1953) 5.

67 Ibid., 44.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid., 45.

70 Ibid., 44.

71 Trocmé, “Plan général d'études bibliques 1943–44” (“André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” copyright Swarthmore College Peace Collection, 1943).

72 Trocmé, “ La paroisse engagée” (“André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” copyright Swarthmore College Peace Collection, undated).

73 Trocmé, “Études bibliques,” (“André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” copyright Swarthmore College Peace Collection, 1941–1945). This notebook is the one used for the “responsables” because every thirty pages or so there is a list of the thirteen different areas to which each leader would go to continue the discussion with rural members of the parish, as well as the days and times that they would meet. Sometimes numbers in the multiples of the hundreds were listed beside each place, but I have not been able to decipher what these numbers mean.

74 Trocmé, “Études.”

75 Trocmé tended not to write out his sermons, but to have a list of points from which he would then preach.

76 Menut, “André Trocmé,” 390.

77 See Boulet, “L'attitude spirituelle,”403. Boulet says the only trace of anti-Semitism for which he could find archival evidence was in one of Trocmé's Christmas stories, in which a zealot finds himself among Jewish hotel owners and business people who have taken his money. I have not been able to find this reference in the published version of the stories, and thus it must have been extracted.

78 Pierre Bolle “La résistance spirituelle sur le Plateau,” Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, 340.

79 This famous sermon is published by Boismorand, ed, Magda et André Trocmé, 125–29.

80 See Menut, “André Trocmé,” 392.

81 A. Trocmé, “How the Donkey Got the Spirit of Contradiction,” Angels and Donkeys. Tales for Christmas and Other Times (trans. Nelly Trocmé Hewett; Intercourse, Pa.: Good Books, 1998) 55–73.

82 See Trocmé, “Hospitality,” Angels and Donkeys, 43–53.

83 Trocmé, “The Revolt of the Animals,” Angels and Donkeys, 89–99.

84 Catherine Pécaut (now Hirsch), “École du Dimanche,” (“André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” Swarthmore College Peace Collection, 1942–1943. Special thanks to Martin Hirsch, son of Catherine Hirsch, for granting me permission to cite from this document). These catechism classes were sophisticated, with thorough discussions of such topics as religion and science, the problem of evil, and how to determine whether one's perceived vocation is truly from God.

85 In Jesus and the Non-Violent Revolution (ed. Charles E. Moore; trans. Michael H. Shank and Martin E. Miller; Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004) 173, Trocmé stresses that Jesus' political program was “the reestablishment of Israel by means of which the chosen people would become the light of the nations. The body of Christ today is the new Israel.”

86 Trocmé, “La violence dans l'Apocalypse,” (“André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” copyright Swarthmore College Peace Collection, undated).

87 Pécaut, “École du Dimanche.”

88 These stories are recounted in Weapons of the Spirit.

89 Trocmé, “Études bibliques: 1941–1942.”

90 Menut (“André Trocmé” [389]), quotes Olivier Hatzfeld, one of the teachers at the Collège Cévenol, who said, “Trocmé a ranimé une paroisse piétiste avec le sang du Christianisme Social, l'accent principal étant placé sur le pacifisme” (“Trocmé revived a pietist parish with the blood of Christian Socialism, with the principal emphasis on pacifism”).

91 See the fourth main section of the 1990 colloquium proceedings, Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, which focuses upon the armed resistance. There is evidence that the Milice and the Gestapo were reluctant to cause problems in the area because they knew so many resistance fighters were active, and the geographic region was mountainous, with dense forests in which people could easily hide. See Zuccotti, The Holocaust, 230–31.

92 See Bolle, “La résistance spirituelle,”340.

93 See, for example, Rosowsky, “Les faux papiers,” Le Plateau-Vivarais Lignon, 254, and also Fabréguet, Les Résistances sur le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, 1938–1945, 194–201.

94 Annik Flaud told me of this agreement and certainly the two men were in contact and Eyraud was a very religious man. See Aline Caritey, “Un chef local: Léon Eyraud,” Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, 493–95.

95 The importance of listening to one's conscience is particularly stressed in the post Armistice sermon on the weapons of the spirit. See Boismorand, ed., Magda et André Trocmé, 127–28.

96 This article could not have been completed without the assistance of Nelly Trocmé Hewett who provided bibliographical information and who put me in touch with a range of people familiar with Le Chambon and the work of her father, André Trocmé. I am forever indebted to the late historian Annik Flaud for her assistance at Le Chambon. Many thanks to Dr. Wendy Chmielewski, archivist at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, for permission to cite from various unpublished documents in the André and Magda Trocmé papers. Gratitude also extends to Pierre Boismorand, Gérard Bollon and Laurent Gambarotto for bibliographical and historical information. Finally, I am very appreciative of Jacques P. Trocmé, Patrick Henry, Lucien Pelletier and the editors of this journal for reading drafts of this paper, and for providing helpful observations, clarifications, and encouragement.