by Heather Munn
Vichy did hand down an order to use the fascist flag-salute in French schools, and the pastor and principal did deliberately undermine it. A third man also helped: Edouard Théis, principal of the new school (which had actually been started in 1938). Their plan was to have a combined flag ceremony, each school’s students making a half circle in their own schoolyard—with a busy street in between. The flag-salute fell apart after a few weeks, just as they hoped it would.
The real stationmaster of Le Chambon never did any such thing as offering refugees a ticket back where they came from. But Magda Trocmé, Andre Trocmé’s wife, did go to the mayor and ask for a ration card for a Jewish refugee, and the mayor did tell her angrily that she was endangering Le Chambon and had better get this person out of town immediately. The refugee was a middle-aged woman, and she was not sick, so Magda found a family in a nearby town who would take her in.
At the end of the book, Julien expects his country to be under Nazi domination for the rest of his life. This also is accurate. There was no good reason, then, to think otherwise. It was with no hope in sight that the people of Le Chambon trusted God and did what they could for the people they saw being persecuted. Sixty-five years later what they did is still remembered. I hope it always will be.
About the Author
Heather Munn was born in Northern Ireland of American parents and grew up in the south of France. She decided to be a writer at the age of five when her mother read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books aloud, but worried that she couldn’t write about her childhood since she didn’t remember it. When she was young, her favorite time of day was after supper when the family would gather and her father would read a chapter from a novel. Heather went to French school until her teens, and grew up hearing the story of Le Chambonsur-Lignon, only an hour’s drive away. She now lives in rural Illinois with her husband, Paul, where they offer free spiritual retreats to people coming out of homelessness and addiction. She enjoys wandering in the woods, gardening, writing, and splitting wood.
Lydia Munn was homeschooled for five years because there was no school where her family served as missionaries in the savannahs of northern Brazil. There was no public library either, but Lydia read every book she could get her hands on. This led naturally to her choice of an English major at Wheaton College. Her original plan to teach high school English gradually transitioned into a lifelong love of teaching the Bible to both adults and young people as a missionary in France. She and her husband, Jim, have two children: their son, Robin, and their daughter, Heather.