The Collège Cévenol—later known as Le Collège-Lycée Cévenol International—was a unique and historic international secondary school located in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the département of Haute-Loire, France. It enrolled day students from the local area, along with a substantial body of regional, national, and international students from around the world who boarded at the school. The last President of its governing board (the AUCC) was Claude Le Vu; the last director was Patrick Sellier.
The Collège Cévenol was founded in 1938 by local Protestant activists and pacifists, and had been shaped from its beginnings by the area's long-standing traditions of resistance to political and religious oppression. From the beginning, the Collège promoted education linked to principles of nonviolence and the development of mutual understanding and solidarity in a socially and ethnically diverse society. The school's founders were also key organizers of the now-famous community effort, in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, to shelter and save Jewish refugees during the Second World War. Thus an important part of the school's early development was linked to this much discussed episode.
During its early years, from 1938 to 1971, the school was entirely private, and was associated with the Protestant Reformed Church of France, although it welcomed students regardless of their religious or non-religious orientation. From 1971 on, it was part of the French national education system and was secular. It was organized as an “établissement privé sous contrat d'association” (a private school associated by contract with the state), a category of French schools that are privately managed, but bound to the national system by contracts which provide basic funding and teacher's salaries, and require adherence to national curricula and other standards.
On February 9, 2014, President Andre Gast announced that the College would be closing its doors at the end of the school year, faced with mounting financial difficulties and declining enrollment.
“Cévenol” is an adjective meaning "of the Cévennes mountains," a nearby mountain range that is historically significant as a site of resistance for French Protestants. Le Chambon and the Collège are not located in the Cévennes themselves, but just to the north, on the high Plateau Vivarais-Lignon. The "Cévenol" reference in the school's name is thus cultural and historical rather than literal, situating the school's founding within the long heritage of French Protestant (Huguenot) resistance to persecution after the Reformation, for example during the Camisard wars of the early eighteenth century. The peasant fighters called “Camisards” who struggled against the French crown were also known as “Cévenols” after the rugged, mountainous terrain that facilitated the small group's ability to resist the much larger forces arrayed against them. In the 1930s, this long-standing regional tradition of resistance and hospitality to refugees became essential to the school's beginnings.
In May 1938, at a regional synod of the French église réformée (the Reformed Church of France, historically the primary Protestant council in France), pastor André Trocmé, then assigned to the Protestant church in Le Chambon, proposed the creation of a new secondary school. His proposal envisioned a school that would address four goals:
Working with Edouard Theis, another local pastor, the school's first classes were held in September 1938. On its first day, the school had four teachers and 18 students, and met in a room in the Protestant “Temple” or church of Le Chambon.
Because of its relatively remote and protected location in Le Chambon, and because it was founded by the same pastors who became the leaders of local efforts to save refugees from Nazi occupation forces and the French Vichy regime that collaborated with them, the Cévenol school played an integral role in the now-famous efforts of the local citizenry in hiding and protecting several thousand Jewish refugees, including many children, throughout the war.
By the late 1930s, Le Chambon had become the site of several “pensions” or boarding-houses that lodged children drawn from refugee camps in the south of France for victims of the Spanish Civil War. The first pension, organized by Trocmé, was Les Grillons (Crickets), followed by several more, mostly funded by major international relief organizations. More refugees from the German occupation soon followed, including many Jewish children who were lodged and hidden among the others. During the course of the war, Le Chambon's remote location made it attractive for other children from more war-torn areas of France as well, and the student body (including Jewish children being hidden in Le Chambon) grew rapidly, from 40 students in 1939 to 150 in 1940, 250 in 1941, 300 in 1942, and 350 to the end of the war.
In this situation, André and Magda Trocmé, along with Edouard and Mildred Theis served as both teachers at the Cévenol school and leaders of the town's collective effort to protect the refugees. In recognition of their courage and leadership, they, along with Roland Leenhardt (a future director of the school who was then a pastor in the neighboring village of Tence) and the people of Le Chambon, were later honored as “Righteous among the Nations” (sometimes translated as “Righteous Gentiles”), a secular award given by the State of Israel to distinguish non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis. Le Chambon was, in fact, the first community to be recognized in this manner by Yad Vashem.
At the end of the war in 1945, a Collège Cévenol Association (now the AUCC or Association Unifiée du Collège Cévenol) was founded. In 1952 Carl and Florence Sangree, two Americans then associated with the school, founded the AFCC, The American Friends of the Collège Cévenol. A 16-hectare farm at the edge of Le Chambon was acquired as the site for a new campus. The American Association helped raise funds (from the Quaker American Friends Service Committee, among others) and organized work-camps at which the school's teachers and students, along with other volunteers, passed the summers living in large tents while they built the present school with their own hands, from clearing roads and digging trenches for pipes, to building a classroom building, dormitories, and fields for sports. For decades, the original stone farmhouse, called Luquet, housed a makeshift gym, library, refectory, and offices; the refectory is still housed there today. The first dormitories were prefabricated wooden chalets donated by friends of the school in Sweden. The “Batisco” or Batiment Scolaire (the main classroom building used today) was opened in 1953; the science labs in 1957; and a new, relatively comfortable girl's dormitory (Milflor) in 1959.
In its first decades especially, the Collège developed a collective culture distinct from that of other secondary schools. It was a co-educational school from the beginning; male and female students were mixed together in a manner that was relatively rare in French schools, and especially in French boarding schools. The school was open in both a material and an educational sense: it had no walls or gates, and students were encouraged and expected to govern themselves to a significant extent. The school's pacifist and activist origins, its summer work-camps, remote location, and somewhat spartan living conditions for boarding students, encouraged a situation in which teachers and students lived, ate, and worked together in the same modest setting, relatively isolated from the aggressively consumerist and mediatic culture of the early Cold War.
Through the 1960s, students and teachers together developed a community that, within the limits imposed by the school's Protestant orientation, emphasized tolerance and independence vis-à-vis dominant ways of thinking. Activities that were relatively rare for the period, such as a student-run assembly, radio station, and magazine, were initiated during these years. Notable teachers during this early period included the philosopher Paul Ricoeur and the writer and nonviolence activist Lanza del Vasto, one of the principal western followers of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Notable students from the early years include Alexander Grothendieck, one of the key mathematicians of the twentieth century and a dedicated anti-war activist who had escaped the camps as a child refugee in Le Chambon during the war, and Delphine Seyrig, an actress and activist now remembered for her roles in a series of important films in the 1960s and 1970s.
After 1971 the school became part of the French national education system and its culture gradually changed as the generation of organizers and activists formed during the extraordinary conditions of World War II resistance culture faded away. Primarily because it has never charged high tuition and has never aimed to become an exclusive school for the wealthy, the Collège Cévenol has never been financially independent and relies on state funding to survive. After growing to an enrollment of about 500 during the 1980s and 1990s, the school encountered financial difficulties and its enrollment returned to around 300 after 1997. Since that time, the school has gradually improved its funding and seeks to renew its unique history and culture in the conditions of the 21st century.
The recent actualities have been marked by the murder of Agnès Marin by Matthieu Moulinas, both being pupils here.
In its last terms the Collège enrolled students from about 30 different nations each year, working in classes from the Quatrième (the equivalent of 9th grade in the US) to Terminale (the 13th and final or "terminal" year in the French primary-secondary system, during which students prepare for the Baccalauréat examination). It continued to play a role in the local hosting and relief of refugees from conflicts in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
The school maintained partnerships and exchange agreements with several other secondary schools oriented toward international education:
The school's governing board was the Association Unifiée du Collège Cévenol (AUCC). Its meetings assemble representatives of alumni organizations and several French and international Protestant relief organizations. An Association des Anciens du Collège Cévenol (AACC) now provides organization for meetings and fundraising among alumni in France and Europe, beginning with a 70th Anniversary weekend held in Chambon in May 2009. The APCC (Association des Parents du CC) provided information and networking for parents of enrolled students.
The American Friends, a non-profit organization founded in 1952, unites alumni and friends of the Collège from all of the phases of the school's history. It contributed to the school by organizing an annual fundraising drive among the school's US alumni and by continuing the tradition of the summer work camps that went back to the school's earliest years. The work camps were three-week summer sessions organized for high school and college-age students who experienced the atmosphere of Le Chambon and the Collège during the very pleasant summer season in the mountains, worked at community service projects and basic maintenance or repair tasks at the school, and improved their French-language skills.
The French Wikipedia article on the Collège Cévenol provides French-language links to articles on many of these individuals:
Collège Cévenol official website (in French): https://web.archive.org/web/20030830015045/http://www.lecevenol.org/ (information for applications, enrollment, calendar, etc.)
American Friends of the Collège Cévenol (in English): https://web.archive.org/web/20070122143709/http://www.cevenolfriends.org/(information on summer workcamp program)
French Alumni site for the history of the Collège (in French): http://collegecevenol.pasteur.ch/ (information on meetings; reminiscences, photos, etc.)
The Collège Cévenol Forever (in French) : http://www.collegecevenol.org/ (information on present and future of College)
Historical scholarship
Boismorand, Pierre, ed. Magda et André Trocmé: Figures de résistances. Texts selected and edited par Pierre Boismorand. Preface by Lucien Lazare. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2008. (A French-language collection of excerpts from the writings of Magda and André Trocmé)
Bolle, Pierre, ed. Le Plateau Vivarais-Lignon: Accueil et Résistance, 1939-1944. Actes du Colloque du Chambon-sur-Lignon. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon: Société de l'Histoire de la Montagne, 1992.
Debiève, Roger. Mémoires meurtries, mémoire trahie: Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1995.
Draper, Allison Stark Pastor Andre Trocme: Spiritual Leader Le Chambon (Holocaust Biographies), Rosen Pub Group; 1st edition (September 2001)
Flaud, Annik & Gérard Bollon, préface de Simone Veil. "Paroles de Réfugiés, Paroles de Justes." Le Cheylard : Editions Dolmazon, 2009.
Fox, Deborah. "Magda Trocmé: A Mother Responds, "Hineni!" 24.3 (2006), 90–99.
Hallie, Philip. Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.
Hatzfeld, Olivier. Le Collège Cévenol a Cinquante Ans. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon: Collège Cévenol, 1989.
Henry, Patrick (Patrick Gerard). "Banishing the Coercion of Despair: Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the Holocaust Today." Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 20.2 (2002), 69–84.
Lecomte, Fracois and Trocme, Jacques, I Will Never Be Fourteen Years Old: Le Chambon-sur-Lignon & My Second Life, Beach Lloyd Publishers, LLC; first edition (July 1, 2009)
McIntyre, Michael. "Altruism, Collective Action, and Rationality: The Case of Le Chambon." Polity 27.4 (1995), 537–557.
Paldiel, Mordecai. The Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust. Hoboken: KTAV Publishing, 1993.
Rochat, François and André Modigliani. "The Ordinary Quality of Resistance: from Milgram's Laboratory to the Village of Le Chambon." Journal of Social Issues 51.3 (1995), 195–210.
Ruelle, Karen Gray and Desaix, Deborah Durland Hidden on the Mountain: Stories of Children Sheltered from the Nazis in Le Chambon Holiday House; First Edition (February 1, 2007)
Sauvage, Pierre, with Magda Trocmé, Philip Hallie, Hans Solomon, Hanne Liebmann, Rudy Appel. "Le Chambon." In Carol Rittner and Sondra Myers, eds., The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (New York: New York University Press, 1986), 99–121.
Unsworth, Richard P.A Portrait of Pacifists: Le Chambon, the Holocaust and the Lives of Andre and Magda Trocme (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust, Peter I. Rose (Foreword) Syracuse University Press, March 15, 2012
Fiction, memoir, and young adult books
Boegner, Philippe. Ici on a aimé les Juifs. Paris: J. C. Lattès, 1982. (A memoir-novel).
DeSaix, Deborah Durland and Karen Gray Ruelle. Hidden on the Mountain: Stories of Children Sheltered from the Nazis in Le Chambon. New York: Holiday House, 2007. (Stories of Chambon hidden children, with many historical photographs).
Lecomte, François. I Will Never Be Fourteen Years Old: Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and My Second Life. Tr. Jacques Trocmé. Wayne PA: Beach Lloyd Publishers, 2009. (Memoir).
Lecomte, François. "Jamais je n'aurai quatorze ans." Paris : Le Manuscrit / Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, 2005.
Matas, Carol. Greater Than Angels. New York: Simon Pulse / Simon & Schuster, 1999. (Young Adult Fiction).
Films
Barnett, Barbara P. and Eileen M. Angelini. La France divisée. Rosemont PA: The Agnes Irwin School Holocaust Project, 2002. 36 minutes.
Gardner, Robert. The Courage to Care. US: United Way Productions, 1985. 29 minutes. (Oscar-nominated in “short documentary” category, 1985).
Lorenzi, Jean-Louis. Le Chambon: La Colline aux Mille Enfants / The Hill of the Thousand Children. King Movies / Cameras Continentales, France 2, France 3 and others, 1994. 118 minutes. (Made-for-Television fictionalized feature film; International Emmy Award, Drama Category, 1996).
Maous, Thierry and Silvia Salamon. La banalité du bien / The Banality of Good. Zoulou Compagnie. 30 minutes. Documentary film; first broadcast 30 October 2011.
Sauvage, Pierre. Weapons of the Spirit / Les armes de l'esprit. (Documentary Film). US/France: Chambon Foundation, 1987. 90 minutes. (Aired in the US by PBS; Los Angeles Film Critics Association Special Award, 1987).Also available in 35-minute version.
Vella, Pierre. Le Cévenol. (Documentary Film). France: France 3 Télévision, 2010. 30 minutes. First Broadcast 25 April 2010.