Trocmé family photograph

André Pascal Trocmé (1901-1971), French Protestant pastor who, during the Second World War, played a central role in a regional effort to rescue Jews and other persecuted individuals. Trocmé, who was born and raised in St. Quentin in northern France, was the son of a French father and German mother and the product of a strict Huguenot upbringing. As a young adult during the First World War he was struck by the destructive force of national and ethnic hatred and became a committed pacifist. Trocmé studied at the Faculté de Theologie in Paris. In 1926, while doing post-graduate work at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, he met Magda Grilli di Cortona, whom he soon married. Like Trocmé, she was of mixed parentage (Italian and Russian), well-educated and idealistic. An outspoken advocate of non-violence, Trocmé was considered a dangerous radical by the Église reformée de France (the Protestant Church), which sought to limit his influence by posting him in 1934 to the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon on an isolated plateau in central France. Ironically, Le Chambon was to become an influential center of the Christian non-violent movement. In 1938 Trocmé founded the first secondary school in the area and brought in Pastor Edouard Theis to be its headmaster. The school, called l'école nouvelle Cévenole, was a co-educational institution based on the principles of tolerance and internationalism. In its first years l'école Cévenole was to play a major role in sustaining the lives of the refugees who settled in the region by providing schooling for the youth and positions for displaced teachers and academics. Trocmé was acutely aware of the growing threat of Nazism, of which he was an early opponent. After the defeat of France and the establishment of the Vichy regime, Trocmé and Theis embarked upon a campaign of civil disobedience. On the first Sunday after the armistice, June 23, 1940, Trocmé and Theis delivered what became known as the "Weapons of the Spirit" sermon, in which they stated unequivocally, "The duty of Christians is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on their consciences through the weapons of the Spirit... We will resist whenever our adversaries will demand of us obedience contrary to the orders of the Gospel. We will do so without fear, but also without pride and without hate." Trocmé was able to motivate his parishioners by the force of his preaching and personal example. He established no formal resistance organization in the region, but was instrumental in building a tacit consensus of non-violent opposition to the unjust decrees of the Vichy regime, which set the stage for individuals to act on their own to aid the persecuted. Trocmé's commitment to the refugees was shared by his wife Magda, who worked tirelessly and fearlessly on their behalf. It was Magda who handled the many refugees who appeared at the door of the pastor's residence not knowing where else to go. She provided immediate assistance and put them in contact with the appropriate individuals and organizations that could help them. In addition, she sheltered several refugees in her own home over the course of the war years. In January 1943 André Trocmé was arrested along with Edouard Theis and school director Roger Darcissac and held for a month in the St. Paul d'Eyjeaux internment camp for political prisoners. Following his release, Trocmé continued his efforts on behalf of the refugees but soon was compelled to go into hiding himself for several months. After the war the Trocmés moved to Versailles, where they worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a non-denominational pacifist organization headquartered in New York. In the 1960s André Trocmé returned to parish work at the Church of St. Gervais in Geneva, where he remained until his death in 1971. His ashes were buried in the family grave in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.