André Trocmé
Pastor André Trocmé c. 1941
“These people came here for help and for shelter. I am their shepherd, and a shepherd does not forsake his flock.” That’s what André Trocmé told Vichy authorities in 1942. It was during WWII that he urged his Christian congregation in the village of Le Chambon sur Lignon that they needed to hide the Jewish refugees from the Holocaust. And the Pastor did not segregate – he attempted to help all those who came to him for protection. He preached that all other individuals who persecuted by the Nazi regime also needed their help.
In 1940, France was overrun by Nazi Germany. Trocmé and his church members together helped develop ways of resisting what they were facing in Nazi-occupied France at this horrendous time and began to develop a network of “safe Houses” where those who were seeking refuge could escape the Nazis and hide. They couldn’t do it alone. They received contributions from the Salvation Army, the American Congregational Church, from Jewish and Christian ecumenical groups, the French Protestant student (referring to a student who is both French and Protestant, often specifically a Huguenot student, who generally followed Calvinist theology, who was a French Protestant during the 16th and 17th centuries), the Cimade organization (founded in 1939 to help displaced people and still continues to aid refugees from all over the world and to defend their rights), the Swiss organization Help to Children, and others, in order to house and buy food supplies for the fleeing refugees. But it is the Quakers’ contributions I will be speaking about in this article.
Pastor Trocmé contacted the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) during the winter of 1940. They were in Marseille. There was a great need for relief supplies to the Jewish population in internment camps in southern France. We are talking about 30,000 refugees — mostly foreign-born Jews, without French citizenship, a majority of which were children. It was Trocmé’s relationship with Burns Chalmers, the well-known American Quaker at the time, who claimed he could get internees released from the camps. However, there were no shelters established for them once released at that time. With his help and the aid of Magda, Trocmé’s wife, who also was actively involved in rescuing the Jews and others, they created and maintained this haven at the village of Le Chambon sur Lignon for the persecuted people of the area who were eventually dispersed throughout many other surrounding villages, farms, boarding houses and private homes. There they were able to receive aid, health care, and be protected while hiding from the Nazis. Some of these refugees even hiked out onto dangerous trails to freedom at the Swiss border.
A Swiss Red Cross, another Quaker organization, also American Congregationalists, and even national governments like Sweden, helped to fund these places. They aided the refugees, made sure they were fed, clothed, and given false identifying documents. The children of the refugees were sent to schools – secular and religious. Most of the time the children were protected, but there were occasions when the schools were raided, and the students were taken and sent to Auschwitz and died. Trocmé’s cousin, a teacher, was arrested, deported, and sent to a concentration camp and later killed by the SS. A physician who was aiding the refugees by making false documents was also arrested, shot, and killed.
Unfortunately, in February of 1943, Trocmé was arrested and placed in prison. There is an interesting story about this. Read it in his life’s story. After a few weeks, though, he was released but marked for death by the Gestapo. He and others went into hiding until the end of the war. It wasn’t until 1944 when the area was liberated that he continued his pacifist work. Trocmé received a number of awards for his work helping those in need of protection from the Nazis during WWII. He died in 1971.
For more reading on the life of André Trocmé, click here and read André and Magda Trocmé – Wikipedia