A Rescuers Story: Pastor Pierre-Charles Toureille in Vichy France

ISBN: 0274723700

Author: Zasloff, Tela

Condition: New

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 Toureilles 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. Toureilles 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.