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Group portrait of Jewish and non-Jewish refugee children sheltered in various public and private homes in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during World War II with some of the French men and women who cared for them.

Photograph | Photograph Number: 86055
Group portrait of Jewish and non-Jewish refugee children sheltered in various public and private homes in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during World War II with some of the French men and women who cared for them. Among those pictured are: Pastor André Trocmé (top row, center wearing glasses), Daniel Trocmé (top row, right, partially hidden), Edouard Theis (top row, to the left of André Trocmé), Peter Feigl (third row from the front, second from the left), Amede Dutry (third row from the front, far left), Kurt Grossman (second row from the front, far left), Jean Speigel (second row from the front, second from the left), and Simone Fullenbaum (second row from the front, far right).

Group portrait of Jewish and non-Jewish refugee children sheltered in various public and private homes in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during World War II with some of the French men and women who cared for them.

Among those pictured are: Pastor André Trocmé (top row, center wearing glasses), Daniel Trocmé (top row, right, partially hidden), Edouard Theis (top row, to the left of André Trocmé), Peter Feigl (third row from the front, second from the left), Amede Dutry (third row from the front, far left), Kurt Grossman (second row from the front, far left), Jean Speigel (second row from the front, second from the left), and Simone Fullenbaum (second row from the front, far right).

Date
1943
Locale
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, [Haute-Loire] France
Photo Designation
RESCUE MISSIONS -- Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Peter Feigl

About This Photograph

Event History
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is one of a cluster of largely Protestant villages on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon in the Haute-Loire region of France, where thousands of Jews and political refugees found shelter during the Second World War. The residents of these villages heeded the call of Pastors André Trocmé and Edouard Theis and other local leaders to extend aid to the persecuted even at the risk of endangering their own lives. The movement of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees into the region began in earnest in 1940. Some had enough money to rent their own homes, but most lodged with local families or in the many boarding houses that dotted the region. Their numbers increased after the defeat of France and the decision of the new Vichy regime to incarcerate refugees in internment camps. The height of the Jewish influx came in the spring and summer of 1942. At this time Christian relief organizations, such as the Cimade, Secours suisse aux enfants and the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), and Jewish groups like the Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) and the Eclaireurs Israelites de France (EIF) began funneling groups of Jews to the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon. These organizations, which had been operating small teams of relief workers in the internment camps, began, in the spring of 1942, to establish refugee homes in the Haute-Loire and other regions to receive groups of Jews who were being released from the camps on condition that they be placed in the charge of an authorized agency. Pastor André Trocmé, in a meeting with Burns Charmers, head of the American Friends Service Committee in Marseille, readily acceded to Charmers' request to house refugees (most of whom were children and teenagers) in the vicinity of Le Chambon. Several refugee homes were set up under the auspices of different relief organizations including Coteau Fleuri (Cimade), La Guespy (Secours suisse), Faidoli (Secours suisse), Les Grillons (Secours suisse), L'abric (Secours suisse) and Maison des Roches (Fonds Europeen de Secours aux etudiants). Other refugees were placed in private homes and boarding houses in the villages, and on farms in the surrounding countryside. When the police round-ups of Jews began in August 1942, the heretofore legal assistance of refugees provided by relief workers and local residents abruptly turned into covert resistance activity. Refugees were hidden during round-ups; false identification papers, birth certificates and ration cards were produced; groups of Jews were secreted away at night to the Swiss border and smuggled across with the help of such international organizations as the Comites universels des Unions chretiennes and the Conseil oecumenique pour les refugies. It is estimated that 5,000 refugees, including 3,500 Jews, were aided by the people of the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon. In January 1943 Pastors André Trocmé and Edouard Theis and school director Roger Darcissac were arrested by the Vichy authorities and interned at the St. Paul d'Eyjeaux camp for political prisoners near Limoges. They were released four weeks later. The rescue operation that took place in the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon was unique in that it involved the majority of the population of an entire region --Protestant, Catholic and non-religious-- who banded together to carry out what they viewed as their Christian, moral or political duty. Pastor André and Mme. Magda Trocmé and Pastor Edouard and Mme. Mildred Theis were among 34 residents of the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon who were later recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. Eventually, the entire population of the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon was so acknowledged, and a rock garden was planted in their honor in Jerusalem.

[Sources: Hewett, Nelly Trocme, (interview, June 2000); Saville, Betty, "La plateau du Vivarais-Lignon," in Les Enfants caches, Bulletin No.29 (Paris, December 1999).
Merle d'Aubigne, Jeanne, et al., Les Clandestines de Dieu, Bethany Press, 1970.]

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/le-chambon-sur-lignon.
Biography
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.

Peter Feigl (born Klaus Peter Feigl, later Pierre Feigl)l is the son of Ernst and Agnes (Bornstein) Feigl. He was born March 1, 1929 in Berlin, where his father worked as a mechanical engineer for the Denes & Friedman company, an international firm specializing in the sale of automotive and aircraft parts. Peter was an only child. The family was Jewish, but entirely assimilated. Ernst, in fact, was an avowed atheist. Though the Feigls lived in Germany and Agnes was a German by birth, the family bore Austrian citizenship because Ernst was a native of Vienna. After the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, the family remained in Berlin for three more years, and Ernst continued to work for Denes & Friedman. The situation, however, became increasingly dangerous. At one point, the new government pressured Ernst to use his international business connections to import aircraft equipment into Germany that was prohibited under the provisions of the Versailles Treaty. Ernst refused to cooperate, though he knew it put him at risk. In 1936 the family left their home for Prague, where Ernst was assigned the task of closing the Czech branch of his company. The Feigls spent one year in Prague before moving to Vienna in 1937. On the 8th of May of that year Ernst and Agnes had Peter baptized a Catholic, though they did not do so themselves. The Feigls remained in Vienna until shortly after the annexation of Austria in March 1938. (Peter remembers viewing Hitler at a rally in Vienna a few days after the Anschluss and asking his parents if he, too, could join the Hitler Youth.) Ernst had little difficulty finding a place of refuge for his family because his firm provided him with entry visas to several countries. He decided to move the family to Belgium, where his company had an office in Antwerp. They settled in Brussels, and Ernst commuted daily to Antwerp. Agnes supplemented their income by opening an electrolysis business in her home, and Peter recommenced his studies at a public school. The Feigls lived in close proximity to Agnes' stepmother, Flora Bornstein, stepsister Annelise, and Annelise's husband, Joseph Blumberg. But, within the next year or so the Blumbergs moved on to Paris. On the day the Germans invaded Belgium, May 10, 1940, Ernst was arrested at the Brussels railroad station while trying to get to his office in Antwerp. Because of his German passport, the Belgian gendarmes jumped to the conclusion that Ernst was a German paratrooper and hauled him off to a military barracks. After two or three days Agnes located him and brought him some basic provisions. A few days later Agnes, Peter and Flora left Brussels for Paris. They traveled via Ostende and Dunkirk, often having to stop and seek cover from the strafing of German aircraft. When they finally reached Paris three or four days later, they went to the Blumberg's apartment. Within hours, however, there was an air raid in Paris, and Agnes insisted on leaving at once for Bordeaux. As it turned out, the family boarded the last train to Bordeaux before the bridges were blown up. Immediately upon their arrival, Agnes went to register with the police, but the authorities did not know what to do with the family, since they fell outside of all established categories. Ultimately, they were instructed to go to the town of Oloron Sainte Marie in the Basses Pyrenees near the Spanish border. When their train arrived, it was immediately surrounded by gendarmes, and all its passengers were put on trucks and driven to the Gurs internment camp. There were already several thousand enemy alien prisoners in Gurs when they arrived. Though the family remained together, living conditions were miserable, and Agnes resolved to get them out as soon as possible. Her chance came during a prearranged inspection tour of Gurs by a group of Wehrmacht officers soon after the French capitulation in June 1940. When the officers arrived, Agnes confidently strode up to them, gave the Hitler salute, presented her German passport and proceeded to demand her family's immediate release from the camp. The officers were taken in by her performance and ordered that a taxi be brought forthwith to take them wherever they wanted to go. At first Agnes demanded to be driven to Spain, but when the driver informed her that the border was closed, they went north to the town of Auch (Gers). On the way, Flora left the taxi to rejoin the Blumbergs in Toulouse. At the approach to Auch, Agnes and Peter were warned against entering the town, so they took refuge in a nearby convent. There, the nuns put Agnes in touch with a local refugee welfare organization jointly operated by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the Swiss Red Cross and a French group. Agnes went to work for them and soon secured a one-room apartment for herself and Peter. With the help of the refugee organization, Agnes located Ernst at the St. Cyprien internment camp on the French Mediterranean coast. In late October 1940 St. Cyprien was destroyed by a violent storm, and its inmates were evacuated to Gurs. By this time Ernst was in failing health. Agnes petitioned the authorities to secure his release, and eventually he was granted a 30-day medical leave in the spring of 1941 and was reunited with his family in Auch. Fortunately, he was able to renew his leave every 30 days for the next 15 months. On August 26, 1942, while Peter was away at an AFSC summer camp in nearby Condom, the French police initiated a round-up of Jews in the area of Auch. Both Ernst and Agnes were taken. Their transport, Convoy 28, took them first to Le Vernet, then to Drancy, and finally to Auschwitz. (The convoy left Drancy on September 4 and arrived in Auschwitz on September 6, 1942.) Peter was told of his parents' arrest the next morning by Madame Cavailhon, the director of the summer camp. The last time he saw either of his parents was in mid-August, when his father made a special trip by bicycle to Condom to see him. During that visit he presented Peter with a small package, which he opened only after his father's departure. It contained his father's pocket watch, a good luck charm and a few pieces of his mother's jewelry. When Peter saw the contents of the package, he understood that he would never see his parents again. It was at this point, August 27, 1942, that Peter started his first journal, which he dedicated to his parents. Shortly after the round-up in Auch, the police came looking for Peter in Condom. Tipped off by a sympathetic gendarme, Madame Cavailhon made sure that Peter looked too sick to be moved when the police arrived. The police returned three times in as many weeks, but each time Peter was bedridden. Fearful that their luck would not hold, Madame Cavailhon appealed to the AFSC for help. The relief organization instructed Peter to fill out an application to join a children's transport for the United States. Unfortunately, he identified himself as a Catholic in the application and was initially rejected. Madame Cavailhon, however, was able to get the sponsors to reverse their decision after writing a lengthy letter explaining his situation. So, on November 4, 1942 Madame Cavailhon escorted Peter to Marseilles, where he was to wait at a shelter until the departure of the transport, scheduled for November 27. However, due to the Allied landing in North Africa in the second week of November, which triggered the German occupation of the free zone of France, the children's transport was cancelled. Peter remained in Marseilles until the second week of January, when he was put on a train for Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. He was met by Daniel Trocmé, who took him to the Les Grillons children's home, which he directed. For the next eight months Peter remained at the home, where he was given the false identity of Pierre Fesson. About a week after his arrival in Les Grillons, Peter noticed his journal was missing. He later surmised that Daniel Trocme must have removed it because it contained too many names and places that might have endangered others if it fell into the wrong hands. Peter developed many friendships at Les Grillons, which sheltered an array of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees, including many children of Spanish Civil War refugees. As tokens of their friendship the children of Les Grillons exchanged photos of themselves, which had been taken for identity cards. Peter collected more than 30 such photos (as well as group shots), many of which were inscribed with the true and false names of the children pictured. Despite the risk of carrying them on his person, Peter kept them with him for the duration of the war. In September 1943 Peter was sent along with four other refugee boys to a boarding school in Figeac (Lot) called the College Champollion. Soon after his arrival, Peter began a second journal, which he kept until May 1944. Early in May, members of the French resistance blew up the Ratier aircraft propeller factory in Figeac, which immediately brought about a large scale round-up in the town. All males between the ages of 16 and 55 were required to report to the town square. Though Peter was only 15, he went into hiding for the day inside the church where he served as an altar boy. A few days later, he and the other Jewish refugee children were contacted by a member of the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants), who told them to prepare to leave at short notice. Less than a week later they set out by train for Clermont Ferrand, a collection point for the OSE, where about a dozen Jewish children were assembled for escape to Switzerland. With the assistance of a passeur, Peter successfully crossed the border on May 22, 1944. In his backpack he carried his photos and journal, and in the lining of his jacket was sewn his birth and baptismal certificates. After being interrogated at the Claparede reception camp near Geneva, Peter was given permission to remain in Switzerland. He was soon taken in by a former business associate of his father from Bern, Siegfried Gersonde. He and his wife, Angela, took care of Peter for about a year before turning him over to the Red Cross. For the next year he lived in a series of private homes and youth homes around the country, including the Home de la Foret in Geneva, where he studied tool and dye making at the nearby ORT vocational school. With the help of his relatives (the Blumbergs, who together with Flora Bornstein, reached the U.S. in 1941), Peter received an American visa and immigrated to the U.S. in July 1946. He retrieved his first journal only in 1987, after being contacted by a Parisian named David Diamant, who had purchased it in the late 1940s at a flea market in the south of France and published it in the 1970s.

Edouard Theis was the assistant pastor in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, who together with André Trocmé, spearheaded a regional effort to rescue Jewish refugees and other persecuted individuals during the German occupation of France. A committed pacifist, Theis directed l'école nouvelle Cévenole, an international school based on the principles of non-violence. In January 1943 Theis was arrested for his resistance activity along with Trocmé and Roger Darcissac. The three were interned for a month at the St. Paul d'Eyjeaux camp near Limoges. Like Trocmé, Theis refused to sign a document pledging allegiance to Pétain and the Vichy government in order to secure his release. They were freed the next day, in any event, and soon returned to their rescue work in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Theis was aided in his rescue efforts by his wife Mildred, who worked to provide shelter and other forms of assistance to those seeking refuge from the Nazis.

Keywords and Subjects

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Provenance: Peter Feigl
Source Record ID: Collections: 1992.59
Published Source
The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust... - Berenbaum, Michael - Little, Brown and Company - p. 160
 
Record last modified: 2014-11-13 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa16312