My Thoughts on Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France by Caroline Moorehead

Aaron Sharp | January 15, 2021

Look at me writing something about another book!

This time it is Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France by Caroline Moorehead.

For those that haven’t seen my new method on book reviews, here’s the scoop. I am going to blog about books I’ve read in a question and answer format. The premise is that one of my readers is asking me questions. For the record, this is just a device I am using to have fun. I’m the one asking and answering. It’s more interesting for me to write them this way, and it gives the other voices in my head a chance to talk. If you don’t like it, well, there are plenty of other things to do online.

Should I read this book?

Maybe. It was very interesting, and definitely a story worth telling, but you probably have to be pretty committed to wanting to know the story to read it.

It sounds like you didn’t like this book, is that true?

No, I liked this book. It’s just that some stories are conducive to being swept along as a reader, I don’t think this is one of those stories. In a lot of ways I’d use the word sprawling to describe it. There are a lot of people, a lot of places, and it’s the type of book that can almost discourage you because it can be a little hard to find a rhythm as a reader because it seems to be constantly changing direction. This isn’t a criticism of the author so much as a commentary on the difficulty that I’m sure was there in attempting to do justice to the reality of what happened.

What prompted you to read this particular book?

A couple of things. First, I’ve got an idea for a book bouncing around in my head that might use this time and place in France as a background, so there was definitely a “research” element for me. Second, I am always up for reading about World War 2, and this was a piece of the puzzle that I knew nothing about.

Was there anything you read in this book that you think we can learn from in our current world?

Man, there were lots, but there is one that I’ve been thinking about a lot the last few days. I’m going to try to thread a needle here politically (which I’m sure I won’t be successful at), but here goes. We live in a hyper-partisan, polarized world, particularly in the U.S. That isn’t a terribly insightful observation, and if you think it is you need to get out more, but what I have been thinking about is this idea of being a collaborator. Not in the sense of someone who is good at working with other people, but in the WW2 sense of working with the enemy. We have come to a place that whichever side of the fence you are on politically you generally think your side is good, and the other side is evil. Because of this anybody who works with or for the person you find reprehensible gets branded a collaborator. Obviously, there is a line that if crossed you are aiding people in unethical and bad behavior, I’m not suggesting we ignore that. What I have been pondering though is that there may be good people who may be in tough spots because they have decided that’s the best way to stave of disaster. I think of this line near the end of Village of Secrets, “From one end of France to the other, there were civil servants who falsified ration books, policemen who turned a blind eye, telephone operators who warned of impending raids. Parallel to the map of Vichy is a map of decency.”

Our political landscape is such that I think the red and blue teams largely view each other as Nazis, or at best the Vichy French, but all throughout our country there are legions of people, some of which we may view as “working for the other side,” who do what they do for the common good of as many as they can. I think there are definitely things going on in the world that we should have moral clarity on, but there is an awful lot of gray area on what the best way to deal with a particular problem is. Our world isn’t complicated in the same way as trying to exist under the Nazi regime, but doesn’t mean that the world hasn’t gotten less complicated. We are blessed in the United States not be dealing with being overrun by Nazis, but we do live in a time with serious problems and questions, perhaps it’s time to do a little less tarring and feathering.

There were a lot of people who appeared in this book, that almost 80 years later we aren’t really sure if they were collaborators or not. Were they trying to help? Were they trying to save their own skin? Were they willing to switch sides depending on who looked to be winning? History hasn’t given us answers, and I think the same questions still exist about a lot of people today, and maybe we don’t know the answers as well as we think we do.

At this point 8 of the 10 people who read this post now believe that I am a heretic, so let’s hurry along to another question shall we?

You sure you don’t want to talk about your thoughts on collaborators anymore?

If any educational institution I attended before grad school still existed I’m pretty sure they’d be revoking my diplomas, so yeah, let’s move along.

If we must move along, then what about this book surprised you?

There were several things, but one of them was the appearance of John Nelson Darby. Darby is considered the father of the theological system of Dispensationalism. I grew up steeped in dispensational theology, and even attended Dallas Theological Seminary, the most famous dispensational institution out there, but I had no idea that his followers in France were instrumental in saving so many Jews. They weren’t the only ones. French Huguenots, Quakers, and other Protestants did their share. A number of Catholics were also involved in saving Jews, but I never knew that there were Darbyist enclaves in France, and that they were committed to saving as many Jews as they could. Maybe I just don’t know that much about France, a distinct possibility.

Here’s a good quote from the book about there prevalence:

“There was, however, something else that made the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon exceptional in France, and it would become crucial in saving the Jews in the months to come. Among its inhabitants were not only a very high percentage of Protestants, steeped in the embattled faith of the Huguenots, but also a number of Darbyists, followers of a nineteenth-century English preacher, John Darby, sober, austere, very private people sometimes likened to Quakers and the Amish. By the outbreak of war, the plateau had 12 Protestant parishes, and some 9,000 of its 24,000 people were Protestant, in a country in which Protestants counted for less than 10 per cent of the total population. The Darbyists, and an even smaller and more obscure sect, the Ravenists, were said to number about 2,000, making these communities some of the largest in Europe.”

This is getting long so two final questions.

First, did you have to look up how to spell Huguenot?

Absolutely.

Second, do you have a favorite quote from the book?

Well, I read this as an ebook, and I did so specifically so I could highlight easily and access those highlights efficiently. That is to say, there were lots of highlights.

One quote that stood out to me was from a Jewish woman in an interment camp in France, many of whom would be shipped to Auschwitz, never to be heard from again, “We lived somewhere outside life,” she wrote, “In a bath of death.”