HISTORY DEPARTMENT presents

During the Second World War, in a remote pocket of Nazi-held France, ordinary people risked their lives to rescue many hundreds of strangers, mostly Jewish children. The same place offers refuge to migrants today. Why? With the tools of historical research, anthropological fieldwork, and personal narrative, Dr. Maggie Paxson set out to explore the habits of helpfulness and rescue that the villagers of the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon have demonstrated for centuries. But it was the story of a distant relative, Daniel Trocmé, that set her on a new and unexpected course. Restless and idealistic, Trocmé had found a life of meaning and purpose—or it found him—sheltering a group of children on the Plateau, until the Holocaust came for him, too. Paxson's journey into past and present turns up new answers, new questions, and a renewed faith in the possibilities for us all.