A Rescuer's Story

by Zasloff, Tela

• ISBN13: 9780299175009
• ISBN10: 0299175006
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr

Summary

This is the story of a Holocaust rescuer, Pierre Toureille, a French Protestant pastor whose efforts resulted in the rescue of hundreds of refugees, most of them Jewish. Inspired by his Huguenot heritage, Pastor Toureille participated in international Protestant church efforts to combat Nazism during the 1930s and headed a major refugee aid organization in Vichy France during World War II. After the war, Pastor Toureille was honored by the Jewish organization Yad Vashem as one of the "Righteous Among the Nations." In telling Toureille's story, Tela Zasloff also depicts the wide-ranging network of Protestant pastors and lay people in southern French villages who participated in an aggressive rescue effort. She delves into their motivations, including their heritage as members of a religious minority. Toureille's rescue work under the Vichy regime, partly official and then increasingly clandestine as the war progrressed. was a crucial part of the French non-violent "spiritual resistance" against Nazism.

Table of Contents

Prologue	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Abbreviations	xi
1. Pierre-Charles Toureille, 1900-1976	1	(8)
2. To Be a Huguenot	9	(25)
3. Pierre Toureille's Early Years and the Ecumenical Movement of the 1930's	34	(29)
4. The War Years, an Introduction	63	(12)
5. The War, 1939-1940	75	(31)
6. The War, 1941	106	(37)
7. The War, 1942	143	(89)
8. The War, 1943-1945 and After	232	(1)
Epilogue	232	(7)
Appendix: Postwar Tributes and Awards	239	(6)
Notes	245	(12)
Selected Bibliography	257	(6)
Index	263