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Susan Schwartz wrote a feature in the Montreal Gazette on Second World War resistance figures Magda and André Trocmé, and their daughter Nelly Trocmé Hewett’s Montreal speaking events this month.
As mentioned in the Gazette article, Trocmé Hewett’s “presentation will include a short version of the award-winning 1989 documentary Weapons of the Spirit, made by Pierre Sauvage, who was born and sheltered in Le Chambon, about the town. The title is drawn from the admonition by André Trocmé to his congregation the day after France’s surrender to Nazi Germany: “The responsibility of Christians is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on their consciences through the weapons of the spirit.””
We’ve had a great turnout to these events so far, and the next public talk will be Thursday, Oct 23th at 10am, at the McGill Community for Lifelong Learning. Details >
Living in the small, mainly Protestant town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon in southern France, Magda and André Trocmé inspired a network of resistance to the Vichy regime’s deportation of Jews and would eventually be honoured as “Righteous Among the Nations” by the state of Israel.
MQUP recently published a collection of writings by Magda and André Trocmé, selected by Pierre Boismorand, who offers bridging context and explanatory notes throughout. The book includes a mosaic of sermons, letters, published articles, diaries, and speeches from the war years, but also before and after, extending from the 1920s to the 1970s.
The following excerpt is from an article that André Trocmé wrote for L’Écho de la montagne in March 1939, urging Protestant readers to engage in active solidarity and resistance.
“Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
This exhortation to the Israelites, in Deuteronomy 10:19, strikes us as being timely and fitting today. It has special relevance to us as Christian Reformed people descended, at least spiritually, from the Huguenots who were persecuted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Once more, atrocious persecution is taking place. Hundreds of thousands of Christians, Jews, dissidents and democratically-minded people are trying to escape the oppression and violence of totalitarians. But escape is possible for only a small portion of those persecuted, for many have no means to leave and free nations have barely opened their doors to them. Most of the people we welcome here as refugees are refused the right to work, condemned to unemployment, and all too often denied state benefits. Some, who were tired of begging and starving, are, at this moment, in prison for having committed the horrific crime of working. Others are desperate and have given way to vice or the mad despair of suicide.
In the midst of all this cruelty and indifference, the time has come for Christians to act in response to the words of their Master and Saviour: “For I hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in.”
To learn more about this book, or to order a copy online, click here.
For media requests, please contact Jacqui Davis.
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