 | |
| Author | Caroline Moorehead |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | United Kingdom 2014 |
| Pages | 356pp. |
| ISBN | 9780701186418 |
Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France is a 2014 book by Caroline Moorehead.
| | |
| Author | Caroline Moorehead |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | United Kingdom 2014 |
| Pages | 356pp. |
| ISBN | 9780701186418 |
Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France is a 2014 book by Caroline Moorehead.
The book is a narrative regarding the role of residents of the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, located in the mountains of the eastern Massif Central, in helping to secure the lives of Jewish people during the Second World War. According to Moorehead, villagers secured the survival of 800 Jewish refugees by hiding them and also enabled another 3,000 to get across the French border and secure safety in Switzerland. The figures involved represented the highest proportion of Jewish residents saved out of all of France at the time. [1] The work of those who helped save them was achieved at enormous risk to their own lives. It was achieved in the face of more and more danger and risk as time went on during the war, with the introduction of a convalescent home for wounded German soldiers in the area at one point, along with more intransigent behaviour from the Germans as the Allies progressed through France towards the end of the conflict. [2]
Organisations that were crucial in the process of helping people to survive included the Organisation de Secours aux Enfants and Cimade. The latter was a mainly Protestant organisation, which is related to one of the wider factors that helped ensure that people tried to secure the safety of the Jews: there was a long tradition in the area of Protestantism, including a Huguenot and Darbyist history, which had suffered persecution itself. [3]
The questions of morality that arise from the story are particularly important given the view propagated by Jacques Chirac that Chambon was in fact "our country's conscience". [4] Moorehead places the story in the context of the wider anti-semitism of the Vichy government and the Milice française, arguing against what she perceives as a recent tendency to minimise collaboration between the French and the Nazi regime and asserting that by interning Jewish people, the Vichy regime had "made it far easier for the Germans to do their work”. [5]
Moorehead's work was shortlisted for the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction. [6] The work was widely praised by literary critics. In addition to those cited above, Louis Begley used the book as the basis for a review article about Vichy France and the Jews. [7] Yale historian, Carolyn Dean, writes, that Moorehead "has done us the great service of unveiling the real lives behind the myth and in demonstrating that fallible human beings are far more interesting and dramatic figures than those who make up the stuff of legends.". [8]
Despite this, the book has also been severely criticised by Pierre Sauvage, whose 1989 film Weapons of the Spirit told the story of Protestant pastors André Trocmé and Edouard Theis and their role in the resistance effort. Sauvage accuses it of misrepresenting witness accounts. [9] Caroline Moorehead has replied to the criticism: She points out the problems of reconciling memory and history, particularly after 70 years. "I chose to think that by taking immense care to document every step of the way I would be able to steer safely between the conflicting truths. I was wrong. I have been shocked by the malice and personal nature of the attacks." [10]
Paul Claude Marie Touvier was a French Nazi collaborator during World War II in Occupied France. In 1994, he became the first Frenchman ever convicted of crimes against humanity, for his participation in the Holocaust under Vichy France.
Alfred Denis Cortot was a French pianist, conductor, and teacher who was one of the most renowned classical musicians of the 20th century. A pianist of massive repertory, he was especially valued for his poetic insight into Romantic piano works, particularly those of Chopin, Franck, Saint-Saëns and Schumann. For Éditions Durand, he edited editions of almost all piano music by Chopin, Liszt and Schumann.
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a commune in the Haute-Loire department in south-central France.
André Trocmé and his wife, Magda, were a French couple designated Righteous Among the Nations. For 15 years, André served as a pastor in the French town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, in south-central France. He had been accepted to the rather remote parish because of his Christian pacifist positions, which were not well received by the French Protestant Church. In his preaching, he spoke out against discrimination as the Nazis were gaining power in neighboring Germany and urged his Protestant Huguenot congregation to hide Jewish refugees from the Holocaust of the World War II.
Heinrich Otto Abetz was the German ambassador to Vichy France during the Second World War and a convicted war criminal. In July 1949 he was sentenced to twenty years' hard labour by a Paris military tribunal, he was released in April 1954 and died in a car accident four years later.
Michael Robert Marrus was a Canadian historian of the Holocaust, modern European and Jewish history and international humanitarian law. He is the author of eight books on the Holocaust and related subjects.
Xavier Vallat, French politician and antisemite who was Commissioner-General for Jewish Questions in the wartime collaborationist Vichy government, and was sentenced after World War II to ten years in prison for his part in the persecution of French Jews.
Nieuwlande is a Dutch village located in the north-eastern province of Drenthe situated in the municipality of Hoogeveen. The population, as of 2018 is 965. Nieuwlande is one of only two villages in the world that collectively received the Righteous Among the Nations award for its Holocaust Rescue story where nearly all of the towns residents hid and saved the lives of hundreds of Jews as well as resistance fighters and German deserters during World War II.
Mark Mazower is a British historian. His areas of expertise are Greece, the Balkans and, more generally, 20th-century Europe. He is Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University in New York City
The Collège Cévenol—later known as Le Collège-Lycée Cévenol International—was a unique and historic international secondary school located in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the département of Haute-Loire, France. It enrolled day students from the local area, along with a substantial body of regional, national, and international students from around the world who boarded at the school. The last President of its governing board was Claude Le Vu; the last director was Patrick Sellier.
Caroline Mary Moorehead is a human rights journalist and biographer.
Château de Chabannes was an orphanage in the village of Chabannes in Vichy France where about 400 Jewish refugee children were saved from the Holocaust by efforts of its director, Félix Chevrier and other teachers. It was operated by Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) from 1940 to 1943.
Vichy France, officially the French State, was the French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. It was named after its seat of government, the city of Vichy. Officially independent, but with half of its territory occupied under the harsh terms of the armistice with Nazi Germany, it adopted a policy of collaboration. The Occupation of France by Nazi Germany at first affected only the northern and western portions of the country, before the Germans and Italians occupied the remainder of Metropolitan France in November 1942. Though Paris was ostensibly its capital, the government established itself in the resort town of Vichy in the unoccupied "Free Zone", where it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its colonies.
Jean Guéhenno born Marcel-Jules-Marie Guéhenno was a French essayist, writer and literary critic.
Germaine Ribière was a French Catholic, member of the Résistance, who saved numerous Jews during World War II, and was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations.
Pierre Sauvage is a French-American documentary filmmaker and lecturer, who was a child survivor of the Holocaust. Described by Tablet Magazine as "a filmmaker of rare moral perception."
Samuel Tyszelman was a Jewish Polish communist who was a member of the French Resistance during World War II (1939-1945). He and amother man were arrested and executed for taking part in an anti-German demonstration. That started a series of assassinations and reprisals in which over 500 people were killed.
Varian's War is a 2001 joint Canadian/American/United Kingdom film made-for-television drama. The film was written and directed by Lionel Chetwynd, based on the life and wartime exploits of Varian Fry who saved more than 2,000 Jewish artists from Vichy France, the conquered ally of Nazi Germany. Varian's War stars William Hurt, heading an all-star ensemble cast of Julia Ormond, Matt Craven, Maury Chaykin, Alan Arkin and Lynn Redgrave.
Carltheo Zeitschel also Carl Theo,, was a German physician, diplomat, Nazi functionary and SS-major (1940).
Odette Abadi was a French physician, and member of the Resistance during World War II (WWII). She was a co-founder of the Réseau Marcel which saved more than 500 Jewish children from death during The Holocaust. Although she was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, she refused to divulge the locations of the hidden Jewish children and was sent to two concentration camps. After Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated in 1945, Abadi continued her profession as a doctor, with a focus on tuberculosis.