Troupe Juda Maccabee de Moissac. Seigneur Ouvre mes Levres [“Lord Open my Lips,” Psalms 51:15.]

Specially composed book of prayers and meditative texts, including extracts from secular and non-Jewish sources for use by those children cared for after the war in the home run by the French-Jewish Scouts Movement (EIF). These children had been saved from deportation by the villagers of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a commune in the Haute-Loire department in south-central France. “From December 1940 to September 1944, the inhabitants of the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the villages on the surrounding plateau provided refuge for an estimated 3,000 Jews who were fleeing from the Vichy authorities and the Germans. They were mostly foreign-born Jews, who did not hold French citizenship - a majority of them were children. The history of Le Chambon and its environs influenced the conduct of its residents during the Vichy regime and under German occupation. As Huguenot Protestants, they had been persecuted in France by the Catholic authorities from the 16th to the 18th centuries and the collective memory of their own suffering as a religious minority created a strong suspicion of authoritarian governments. The village of Le Chambon and its neighboring villages offer an exceptional example of a collective rescue effort during the Holocaust.” (USHMM