In the nonfiction work Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There (1979), Philip Hallie, an American ethics philosopher, tells the story of how a small mountain village in the south of France provided a refuge for thousands of Jewish people, primarily children, during World War II. The book, which centers on the work of the village’s passionate pastor, André Trocmé, during the German occupation of France, was published following Hallie’s research into the nature of cruelty during the Holocaust. His story offers a hopeful exploration of human kindness, demonstrating the power of nonviolent resistance and the complex nature of religious and moral faith.

This guide refers to the 1994 Harper Perennial edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain discussions of antisemitism, racism, the Holocaust, war and violence, death by suicide, and death from a car accident.

Summary

The Introduction and Prelude establish the book’s philosophical rationale and explore the story’s emotional impact by relating several anecdotes of early reader responses. They include a critique that the story is unimportant, a teen girl’s renewed faith in humanity, and a mother’s gratitude to the village that saved her daughters and to Hallie for writing the book. Hallie explains how he learned of the story and felt that it was imperative to tell it in its entirety. The actions of the villagers of Le Chambon penetrated his growing apathy in response to researching cruelty. He traveled to France and collected the stories of those still living in the 1970s who had experienced the Nazi occupation 30 years earlier.

André Trocmé, the pastor of Le Chambon, is the central figure in the book. The son of a Protestant pastor, he came from a long line of Huguenots, and his mother was of German ancestry. Her violent death in a car accident when Trocmé was a young boy and his experiences with German soldiers in World War I deeply influenced his commitment to nonviolence. He attended seminary in France and then in the US, where he met Magda Grilli, who became his wife after the couple moved back to France. They started a family, and he served as pastor in two other parishes before the family moved to Le Chambon.

Shortly after their arrival, the Trocmés began to revitalize Le Chambon, creating the Cévenol private secondary school. The school, which blended traditional academics with a dedication to nonviolence as a driving philosophy, initially struggled but eventually gained the local community’s commitment. As the war in Europe increased in intensity, Le Chambon saw an influx of Eastern Europeans fleeing religious and political persecution. In 1940, the signing of the armistice created a division between the German-occupied north and the Vichy south of France. Though many French citizens in the south accepted Marshal Pétain and Vichy rule, Trocmé and his parishioners took steps to peacefully resist racist and violent policies through the school, Trocmé’s presbytery, and the village temple. The first acts—the school’s refusal to participate in a fascist salute of the flag and the temple’s bell staying silent on a holiday dedicated to Pétain—went largely unnoticed. Subsequent acts, however, brought attention.

In the summer of 1942, Jews who were arrested were either immediately transported to German concentration camps or sent to the Vélodrome d’Hiver (Vel d’Hiv), a sports arena. The conditions in Vel d’Hiv were deplorable, and those allowed to enter while families were detained there were vocal about the abuses they witnessed. When a Vichy representative came to Le Chambon to try to recruit the local youth into the military, the boys at the Cévenol school presented him with a letter (likely authored by Trocmé) condemning the arrest and deportation of Jews in France. Consequently, the local prefect was furious with Trocmé. Shortly thereafter, Trocmé refused a police chief’s direct order to provide names of the Jewish refugees in Le Chambon. Trocmé mobilized the villagers, and when the police raided the town, they found only two people to detain, even after a three-week search.

In 1940, the first Jewish refugee arrived at the presbytery asking for help. Magda jumped into action but discovered that both authorities and locals were afraid and hostile to foreign refugees. Later that same year, Trocmé met with Quaker organizer Burns Chalmers, and they developed a plan to save Jewish children in France. The stresses of the German occupation and their efforts to provide aid were difficult for all the Trocmés but mostly Magda. Her health declined, and they had to bring in help before she recovered. However, despite the challenges, the family stayed strong and loving to one another.

The village worked together in a complex network to house, protect, and provide for refugees. Most were Eastern European, German, and French Jews running from Nazi persecution. Some were individual adults, and some were families, but most protected and evacuated via Le Chambon were children and adolescents.

Trocmé and his associate Édouard Theis were arrested for their work and sent to a work camp in France. They were released after a short time, avoiding the fate of the other prisoners, who were transported to Germany and executed in the death camps. Later, both men were placed on the Gestapo’s death lists. Trocmé hid in various places across France, spending some time with his son Jacques. Theis hid by helping the all-woman rescue operation Cimade evacuate Jews from Le Chambon to neutral Switzerland.

Though the story of Le Chambon is largely hopeful—the villagers saved an estimated 5,000 people from torture and death—there were also tragedies. Daniel Trocmé, Trocmé’s cousin, came to the village to act as a caretaker in two funded houses. In the only successful raid on the village, Daniel and his charges in one of the houses were arrested and sent to death camps in Germany, where they were murdered. Roger Le Forestier, an enthusiastic young doctor who came to Le Chambon in 1939, served as a second physician in the village. He was arrested near the end of the war and shot outside Lyon after the Gestapo ignored the orders of Major Schmehling, who had been moved by Le Forestier’s nonviolent philosophy and attempted to save him. In addition to these losses, Trocmé’s son Jean-Pierre and local 18-year-old Manou Barraud died in terrible accidents. Manou was accidentally shot by a refugee in her mother’s boardinghouse, and Jean-Pierre hanged himself, likely by accident. Jean-Pierre’s death devastated both his parents and irreparably damaged their faith, but their marriage survived.

After the war, Trocmé continued to campaign for nonviolence. The Cévenol school survived for decades, maintaining its original goal of combining academics and morality. Magda became friendly with Hallie and visited him and his family at their Connecticut home in the 1970s. Hallie was forever transformed by his study of Le Chambon and his experiences with the people there.