No Jews lived in the predominantly Protestant town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in southwestern France, prior to World War II. It may seem ironic, then, that this town's inhabitants - led by town and church officials - chose to shield thousands of Jews from arrest and deportation to Nazi extermination camps. Why this village made such a morally courageous decision has never been understood; one resident simply said, "It was the human thing to do." As one official of Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem holocaust authority, put it, "The village was unique in that almost all the people of the plateau were involved in saving the Jews." Still, many other inhabitants of Nazi-occupied or collaborationist territories were only too eager to assist in, or turn a blind eye to, rounding up their Jewish neighbors.

1. View photos and interviews from a documentary film on Le Chambon at
   http://www.chambon.org/weapons.htm
2. A website hosted by the Simon Wiesenthal center offers a brief description of the town and several photographs of rescuers and rescued:
   http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/pages/t043/t04344.html
3. Another website dedicated to the events at Le Chambon, whose inhabitants were named as Righteous Gentiles by the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, is located at
   http://www.auschwitz.dk/Trocme.htm