A Rescuer's Story: Pastor Pierre-Charles Toureille in Vichy France

This is the story of a Holocaust rescuer, Pierre Toureille, a French Protestant pastor whose efforts resulted in the rescue of hundreds of refugees, most of them Jewish. Inspired by his Huguenot heritage, Pastor Toureille participated in international Protestant church efforts to combat Nazism during the 1930s and headed a major refugee aid organization in Vichy France during World War II. After the war, Pastor Toureille was honored by the Jewish organization Yad Vashem as one of the "Righteous Among the Nations."
In telling Toureille's story, Tela Zasloff also depicts the wide-ranging network of Protestant pastors and lay people in southern French villages who participated in an aggressive rescue effort. She delves into their motivations, including their heritage as members of a religious minority. Toureille's rescue work under the Vichy regime, partly official and then increasingly clandestine as the war progrressed. was a crucial part of the French non-violent "spiritual resistance" against Nazism.

Author: Tela Zasloff
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 10/15/1996
Pages: 282
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.54h x 6.02w x 0.84d
ISBN: 9780299175009

Review Citation(s):
Multicultural Review 06/01/2004 pg. 67

About the Author

Tela Zasloff is the author of Saigon Dreaming: Recollections of Indochina Days. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.