When the villagers of Le Chambon, in south-central France, sheltered some two thousand persecuted Jews in their own homes between 1941 and 1944, they knew that they could be severely punished for doing so.

Yet the Chambonnais did not feel that they were doing anything out of the ordinary. Compassionate hospitality had become second nature to them.

There was no formal instruction or organisation urging the Chambonnais to shelter refugees other than the simple but passionate exhortations to love one another that André Trocmé, their Lutheran pastor, delivered during his Sunday sermons… Read more »