Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France (The Resistance Trilogy Book 2)
Caroline Moorehead
Language: English
Pages: 384
ISBN: 0062202472
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
From the author of the New York Times bestseller A Train in Winter comes the absorbing story of a French village that helped save thousands hunted by the Gestapo during World War II—told in full for the first time.
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a small village of scattered houses high in the mountains of the Ardèche, one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of Eastern France. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of this tiny mountain village and its parishes saved thousands wanted by the Gestapo: resisters, freemasons, communists, OSS and SOE agents, and Jews. Many of those they protected were orphaned children and babies whose parents had been deported to concentration camps.
With unprecedented access to newly opened archives in France, Britain, and Germany, and interviews with some of the villagers from the period who are still alive, Caroline Moorehead paints an inspiring portrait of courage and determination: of what was accomplished when a small group of people banded together to oppose their Nazi occupiers. A thrilling and atmospheric tale of silence and complicity, Village of Secrets reveals how every one of the inhabitants of Chambon remained silent in a country infamous for collaboration. Yet it is also a story about mythmaking, and the fallibility of memory.
A major contribution to WWII history, illustrated with black-and-white photos, Village of Secrets sets the record straight about the events in Chambon, and pays tribute to a group of heroic individuals, most of them women, for whom saving others became more important than their own lives.
Church of Spies: The Pope's Secret War Against Hitler
German Commerce Raider vs British Cruiser: The Atlantic & The Pacific 1941 (Duel, Volume 27)
Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe: Nazi Rule in Poland under the General Government
realise that he was probably the father of a small boy himself, and longed for the warmth of the child. But at the time, he could feel only hatred. He picked Jacques up and left the tent. The boys received a visit from their father Aaron, allowed out from his work camp for a few days’ leave. The Bards offered to find him work, and he could easily have stayed on the plateau, with false papers, in hiding. But he told Simon that he knew that he would soon be leaving for Germany, and this was
Egypt, Mikhaëli took a candle and went out on to the plateau. There he sat and by its light read the Book of Ruth. The groups of maquisards on the plateau were short of everything; but above all they lacked weapons and ammunition. All this was suddenly changed by the arrival of one of the most improbable and exotic figures to enter the story. Her name was Virginia Hall. The daughter of a Baltimore banker who had married his secretary and made a fortune in movie theatres, Virginia had studied at
January 1942 4, 27 see also Gestapo, SS and Wehrmacht Gestapo 22, 29, 30, 50, 67, 74, 89, 93, 151, 152, 154, 202, 210–11, 216, 217, 226, 227, 228, 231, 234, 235, 236, 238, 240, 241, 243, 251, 254, 264, 265, 267, 268, 270, 271, 272, 274, 279, 280, 286, 287, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 302, 318, 338 Gide, André 96–7 Gilbert, Mme 143, 144, 276 Gillet, Louis 173 Gineste, Marie Rose 84 Glaizon, Louis 238, 242 Glasberg, Abbé 2, 68, 69, 70–1, 72, 73, 74, 88, 210, 220, 318, 330 Goillot, Paul 309,
only helped to disguise the reality of what was taking place. In March 1941, Boegner wrote a letter to the Chief Rabbi, Isaïe Schwartz, expressing solidarity between Protestants and Jews based on their shared reading of the ‘Old Testament, in which Jesus of Nazareth nourished his soul and his thinking’. He sent a second letter to Admiral Darlan, vice president of the Council at Vichy. To both he explained that while there had indeed been a problem in letting so many foreigners into France and
to Pétain seemed to lock them into a vicious circle of docility and prudence. Others tried to flee. By now, some 35,000 Jews had applied to leave France, mainly for the United States, Latin America and China, but most were thwarted by the expense and the bureaucratic obstacles to obtaining visas. Even as Darquier was taking over at the Commissariat in Vichy, in Berlin meticulous plans were advancing for the deportation of France’s Jewish population. By now, Drancy, a disused housing estate on
