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  • We Only Know Men: The Rescue of Jews in France during the Holocaust
  • John Conway
We Only Know Men: The Rescue of Jews in France during the Holocaust. By Patrick Henry. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.2007. Pp. xxiv, 192. $59.95. ISBN 978-0-8132-1493-1.)

In 1979 an American professor of philosophy, Philip Hallie, published an account of the notable efforts by a small group of French Reformed Protestants during World War II to give sanctuary to Jews oppressed by the Nazis and their Vichy collaborators. This pioneering work, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There, described to English-speaking audiences how these villagers, on a lonely rural plateau a hundred miles south of Lyons, undertook what is now recognized as a uniquely heroic rescue attempt. No other communal effort on this scale occurred for this length of time anywhere else in Occupied Europe. Hallie's findings were later followed by a moving documentary film, Weapons of the Spirit, produced by a film-maker who himself, as a child, was one of those rescued. Not surprisingly, these events have been given prominence, not only to support the cause of postwar Jewish-Christian reconciliation but also to promote the image of the French resistance to Nazi-organized tyranny.

Patrick Henry, writing a generation later, seeks to amplify Hallie's account, to correct a few historical errors, and to put the inhabitants of Le Chambon in a wider setting. He also takes issue with some of the mythical interpretations, which perhaps inevitably had crept in. Naturally Henry has to cover a lot of the same ground, but stresses particularly the role of these Protestant Huguenots as the successors to a long history of religious persecution in that part of France. This made them sensitive to the plight of the Jews, a sentiment reinforced by their strong sympathies with the people of the Bible.

Henry is at pains to dispute the view that the villagers of Le Chambon and district were primarily motivated by economic factors. Instead he emphasizes the spiritual calling that they shared with like-minded Christians of the area, such as Quakers and Darbyites (Brethren). Since 90 percent of the area's population was Protestant, the Catholics were underrepresented. Their efforts to assist Jews took place elsewhere and are not discussed here.

This Protestant determination to resist Nazi oppression and to rescue Jews was all the more notable for being linked to their equal commitment to pacifist nonviolence. Henry devotes one chapter to the uplifting story of Daniel [End Page 597] Trocme, a young cousin of Le Chambon's pastor, who with six of his charges was deported by the Nazis. All lost their lives in concentration camps.

Henry also records the equally self-sacrificing but unknown witness of Madeleine Dreyfus, a righteous Jew, who took enormous risks to bring fellow Jews to the sanctuary on the plateau. Arrested in November 1943, she was to spend eleven months in the horrors of Bergen-Belsen, but luckily survived. Henry believes that her story, and that of other Jews who were part of the resistance in France, has been unfairly neglected and deserves to be better known.

In his concluding chapter Henry regrets that not enough attention has been paid to these rescuers. For the first fifty years after the Holocaust, survivors stressed the evils they had endured. But there was also goodness, even love and compassion amongst those, few and far between, who saved Jews from the death camps. Unfortunately, these efforts have sometimes been disparaged, or their motives challenged. Even notable figures, such as the only American Righteous Gentile, Varian Fry, who also operated in Southern France, are largely unknown. Henry's contribution seeks to rectify this omission and to put the heroes of Le Chambon into a European-wide context. Their legacy, whether as Jews or Christians, is that they protested against the racial hatred of the day and because they knew only men witnessed to the essential similarity of all humanity.

John Conway
University of British Columbia
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