A rescuer's story: Pastor Pierre-Charles Toureille in Vichy France 9780299175030, 9780299175047, 9780299175009

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Prologue (page vii)
Acknowledgments (page ix)
Abbreviations (page xi)
1. Pierre-Charles Toureille, 1900-1976 (page 1)
2. To Be a Huguenot (page 9)
3. Pierre Toureille's Early Years and the Ecumenical Movement of the 1930s (page 34)
4. The War Years, an Introduction (page 63)
5. The War, 1939-1940 (page 75)
6. The War, 1941 (page 106)
7. The War, 1942 (page 143)
8. The War, 1943-1945 and After (page 190)
Epilogue (page 232)
Appendix: Postwar Tributes and Awards (page 239)
Notes (page 245)
Selected Bibliography (page 257)
Index (page 263)

Citation preview

A Rescuers Story

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A Rescuers Story 2

Pastor Pierre-Charles Toureille in Vichy France

Tela Zaslott

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

The University of Wisconsin Press 1930 Monroe Street Madison, Wisconsin 53711 www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/

3 Henrietta Street London WC2E 8LU, England Copyright © 2003 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved

5432]

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zasloff, Tela. A rescuer’s story: Pastor Pierre-Charles Toureille in Vichy France / Tela Zasloff. p. cm.

ISBN 0-299-17500-6 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Toureille, Pierre-Charles, b. 1900. 2. Righteous Gentiles in the Holocaust—Biography. 3. World War, 1939-45—Jews—Rescue—France. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—France. 5. France—History—German occupation, 1940-1945. 6. France—Ethnic relations. I. Title. D804.66.T68 238 2002 940.59’ 1835'09448—dc21 2002010201

Contents

Prologue vii Acknowledgments | ix Abbreviations xi 1. Pierre-Charles Toureille, 1900-1976 1

2. ‘To Bea Huguenot 9

3. Pierre Toureille’s Early Years and the Ecumenical

Movement of the 1930s 34

4. The War Years, an Introduction 63

5. The War, 1939-1940 75 6. The War, 1941 , 106

7. The War, 1942 143 8. The War, 1943-1945 and After 190

Epilogue 932

Notes 245 Index 963

Appendix: Postwar Tributes and Awards 939

Selected Bibliography 257

Vv

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Prologue What we have to learn from heroic societies is twofold: first, that all morality is . . . tied to the socially local and particular . . . and, secondly, that there is no way to possess the virtues except as part of a tradition in which we inherit them and our understanding of them from a series of predecessors. —Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

This is a story of a certain kind of hero, who was shaped by the history of his people. It is not his whole story but focuses on the powerful influences

of his French Huguenot heritage and the experiences of his maturing

World War II. |

years as a Protestant pastor in the 1930s, culminating in the central drama of his life—his role as a rescuer during the Nazi occupation of France in Whether a particular cultural heritage produces certain kinds of character, including the heroic, is one of the questions intriguing those studying rescuers and altruistic action. Most studies have focused on individual rescuers, testing for cultural factors like religious upbringing and family role models. Some try to isolate psychological traits that rescuers have in common, like a strong sense of self, or altruism, or a need for praise, ora — feeling of well-being.! But when a whole people— insistent over centuries on its own history and its differentness from the larger society in which it lives—produces whole communities of rescuers (as in the case of the French Huguenot village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, discussed in chapter 2), we also have to look at the broad subject of cultural heritage as a shaper of action. My attraction to the subject of rescuers started when, as an American Vii

Vili PROLOGUE Jew, I was first struck by certain similarities between the Huguenot villagers of southern France and the Jewish people. Both peoples repeated insistently to their children their history of persecution, their covenant with God to act righteously as a chosen people, their deep reliance on the Old Testament, their persistence in maintaining their faith, their special history, and their sense of peoplehood. By a remarkable twist of fate, the horror of World War II and the Holocaust had brought both together as rescuers and rescued. My own childhood was securely far away from the war, in a close-knit Jewish community in a small railroad town in the mountains of Pennsylvania. I was born on the eve of the war, in 1938. As with most American Jews, details of the Holocaust seeped in slowly, not only because of my family’s reluctance to discuss it with children in the 1940s but also because of the hugeness of the task of assimilating information about it. I was made aware, as far back as I can remember, of being part of some large and special story, of ties to other places in the world, of obligations to people far

away and in the past. My four grandparents were immigrants from eastern Europe—from Riga, Latvia, and from Ponevez, in Kovno Province, Lithuania. They arrived in America about the same year that Pierre Toureille was born, in 1900, and the stories of their childhood, why they left home, the dangers they had escaped, and their hard work to make it in America were passed around among us all. So when I first encountered Pierre Toureille’s story, I felt it had an unclear but nevertheless insistent connection to mine.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Marc Toureille for providing me the inspiration to write this story about his father. My interviews with Marc over a five-year period and the family papers, documents, and photographs he made available are the foundation on which this book was built. I would also like to thank the following institutions for providing documents and research materials for this book: The Leo Baeck Institute, New York Société de |’ Histoire du Protestantisme francais, Paris Faculté libre de théologie protestante de Montpellier, France The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.

The World Council of Churches, library and archives, Geneva, Switzerland Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel. Research and preparation for publication of this book were supported by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, New York.

All English translations of French sources were done by the author unless otherwise indicated.

ix

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Abbreviations AFSC American Friends Service Committee

CCA Center for Czechoslovak Aid CGQ] Commissariat général aux questions juives (Bureau for Jewish Affairs)

CIMADE Comité inter-mouvements d’aide auprés des évacués (Committee of Aid to Refugees)

FFI French Forces of the Interior FFL Forces frangais libres (Free French Forces) FPF Fédération protestante de France (Protestant Federation of France)

GTE Groupes de travailleurs étrangers (Foreign Workers Groups, also identified as TE)

MACE Maison d’accueil chrétien pour enfants (Christian Home for Children)

ORT Organisation pour la reconstruction et le travail (Organization for Rebuilding and Vocational Training)

OSE Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (Agency for Aid to Children) STO Service du travail obligatoire (Forced Labor Service)

UGIF Union générale des israélites de France (General Union of Jews in France)

WCC World Council of Churches

WJC World Jewish Congress YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association

XI

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1

Pierre-Charles Toureille, 1900-1976 Pierre-Charles Toureille was born on May 5, 1900, in the sunny, orange— and—gray-green countryside of Nimes in the south of France. After he was received into the French Reformed Church at the age of fifteen, he was

honored by the Royal Serb government for helping wounded Serb soldiers in Nimes, passed through a religious awakening at age seventeen, and at Easter 1918, when he was just eighteen years old, received the calling to evangelize among the Slav youth. His career path was no surprise to his family. There were many pastors among his Huguenot ancestors, and of his two sisters, Alice and Marguerite, the latter married a pastor. His interest in the Slav peoples was initiated by both his parents. Pierre’s

mother, born Léonie Bastide, had nursed and aided Slavs who sought refuge in France during World War I, for which she received the Chevaliére de la Légion d’honneur. It was to his father, Etienne Charles Toureille, a tax-department official for the city of Nimes, that he wrote this dedication for his undergraduate thesis on John Huss—“To the memory of my father who taught me to know and love the Slavs.” Toureille and his father shared the same middle name—Charles— and his whole life, he used his middle initial and was often addressed by his friends as P.-C. From his father’s side of the family he also inherited a military tradition, including two Légion d’honneur awardees. His greatgrandfather, Paul Toureille, was in the Imperial Guard, fought at Austerlitz and Waterloo and served in Napoleon’s small military force in exile on Elba. Toureille’s first cousin, Charles Pomaret, received the Croix de Guerre in 1919 and then followed a political career. He served as deputy from Lozére and Secretary of State for Technical Training and was appointed to Pétain’s cabinet in 1940, from which he resigned after serving less than two months.

After entering the Faculty of Theology of Montpellier in 1919,

l

2 pa A RESCUER’ S STORY rr |

| ae - ‘Toureille at age seven, 1907. | ar eee | | - Toureille studied at the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University | of Strasbourg, concentrating in Slavic language and literature. Upon re-

ceiving a scholarship from the Czech government to study at the Faculty ; . John Huss in Prague in 1920-21, he learned Czech, traveled through Aus- aa -__ tria, Hungary, and Serbia, and translated a work by Tomas Masaryk, first

president and chief founder of Czechoslovakia. For the next two years, | | - from 1922 to 1924, he returned to Strasbourg, where he was strongly in-

a fluenced by the teaching of Jean Monnier, a professor of theology, spent | ~ ayear of study at the University of Bratislava, then returned to the faculty Poon of Theology at Montpellier to complete his thesis, titled “Jean Huss: Les — | — débuts de la crise religieuse actuelle de la nation Tchécoslovaque” (John |

Huss: The beginnings of the present religious crisis in Czechoslovakia). ,

_ He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in theology from Montpellier. | | - That same year, 1924, he married Délie Lichtenstein-Warnery, from -a well-to-do Swiss family with ancestors who include both Huguenots | and rabbis. Toureille was appointed pastor of the Evangelical Reformed _ Church from 1924 to 1928 in Bourdeaux, Dréme, then of the same church :

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