“These are the people, sometimes insignificant in appearance, their courage, their efforts, who have always changed things». The sentence of Doris Lessing in Exerue sets the tone of the book. Unable to study in his country because of racial laws, Margit is sent by his family to Paris. She meets a Czechoslovak Jew, the wife; He will then be interned in a labor camp for foreigners in the south. Hunted by the Nazis, the Parisian neighbors encourage pregnant women to go to the southern zone. On the train, a passenger pretends a tuberculosis cough thus detering the gendarmes from checking the papers. An owner praises him accommodation without declaring it foreign, women prepare a cradle with the means at her, a doctor saves his sick baby, a gendarme decides to bypass the roundup orders. In the village of Mirabelle, acts of civil resistance multiplied around Marguerite, her new first name. Pastor Roger Chapal also preaches in pulpit: “If a foreigner comes to stay in your country, you will like it as yourself. Thus speaks the Lord Lord», Remarks abundantly relayed in the Protestant community. An echo to the famous letter from Pastor Boener to Pétain of August 42 registered in filigree in the story: “The Council of the Protestant Federation calls for your high authority so that entirely different methods are introduced in the treatment of Jewish foreigners, Christians or not of religion. »
What makes the salt of this romanticized testimony is the way Véronique Mougin plunged into psychology, the motivations of people; Each chapter is devoted to one of them, to his saving gesture. This book draws up composite portraits, creates a mosaic of views, acts of humanity. “”Tiny lives leave traces“Specifies the writer in an incise where she specifies her approach. Based on local archives, photos, history books, meetings, she imagines the character, her appearance, her thoughts, to grasp “a soul layer, a ray of being that would continue to vibrate». Women often have the beautiful share, honoring this female resistance less known than the top fellows. Thus the town hall secretary who prepares illegal papers, the social worker who obstinately opposes the commander, the shoe merchant who brings to the maquisards hidden messages in her bun.
With this poignant account in tribute to the courage of the anonymous, it remains to hope that this village of Mirabelle and surroundings, receive, like the Chambon-sur-Lignon, the medal of the righteous among the nations.
Isabelle Wagner
-Véronique Mougin, About a forgotten village, Flammarion, 2025, 192 p., 20 €
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