France War

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a small village of scattered houses high in the mountains of the Ardèche. Surrounded by pastures and thick forests of oak and pine, the plateau Vivarais lies in one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of Eastern France. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of the area saved thousands wanted by the Gestapo: resisters, freemasons, communists, downed Allied airmen, and above all Jews. Many of these were children and babies whose parents had been deported to the death camps in Poland.

El 14 de junio de 1940, Alemania había conquistado Francia. Hitler, ebrio de felicidad, no podía creer lo alcanzado. Había conquistado la mitad de Europa en tiempo récord. Sin embargo, la II Guerra Mundial tomaría en el futuro, un nuevo curso. En las secretas calles de la ciudad, se organizaba, secreta, una gran resistencia. Muy pronto el Reich sabría de lo que son capaces.

On January 24, 1943, 230 women were placed in four cattle trucks on a train in Compiegne, in Northeastern France, and the doors bolted shut for the journey to Auschwitz. They were members of the French Resistance, ranging in age from teenagers to the elderly, women who before the war had been doctors, farmers' wives, secretaries, biochemists, schoolgirls. With immense courage they had taken up arms against a brutal occupying force; now their friendship would give them strength as they experienced unimaginable horrors.