Jewish Man Leaves $2.4 Million To French Village Who Hid His Family From Nazis

 

Nazi soldiers march through Paris, France, October 24, 1940

A Jewish man who fled Nazi-occupied Austria with his family during the Holocaust bequeathed a large part of his personal fortune to the French village whose residents saved his family members from the Nazis along with thousands of other Jews.

Eric Schwam, who passed away at the age of 90 in late December, instructed in his will to give about $2.4 million to the remote mountain village of Chambon-sur-Lignon in southeast France. Schwam did not leave behind any children and the sum was a large part of his fortune.

“It’s a large amount for the village,” Mayor Jean-Michel Eyraud told AFP.

Schwam and his extended family arrived in Chambon-sur-Lignon in 1943 and were hidden by the villagers, along with between 3,000 to 5,000 other Jews. Village residents were later recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem in Israel, one of only two locales collectively honored by Yad Hashem. (The other is Nieuwlande, in the Netherlands.)

The village residents, who have been primarily Huguenot or Protestant since the 17th century, had a history of sheltering those in need even before the Holocaust, including sheltering priests fleeing the French Revolution and Spanish Civil War refugees.

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