Church Times

‘We only know men’: How French Christians confronted the Holocaust

‘We only know men’: How French Christians confronted the Holocaust

Thursday, January 22, 2026
ANDRÉ TROCMÉ, the Calvinist pastor of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during the Second World War, made this riposte when Marshal Pétain’s Vichy officials ordered him to reveal the Jews in his town: “We do not know what a Jew is. We only know men.” At a tim...