The Huguenots, the Jews, and Me

Azure ^ | Autumn 2006 | ARMAND LAFERRERE

[Spacewalker]

My great-great-great-grandfather was named Moses. My cousins have names like Sarah, Deborah, Jeremy, Judith, Esther, Raphael, and Samuel....

Yet I do not (as far as I know) have a single drop of Jewish blood in my veins. Neither did I, nor any member of my family, convert to Judaism. But philo-Semitism, which often includes an emotional identification with the Jewish people, is part of the heritage of the community I was raised in: The French Huguenots, or Protestants....

But perhaps the most moving example of Protestant efforts on behalf of French Jewry occurred in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small, all-Protestant town in southern France. There, the whole community gave haven to more than three thousand Jews, mostly children, during the war. When a family volunteered to hide a child, Pastor André Trocmé would say, “I will bring you tomorrow the Old Testament that you have asked for.” Nazi patrols came in search of the Jews repeatedly, but all were safely hidden. Everybody knew, but no one ever spoke....

We are not many. But we French Huguenots-or, at least, those of us who know our own history-are linked with the Jewish people by too many bonds of culture, history, and religious beliefs to betray that old alliance. The world is now experiencing a new wave of Jew hatred, with many Muslims hoping openly for a new Holocaust and most Europeans all too willing to let one happen. The most tenacious, vilest, and oldest of hatreds is reaching a new high. In such dark and troubled times, may the God of Israel give us the strength to proclaim our everlasting gratitude to the Jews. May he give us the grace, which we do not deserve, of sharing their torments today and their victory tomorrow.

[Spacewalker]

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/calvin.html