Rating: 
Summary: Moving, challenging, insightful
Review: Hallie is a brilliant writer and researcher who tells an amazing story of courage and faith. In it he demonstrates how "decent" people who stay inactive out of cowardice and indifference--when around them human beings are humiliated and destroyed--are the most dangerous people in the world. I didn't need his closing thoughts on ethics, and I would like to have learned more about what the villagers themselves did to protect the refugees. But the parts the author did well were so astonishing, it still gets five stars. It left me asking myself, "What exploited people groups can I help and how?"
Rating:
Summary: Moving, challenging, insightful
Review: Hallie is a brilliant writer and researcher who tells an amazing story of courage and faith. In it he demonstrates how "decent" people who stay inactive out of cowardice and indifference--when around them human beings are humiliated and destroyed--are the most dangerous people in the world. I didn't need his closing thoughts on ethics, and I would like to have learned more about what the villagers themselves did to protect the refugees. But the parts the author did well were so astonishing, it still gets five stars. It left me asking myself, "What exploited people groups can I help and how?"
Rating: 
Summary: Assigned reading
Review: I am a Junior in High School, and we were assigned to read this and write a paper on it (which, coincidentally, is due monday, so I'd better get started!) about any of the multiple themes that run through it. It is a very rich book, and some of the scenes are deeply poignant. I highly recommend this book, but I hold back the fifth star because it became redundant nearing the end. Read this book, you will enjoy it!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing: a fawning, obsequious portrait of Trocme
Review: I had high hopes for this book. I wanted to understand how an entire village could overcome the instinct for self-preservation and muster the moral courage to resist the Nazis and save thousands of Jews during World War II. While Pastor Andre Trocme and his wife undoubtedly played pivotal roles in organizing the village, I felt this book focused almost entirely on these two individuals. The first chapter that addressed Andre Trocme's background and philosophy was quite welcome, as it helped me to understand what drove him, but by the second, third, and fourth chapters, it began to get tiresome and repetitious. Sometimes less is more.The author understandably and rightly holds the Trocmes in high regard, but he does them a disservice with this fawning and obsequious portrait. Somewhere around the 275th page, he writes "It would be tempting but wrong to focus entirely on the Trocmes, but ..." By then, I was craving a description of the contributions of other villagers. What did they do? What reluctance did they initially feel? How did they manage their fear? How were the organizations structured to handle so many refugees? Finally, in the final few chapters, the reader is rewarded with some factual information about the other players in this moral drama. However, the information is cursory, and the villagers seem to play an almost incidental role in the book. I understand that this book was written 30 years after the Occupation, and that many of the people involved are no longer living, but I had hoped for a more balanced account of an extraordinary story.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing: a fawning, obsequious portrait of Trocme
Review: I had high hopes for this book. I wanted to understand how an entire village could overcome the instinct for self-preservation and muster the moral courage to resist the Nazis and save thousands of Jews during World War II. While Pastor Andre Trocme and his wife undoubtedly played pivotal roles in organizing the village, I felt this book focused almost entirely on these two individuals. The first chapter that addressed Andre Trocme's background and philosophy was quite welcome, as it helped me to understand what drove him, but by the second, third, and fourth chapters, it began to get tiresome and repetitious. Sometimes less is more. The author understandably and rightly holds the Trocmes in high regard, but he does them a disservice with this fawning and obsequious portrait. Somewhere around the 275th page, he writes "It would be tempting but wrong to focus entirely on the Trocmes, but ..." By then, I was craving a description of the contributions of other villagers. What did they do? What reluctance did they initially feel? How did they manage their fear? How were the organizations structured to handle so many refugees? Finally, in the final few chapters, the reader is rewarded with some factual information about the other players in this moral drama. However, the information is cursory, and the villagers seem to play an almost incidental role in the book. I understand that this book was written 30 years after the Occupation, and that many of the people involved are no longer living, but I had hoped for a more balanced account of an extraordinary story.
Rating:
Summary: A poor look at ethical wealth
Review: I was asked to contrast this book to Christopher Browning's _Ordinary Men_ for a class in Comparative Religious Ethics. While this proved to be an intresting exercise, Philip Hallie's unpolished tale of Le Chambon, a stop on France's "Underground Railroad" for WWII refugees, suffers in the comparison. Hallie makes tentative steps towards a biography of Andre Trocme (the town's pastor), a specific and narrow history of a French town in WWII, a case study in ethics, and a testimony of praise for people he grew to admire in his research. None of these directions arrive at any satisfying destination, leaving the narrative feeling disorganized and lacking the import the story might have held. In spite of the ways Hallie's approach disappointed me, I would still recommend this book to those people who enjoy reading simple modern morality tales told in terms of "good vs. evil", or those who want some rather saccharine optimism about human nature in their histories of WWII.
Rating:
Summary: A poor look at ethical wealth
Review: I was asked to contrast this book to Christopher Browning's _Ordinary Men_ for a class in Comparative Religious Ethics. While this proved to be an intresting exercise, Philip Hallie's unpolished tale of Le Chambon, a stop on France's "Underground Railroad" for WWII refugees, suffers in the comparison. Hallie makes tentative steps towards a biography of Andre Trocme (the town's pastor), a specific and narrow history of a French town in WWII, a case study in ethics, and a testimony of praise for people he grew to admire in his research. None of these directions arrive at any satisfying destination, leaving the narrative feeling disorganized and lacking the import the story might have held. In spite of the ways Hallie's approach disappointed me, I would still recommend this book to those people who enjoy reading simple modern morality tales told in terms of "good vs. evil", or those who want some rather saccharine optimism about human nature in their histories of WWII.
Rating:
Summary: excellent book
Review: Philip Hallie captured some of the goodness that can come out of a war. During WWII, the community of Le Chambon helped Jews escape Vichy
France. After reading about all of the horror that occurred during WWII, it was nice to read a book about the hope and love that was never lost during the war. I highly recommend this book to any avid reader.
Your spirits will be lifted after reading a book like this. Once you start the book, you won't be able to put it down until it is finished.
Rating:
Summary: inspiring story, but fragmented writing
Review: The true story told in this book is amazing, inspiring, and miraculous. More people should know about it!! Pastor Trocme was the leader of the resistance, and much of the book is about him and his family. He was Pastor in a little Protestant town in France, and he and his townspeople saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish children.
However, I think the book could have been better written. I hesitate to recommend the book to others because I think they would have a hard time getting through it. The story is fragmented. It is not really told chronologically. Each chapter tells a different part/aspect of the overall story. By the time you finish reading the book, the different parts of the puzzle have come together...but its telling is not smooth.
To give the author some credit, he did have a challenging job to write this book so long after the fact. He had to piece together many pieces...through research, reading old diaries and letters, interviewing the handful of still-living people involved in the story, etc. But I still think it could have been "put together" in a better way.
Perhaps someone should write a shorter, less-detailed narrative about this town - that way it might have a wider reading audience. Again, it is an incredible and inspiring story that needs to be told!
Rating:
Summary: If you've given up on humanity, give this book a try.
Review: This book stands as one of the top ten influential books in my life. Hallie details the struggle of a Protestant village in Nazi-controlled France to save Jews from persecution. Despite the obvious risks and the many sacrifices, the village hides and transports Jews beyond the reach of the Nazis. I found the village's decision and determination to fight a persecution unconnected to themselves amazing. It is an interesting challenge for each of us to evaluate how willing we are to show love for others.
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