Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of le Chambon and How Goodness Happened Book

When you are a reader (and if you talk about book frequently enough to make sure other people know it), life has a funny way of throwing books in your path. You become the subject of everybody's recommendations, an unwitting borrower of other people's books, and the thankful recipient of literary gifts during the holidays. This book is a case in point: I would probably never have read it had it not been lent to me by a long-time friend.

Though Hallie was a philosopher of ethics, he seemed pretty uninterested in abstract theories. As in so many other books, what is left out of this work is just as important as what made it in: gone are any statements about the abstract nature of 'goodness' and 'justice'. The big-time philosophical schools of ethics'deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics'are only mentioned in passing. What Hallie writes about instead are real people doing real things.

What people doing what things? Hallie concentrates his attention on Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a Huguenot village in southern France. It is a poor, predominantly Protestant village, where much of the economy depends on tourism, situated high up in the Auvergne-Rhone Alps. What sets this quotidian locale apart from its neighboring villages is the people: almost the entire village cooperated to rescue fleeing Jews during World War II. This was done at considerable risk to themselves; and, indeed, some residents paid the ultimate price for their efforts. But remarkably, miraculously, they largely succeeded: probably thousands of Jews were saved.

So the question Hallie asks is this: What set them apart? Why did these poor villagers risk their lives to help others, when so many others refused to help? In other words, what went on to make the entire community such a paragon of ethical behavior?

In lieu of an abstract answer, Hallie offers us a portrait of André Trocmé and his wife Magda, the two leaders of the town's rescue efforts. André is protestant pastor, cast in the mold of all the great spiritual leaders of the past'a man with unswerving commitment to an ethical idea and seemingly limitless fortitude. His commitment to the Christian ideal of behavior is extreme: he refuses to harm even enemy soldiers, and refuses to lie to the authorities about his subversive activities. Any time he was asked if he was harboring Jews, he simply said yes; and every opportunity he had of reducing bloodshed'be it of Jews or of German soldiers'he pursued. His wife Magda is much more secular in her outlook; she believes that one should help others simply because it's the right thing to do. If people need help, and ask for it, it's your duty to give your all to help them'no questions asked.

So that is Part One of Hallie's answer: ethical behavior is personal; it depends on specific individuals who take it upon themselves to help. But, clearly, if it was André and Magda alone who were attempting to save Jews, they wouldn't have gotten very far; they needed help. And this brings Hallie to Part Two of his answer: history and community.

The village of Le Chambon was founded by Huguenots. This, as Hallie points out, probably contributed to their willingness to help: they, too, were descendants of a persecuted people. In any case, the economic and historical conditions of Le Chambon combined to create a people willing to help. In houses throughout the town, residents risked their own lives harboring Jews, spreading their already meager resources thin to support the refugees. The Chambonnais responded to the Trocmés' ethical impetus in kind: the animating spirit of André and Magda inspired the people of the village.

In his book Why We Can't Wait, Martin Luther King, Jr. says "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted 'order' than to justice… ." Philip Hallie makes a similar point. The people who stood by, not wanting to make trouble, were of no help in the crisis. The village of Le Chambon was not populated by moderates but, in a very real sense, extremists. It took extremists for helpfulness to reduce the damage done by extremists for harmfulness; or, as MLK said: "the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?"

André Trocmé's unswerving commitment to nonviolence can be truthfully called radical. In a very real sense he was just as much a radical as was Hitler. Now, I would define a 'radical' as somebody who could not possibly be convinced that he was wrong; someone who is so unshakably sure of his rectitude that no argument could dissuade him. Thus, Trocmé and Hitler were motivated by convictions, not arguments. Hallie makes this point when he says:
If you were to put those two eloquent men, André Trocmé and Adolf Hitler, in a comfortable room for any comfortable length of time to argue about the appropriate ethical judgment to lay upon the actions of the Chambonnais between 1940 and 1944, neither would persuade the other that his judgment was the final one; nor would they ever both acknowledge any court to decide conclusively between their conflicting judgments.
This is, I think, what is at the root of Hallie's distrust of ethical theories. For an ethical theory is a theory which attempts, through logical reasoning, to set up an objective guideline for an ethical action; the aim is to unambiguously decide what is 'right' and 'wrong', and come up with a test for judging a given action. This is the aim of both the categorical imperative and utilitarianism. Yet what use are these theories if they are not operative in the great ethical struggles of reality? If both Trocmé and Hitler, both the Chambonnais and the Nazis, were motivated, not by reason, but by a conviction, what use is the philosophy of ethics? In other words, the battleground of ethics is not in debate, but in action. Those who need convincing are those who sit by the sidelines.

According to Hallie, however, there is one simple test of ethical worth: do you consider life precious or not? Underneath all questions of duty, of virtue, of utility, of happiness, and of pleasure, this simple difference between those who want to help save lives and those who don't is fundamental. But this conviction of the universal dignity of human life is not a proposition; it is a feeling, and, as a feeling, occupies a place in one's psyche that is deeper than intellectual theories.

Hallie's focus on personality, on culture, on history, on context, and on conviction leads him to write in a very different way than do most philosophers. For him, the proper way to write about ethics is not as Kant and Mill did'with theses that are proven with arguments'but as Dickens and Tolstoy did: with stories and characters. Most people simply don't have time to play with ethical scenarios and with different theories; they need to act now, with limited information, and with limited means. And since we have to act now, our basic conviction'is human life precious?'is what determines the event.

This is exactly what the Trocmés and the Chambonnais did: they acted in the spur of the moment, with limited resources, solely on the conviction that all human lives are precious. Hallie would have us do the same.