Andre Trocme (1901-1971) may be a name largely forgotten today, but he and his wife Magda deserve to be remembered for a faith-fueled courage in almost insurmountable circumstances. What may help revive and further their memory is the publication of his memoirs in English, appropriately titled The Memoirs of Andre Trocme. The work, translated by Patrick Henry and Mary Anne O’Neil and edited by Patrick Cabanel (who also first edited the work in French in 2020), is a conversational, straightforward account of Trocme’s life through the 1950s. He continued to work on the memoir until his death in 1971, but it wasn’t published until nearly 50 years later. Cabanel had the good fortune of using a manuscript containing Magda’s annotations and marginal notes.
Trocme was seemingly a man of contradictions. Born into a well-to-do family of a linen curtain manufacturer in Saint-Quentin near the Belgian border, he found himself early on drawn to the religious life. His father was French; his mother, who died when he was young, was German. His parents were firm Protestants in a Catholic region and country. His region of France was occupied by the Germans in World War I; he tells of his embarrassment when his German cousins came to visit. But as the war front shifted, the town’s population was gradually deported to Belgium. But his descriptions of life under German occupation are vivid and often harrowing.
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| The Trocme family about 1930 |
After the war, the Trocmes landed in Paris; their home in Saint-Quentin had to be substantially rebuilt after suffering damage by the German forces. Andre did his military service, finding himself for a time stationed in Morocco. But again the contradiction: he was also a pacifist and conscientious objector; he would not use a gun to defend or attack. This lifelong philosophy often thrust him into predicaments on both sides in World War II.
He decides to enter the ministry and studies at the School of Theology at the Sorbonne in Paris. He wins a scholarship to Union Theological Seminary in New York, and, while studying there, finds work as a tutor of French for two boys in a wealthy family. The family was the Rockefellers; the boys were David, who became CEO and chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, and Winthrop, who would become governor of Arkansas. And it’s at Union Seminary that he meets Magda.
The memoir goes on the describe his return to France, pastoral training, the births of their children, and the family’s eventual assignment to a church in Le Chambon, southwest of Lyon in south-central France. Trocme’s pacifism raises questions everywhere, but it becomes especially intense as war moves closer and closer.
And then events seem to happen almost at once – the defeat of France, the collapse of the government, the German occupation of northern France, and the Petain government in southern France. Le Chambon sees floods of refugees, including Jewish refugees from Paris and Germany. When the Petain government begins to facilitate roundups of the Jews, it is Reformed pastor Trocme who organizes hiding them, helping them escape, and moving them around to avoid capture. The police and the Germans always suspect what he’s up to, and he even finds himself arrested and imprisoned for a time (he was arrested in his own home at a time when the family had given refuge to a Jewish man; the man wasn’t caught). He has to go into hiding for a time, when he learns of a plot to kill him.
For their work in hiding and saving Jews, whose number reached the thousands, Andre and Magda were later recognized by Israel as Yad Vashem, the righteous Gentiles who risked their own lives and those of others to save Jews from capture, arrest, and death.
The memoir ends in the 1950s, as the Trocmes are establishing the House of Reconciliation in Paris, an educational establishment devoted to Christian education for peace.
Trocme writes in a simple, lively, and almost entertaining style, telling his stories much like a novel or fiction. It’s sometimes astonishing to read what he and his family experienced including personal tragedy, recounting a life lived through some of the most tumultuous times in recent history. While sometimes encountering doubt, it was his faith in God that he held tightly to and that he no doubt today would credit for explaining how he and his family survived.
The Memoirs of Andre Trocme is an eye-opening, thoroughly enjoyable read, a story of courage and faith filtered through history.
Some Monday Readings
Walt Disney and the American Civil War – Tom Elmore at Emerging Civil War.
Britain: Surveillance is sapping our humanity – Peter White at UnHerd.
Illiteracy is a Policy Choice – Kelsey Piper at The Argument.
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