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 Ardeche, 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.
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