Protests

Protests By French Church Leaders and the Impact of French Public Opinion

Starting in August, 1942, prominent French church leaders protested to the Vichy régime against the treatment of Jews. This had a significant impact on public opinion, and led to the slowing down of deportations. It is due in part to this that three-fourths of the Jews living in France were saved. Whole villages devoted themselves to the rescue of Jewish children, as is documented in the films Weapons of the Spirit (1989), Le Chambon (1994), and Children of Chabannes (1999). It was, in fact, the brutal treatment meted against children that especially shocked the French population.

On June 14, 2006, the French government unveiled the “Wall of the Just,” bearing the names of some of the thousands of French citizens who helped to save Jews during the Occupation. Many more remain anonymous.

One of those who figure on the Wall of the Just, the archbishop of Toulouse Jules Saliège, wrote the following pastoral letter, which was read in public in all the churches of his diocese on August 23, 1942, at the height of the deportations:

“We have witnessed children, women, men, fathers and mothers being treated like a lowly herd of animals, we have seen families being separated and their members sent separately to an unknown destination—this is something never seen before. These Jews are men and women, these foreigners are men and women. They must be treated as men, as women, they are part of humanity; they, like so many others, are our brothers. A Christian cannot forget this.
France, beloved motherland, France who in the minds of all her children stands for the respect of the human being; chivalrous and generous France, you cannot be responsible for these wrongs.”