Man leaves $2.4M to French village that hid family from Nazis

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Erich Schwam was 90 years old when he died on Christmas Day.

His final gift is for the tiny French village that protected his family during the Second World War.

Schwam, an Austrian Jew, was an adolescent when he arrived in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in 1943 with his parents and grandmother. The family was from Vienna, where Schwam’s father was a doctor.

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in southeast France has been known for 400 years as a place where the persecuted can seek protection — a reputation that began when it was a safe haven for the Huguenots, French protestants fleeing religious persecution in the 17th Century.

Schwam and his family were trying to escape the Nazi sweep of Europe and the mass extermination of Jews.

They were indeed hidden by villagers in Chambon-sur-Lignon and survived the war. According to the BBC, Schwam’s parents eventually returned to Austria, but he stayed in France to study at university in Lyon, the city where he met his future wife.

He never forgot the kindness of the people of Chambon-sur-Lignon.  Many in the town of 2,500 risked their lives repeatedly during the war to hide Jews, saving them from deportation and death.

The people of the village saved 3,000 Jews; their effort during the war has been recognized by Israel.

In his will, Schwam left a large amount of money to the village as a thank you for saving him and his family nearly eight decades earlier. He asked that the money, said to be about $2.4 million, be used for the benefit of schools and to fund scholarships.

The amount was disclosed by a former mayor of the town.

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Chambon-sur-Lignon has the perfect geography for a refuge. The town is isolated and surrounded by forested areas, just the sort of seclusion one would want in a place to hide.

The BBC lists Pastor Andre Trocme and his wife Magda as the spiritual leaders of Chambon’s resistance effort during the Second World War. He rallied the villagers to the cause, and to a man (and woman) the people kept their work a secret.

The penalty for helping Jews was deportation and/or death.

At Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s World Holocaust Remembrance Center, a plaque honours 40 people from Chambon – including Andre and Magda Trocme – as Righteous Among the Nations for risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.