1. Moorehead writes that Hanne’s mother, Ella, “had been a concert pianist.” (P. 36.) Hanne states that her mother had only done some concert singing. Moorehead’s response to the Times was that “her notes showed that Hanne Liebmann’s mother sang and played at concerts.” Hanne insists that her mother was never a concert pianist—and that she would never have said that she was.
2. Moorehead writes that on January 6, 1941, Ella wrote “to her brother in America,” adding that Hanne’s mother “reported that she…had been bartering what little she had for some cognac and eggs.” (Pp. 46-47.) Zeroing on yet another sample detail, the Times reported that “Hanne Liebmann accused Moorehead of “wrongly stating that her mother had bartered for cognac” in Gurs internment camp. The article then gave Moorehead’s side of the story: “the reference to cognac was in a letter.” But what Ella wrote on that day—not to her brother, who was in the camp as well, but to her brother-in-law—was that to get eggs or Cognac “would be impossible” and that even if they were available the prices “would be astronomical.” There is no reference to bartering. Hanne adds: “Cognac? In Gurs? Ridiculous!”
3. Hanne is indignant about Moorehead’s statement that the starving inmates in Gurs would eat "anything, including cats, dogs and rats." (P. 48.) Madeleine Barot and pastor André Dumas, who were relief workers in the camps, describe in my upcoming documentary short Three Righteous Christians how terrible the conditions were—but made no mention of any such extreme measures. Hanne points out: “There were no dogs in Gurs then, except one at one point. And nobody would eat rats!” (P. 48.) Moorehead’s response to the Times was that the reference to rats came from “memoirs and reports.”
4. Moorehead states that at Gurs, “paper was stuffed into the cracks between the planks [of the barracks] to reduce the “draught” (British spelling). (P. 38.) Hanne scoffed at this notion to the Times: “We didn’t even have paper for the latrines.” Moorehead’s response to the Times was that this detail too came from “memoirs and reports.”
Hanne points out that the photography business her mother took over upon her father’s death could hardly have “prospered” at the outset given the hyperinflation and depression of those times. (P. 36.)
It was not “once the Nazis came to power” that photographs became necessary for Jewish I.D. cards, but in 1938. (P. 36.)
It was not “once the Nazis came to power” that the names Sara or Israel had be added to Jewish identity date, but in 1938. (P. 36.)
The family’s photo studio was not ransacked on Kristallnacht; only their showcases on the street. (P. 36.)
It was not a policeman, “evidently somewhat embarrassed,” who told Hanne’s mother that Jews were going to be deported that same day, Oct. 22, 1940. It was a distant cousin her mother happened to meet on the street. (P. 36.)
The family’s “remaining set of Bohemian glass” that Hanne brought to a Gentile friend “for safe keeping” was not glass, but Moser Crystal, and it was a gift. (P. 36.)
The family’s luggage was not left on the station platform; it was at the camp entrance that the luggage had to be left behind. (P. 36.)
Hanne doesn’t recall seeing any “new babies” on the train, and points out that this was not a time when German Jews were going to have many babies (although there were a few babies in Gurs). To the best of Hanne’s knowledge, the youngest children on the train were around 2 years-old. (P. 37.)
“When the carriage doors were finally unlocked…” Hanne doesn’t remember the trains on which Jews were deported from Baden being either being “sealed or locked. In fact, she remembers a woman escaping from the train. (P. 35 & p. 37.)
Hanne was not aware that any people died on the train. (P. 37.)
To the best of Hanne’s knowledge, the oldest person on the train was around 98, not 104.
Moorehead refers to Gurs having “huts.” The word may have different connotations in Britain, but they are more commonly referred to in the U.S. as “barracks.” (P. 35.)
The photograph identified as “Gurs, 1941” is not of Gurs. (P. 37.)
Hanne remembers water towers, not watchtowers. (P. 38.)
The family had not “trudged the 15 kilometers” from the station to the camp; they were taken on open trucks. (P. 37.)
Hanne states that as bad as the conditions were, people did not lose their teeth. (P. 38.)
Moorehead says that Hanne’s mother read aloud to her aunt in Gurs. Hanne says that this indeed happened back in Germany, but not in the camp, where they had nothing to read. (p. 39.)
Hanne’s father died of pneumonia and possibly a heart attack, not of TB. (P. 53.)
It was not German soldiers who sang the antisemitic song referred to by Moorehead, but uniformed members of the Nazi Hitler Youth and the SA. Hanne was not standing on the balcony with friends. (P. 36)
Hanne’s aunt Berta was not buried in Gurs “near her mother.” Berta’s mother had died in Germany decades before. (P. 47.)
Hanne was taken out of Gurs by the OSE but was not “under the OSE protection” outside the camp. She was under the protection of the Secours Suisse. (P. 65.)
When Hanne sough to return to Gurs to see her mother, no one needed to instruct her to make her way to Oloron (actually Oloron-Sainte-Marie) or to look for OSE or Cimade female relief workers. (P. 65.)
Hanne did not sleep near Gurs in a nearby field, but found a room on a nearby farm. (P. 65.)
At the Oloron station looking for her mother, Hanne did not run frantically up and down the train. A French policeman did not stop her as she was running. She was leaning up against the wall of a depot when a policeman approached her. He did not give her a drink of water; he offered her an alcoholic drink, which she refused. But it was this policeman who looked for and found her mother. (P. 65.)
To the best of Hanne's knowledge, Madame de Félice did not rent the house to the Secours Suisse, but simply let them use it. (P. 101.)
The children at la Guespy were not all 14-18; Hanne remembers youngsters below the age of 14. (P. 101.)
It’s not that Hanne, at 17, was considered too old for school. It was she who decided not to go to school. (P. 101.)
Hanne was not “allowed to finish her education.” She never did. (P. 101.)
Hanne recalls what while the children all thought about their parents and other relatives, she did not “think obsessively about her mother,” which is “stretching things a bit.” (P. 102.)
While Auguste Bohny played the piano and the organ, he is especially remembered by the children as playing songs on his accordion. (P. 102)
Hanne never heard children crying at night. (P. 102)
Hanne never stole potatoes from the larder (there was barely anything there), but from the fields. (P. 103)
Hanne: “The children at Faïdoli never did the cooking, what an absurd idea.” (P. 236.)
When the police came to one of the children’s homes, is it not accurate that Auguste Bohny did not let them in. All of the children were interrogated separately by the gendarmes in Mr. Bohny's office. It was there, Hanne recalls, that he told them that we were under Swiss protection and could not arrest us. (P. 137.)
When the gendarmes subsequently came to look for the children, Hanne and a friend heard the conversation, which was not as described. Moorehead: “They listened as the gendarmes asked the farmer if he was absolutely certain that there were no Jews hidden on his property. ‘Jews?’ replied the farmer. ‘What do Jews look like? I hear they have big noises.’ After drinking glasses of red wine, the police left. Hanne: When asked if he was hiding anyone, the farmer answered no. Police: "Are you sure you are not hiding any Jews?" Farmer: "I am not hiding anyone and I do not know what Jews look like." Farmer: "May I offer you a glass of wine?" Police: "No thank you, I will be on my way." (P. 138.)
The train Hanne took to Lyon at the end was not full of German soldiers. (P. 223.)
The hotel where she spent the night in Annecy was run-down, but not a brothel. (P. 224.)
The account of Max Liebmann’s escape to Switzerland misses a key moment. Max realized that when a Swiss sergeant starting yelling at him what not to do, he was really telling him what to do and how to escape. He and another boy were the only ones willing to follow those instructions, successfully. (P. 223.)
Moorehead states that Max Liebmann’s escape to Switzerland took place “late one night just before Christmas 1942.” The Liebmanns state that this would have been impossible because of the snow, and that the escape took place in September. (P. 223.)
According to Hanne, Moorehead states that Max’s parents didn’t know that he reached Switzerland. In fact, both his parents knew, his father only being deported from France in 1944.
Max’s aunt’s name was Rosy, not Jeanne. His mother’s name was Jeanne. (P. 46.)

Moorehead claims that the French, at the beginning of the Cold War, used the story of Le Chambon “as a perfect weapon in the struggle to find meaning for the Vichy years, by minimizing collaborators and celebrating resisters.” (P. 9.) They certainly did the minimizing and the celebrating, but rescue continued to be downplayed—it underscored what could have been done—and what happened in Le Chambon remained barely known for several decades more. Thus, the notion that it was deemed then that “le [sic] Chambon could become [a symbol] of selfless morality” (p. 9) is completely groundless.

Moorehead refers to an obscure American pacifist publication called Peace News that reportedly published a story about Le Chambon in 1953. She writes that “In the wake of the Peace News story came eulogies, newspaper articles, memoirs, documentaries and films.” (P. 10.) Of course, documentaries are films—and this did not happen. The first significant attention to Le Chambon in France only came in 1979, when Jewish survivors from the area placed in the village a plaque expressing gratitude.

Moorehead writes that the plaque placed by Jews in the village “carried the names of 144 grateful Jews.” (P. 332) As anybody can see by looking up at the plaque, it bears no names of Jews.

Moorehead describes the plateau as “quietly basking in pleasure” at the presentation of the plaque.” (P. 332.) Anybody who has ever met any of the rescuers of the plateau knows that they didn’t bask in pleasure at public recognition; they squirmed.

Pastor Trocmé was hardly “half-French, half-German.” He was French, with a German mother. (P. 9.)

There were more than “half a dozen” villages in the area of Le Chambon. (P. 10.)

Moorehead refers to the existence of an unoccupied zone until late in 1943" (p. 317). It was in November 1942 that the Germans occupied the southern zone. (If this was merely a typo, it is preserved in the American edition.)

It was the Quakers (represented in France by Howard Kershner), rather than the Cimade, who first proposed to Vichy taking charge of some internees. (Madeleine Barot herself, the founder of the Cimade, recounts this in my upcoming documentary short Three Righteous Christians.)

Lesley Maber is referred to frequently in Moorehead’s account—but as Gladys Maber. Maber didn’t use that first name. Maber’s memoir of that time is referred to in Moorehead’s bibliography under its French title; presumably Moorehead did not have access to the original English version, Bundle of the Living (which is in the Chambon Foundation archives).

The Quaker activist Burns Chalmers is repeatedly referred to as “Burners Chalmer.”

The European Student Relief Fund is referred to under its French name, and the important work of Tracy Strong, Jr. in Le Chambon on behalf of the ESRF is not mentioned.

The Atlas brothers were 14 and not 16 when they came to Le Chambon (as Joseph Atlas indicates in Weapons of the Spirit)

Maj. Julius Schmähling was not a professor of history.

Maj. Schmähling did indeed “lay low” during the controversy Oscar Rosowsky sought to stir up (see blow); he was long dead.

In the U.K. edition, Oscar Rosowsky’s friends Louis de Juge and Roger Klimovitski are misidentified as “Louis de Jouge” and “Roger Limowitsky,” while Klimovitski’s false name was corrected from “Climand” to Climaud. Moorehead protagonist Oscar Rosowsky’s name in Le Chambon was not Plumme (miscorrected from the British edition, where it is Plume), but Plunne. These are virtually the only such corrections in the American edition; Rosowsky—whose role in all this will be explored further in this document—obviously has clout with Moorehead. (Perhaps it is because Rosowsky gave Moorehead these corrections over the phone that she managed to get Rosowsky’s false name wrong again.)

Oscar Rosowsky did not “hear about the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon” since that geographical designation is a recent one (first promoted by a local intercommunal organization). Most Jews who came to the area heard about Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

Vichy minister Georges Lamirand did not visit “the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon.” He visited Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

Lamirand’s earlier visit to Le Puy was not to have “included the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon,” and it is doubtful that it was to have included Le Chambon. That’s just what the prefect wrote.

Lamirand on his visit to Le Chambon did not wear a “splendid sparkling blue uniform, with a military cut.” According to Lesley Maber, who was there, he was wearing a tweed jacket and riding breeches (visible on photographs). The prefect’s uniform was blue.

When Lamirand finished his public remarks in Le Chambon, there was not “complete silence.” After Lamirand concluded with “Long live Marshal Pétain,” the silence was interrupted when a Salvation Army official, according to Lesley Maber, cried “Long live Jesus Christ!”

Trocmé is referred to as “holding surgeries” for his parishioners. Moorehead also refers elsewhere to a “rota” being established. These strictly British terms, incomprehensible to Americans, are preserved in the American edition.

The “Camp Jouvet” referred to was the camp Joubert.

“An ambitious officer called Coelle” was Ernst Coelle.

The Héritiers did not own the farm they lived in.

It is unlikely Madame Barraud’s husband complained about there being too many children in their pension; he was in a P.O.W. camp in Germany.

Le Chambon is not “the only village in the world to be honoured by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.” One Dutch village, Nieuwlande, has also been collectively honored. (P. 10.)

Daniel Trocmé, an important figure in the Le Chambon story, was not the pastor’s nephew but the pastor’s cousin.

Roger Darcissac is referred to as a pacifist. I don’t believe this is accurate.

Dr. Le Forestier in an important figure in the story of Le Chambon, and is mentioned repeatedly. But his first name, Roger, is never given.

Albert Schweitzer’s hospital, where Le Forestier had worked, was not in Cameroon but in Gabon.

“Côte de Molle” was not the name of a house Dr. Le Forestier rented in Le Chambon; it was the name of street where the house was located.

The several references to “Mme Roussel” never indicate her full name: Marguerite Roussel.

Moorehead writes that “the OSE made no move to close La Guespy [sic], L’Abric [sic] or Faïdoli”; these homes were run by the Secours Suisse, not the OSE.

The Resistance figure referred to twice as “Bob” was Raoul Le Boulicault, aka Bob.

Oscar Rosowsky is listed in the list of “rescuers” at the beginning, when there is also a separate listing for “Jewish rescuers”; he belongs in the latter list. The same is true for Émile Sèches.

Moorehead describes Joseph Bass’ significant role in what happened in and around Le Chambon—he was notably a leader of the Jewish resistance in the area—but includes him in her opening list of Righteous Among the Nations, not including him among “The Jewish rescuers,” where he belongs.

Virginia Hall is listed among “The rescuers” in Moorehead’s opening list. Rescue and armed resistance were two distinct activities, and Hall was an important figure only in the latter.

Though Ely Ben-Gal was born Pierre Bloch, he changed his name long ago; that is the name that should be used in referring to him today.

Moorehead refers more than once to “Darbyists and Protestants”—as if Darbyists weren’t Protestants!

Moorehead writes that in 1932, the Jewish organization OSE had made Paris its headquarters, and that its president was Albert Schweitzer. The OSE had not made Paris its headquarters in 1932, and Albert Schweitzer never was its president. Albert Einstein had been its honorary president previously, when the organization was still in Berlin.

In France, antisemites didn’t shout “Yoppin – Yid.” The antisemitic French term is youpin.

There are and were more than a half-dozen villages in the area of Le Chambon.

Le Chambon is not in the northern Cévennes, but on the edge of the Cévennes.

Panelier, not Le Panelier, was the name of the hamlet where Camus lived during the war, not the name of “a family hotel.”

There was no hospital in Le Chambon; the nearest one was in Saint-Agrève (where I was born).

Lindsley Noble is referred to as “Lindsey Noble.” He is identified as the Quaker delegate in France. While Noble did serve with American Friends Service Committee in France, the chief delegate then was Howard Kershner.

“A young OSE worked called Alice” who chose to be deported with her wards was Alice Salomon.

Monsieur Barbezat was Éric Barbezat.

Madame “Lavandes” was Antoinette Lavondès.

The man identified as “Dr. Freudenberg” was Dr. Adolf Freudenberg.

The woman identified as “Mlle Pont” was Lucie Pont.

Georges Garel is identified as a “Polish engineer.” He was a Jewish engineer from Russia.

Pierre Galland is misidentified as Pierre Gallant.

When the abbé Glasberg hid from the Nazis, he did not move “to Théas in the Tarn” but to a village in the Tarn-et-Garonne. There doesn’t appear to be a place called “Théas” in France; the confusion here seems to be with his fellow righteous Monsignor Théas.

The Barraud pension did not receive families from the Cimade (which had its own home in the area).

The Cimade’s Coteau fleuri was not “where children released from Gurs, Rivesaltes and Récébédou had been taken in and sent to school.” There doesn’t appear to have been unaccompanied children at the Coteau fleuri.

The pension Les Grillons did not have “children as well as adults.” It was a Quaker home for children.

There are many references to chestnuts and chestnut trees. According to Nelly Trocmé Hewett, there are no chestnut trees on the Plateau.

Rescuer Juliette Usach was not “very dark” and none of the children I met who remembered her described her as “slightly glowering.”

André-Jean Faure is correctly identified once, then misidentified as “Jean-Marie Faure.”

It was not in 1987, but in 1982 that I shot Weapons of the Spirit; this is not insignificant because many of the eyewitnesses who eluded Moorehead were then still around.

In the British edition, I am falsely acknowledged as having been among those “telling [her] their stories.” I never did so, and she never asked. (This is accurately omitted from the American edition.)

Moorehead refers to “Poles, Russians, Galicians and Romanians” coming to France after WWI. Did Galicia still exist as an entity? (P. 15)

Moorehead states that on Kristallnacht, Nazis threw books into the street “to be burnt on piles.” (P. 55.) Of course, the famous book-burning was in 1933. In 1938, prayer books in synagogues were burned, but is the scene described here an anachronism?

Moorehead states that foreign Jews in France were "the only Jews in Europe—other than those in Bulgaria—to be turned over to the Germans by a sovereign state." (P. 59). Croatia? Of course, Bulgaria did not turn over its own Jews. Indeed, the very opposite is true: Bulgarians were remarkably protective of their Jews, and the Jewish community essentially survived. The Bulgarian government did, however, turn over the Jews in the territories Germany had allowed it to annex.

Varian Fry is cited as the author of a 1999 work relating to the Fry rescue mission.

Varian Fry’s memoir of that cited in its 1999 French translation, not the 1945 American edition, Surrender on Demand (reissued since)

Author Marc-André Charguéraud is cited as Marc-André Charguéranel.

Only of three of Pierre Fayol’s books dealing with the area of Le Chambon is cited.

Author Jean-Michel Guiraud is cited as Jean-Michel Guirand.

Patrick Henry’s American We Only Know Men is cited only in its French translation.

Lesley Maber’s as yet unpublished memoir, Bundle of the Living, is cited under its French version, and attributed to G. L. Maber.

The only books cited for André Trocmé are his as yet unpublished memoir and a 1943 book to which he had merely contributed a short section. On the other hand, Trocmé’s 1943 collection of Christmas stories is not cited (an American translation, by Trocmé’s daughter, was published in 1998 as Angels and Donkeys: Tales for Christmas and Other Times. There is no mention of Trocmé’s important theological study, Jesus Christ and the Nonviolent Revolution, or of his unpublished Oser Croire.

AMERICAN EDITION—COVER PHOTOGRAPH: As I have already pointed out, the photograph on the cover of the American edition of the book, under the very title Village of Secrets, is not even of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon at all! Since topography is a significant part of the story, it is particularly deplorable that right from the readers’ first glance at the HarperCollins edition, they will be given an utterly false impression of her Village of Secrets. One of those secrets shouldn’t be what the village looks like! No information is provided in the book as to what the cover photograph represents, not even in the list of illustrations. The reader will learn only from me that the Le Chambon stand-in in the photograph is the tiny, picturesque village of Borée, population under 200, which is some 20 km. away from Le Chambon (the photograph is tightly cropped at the edges of the village so one can imagine that there is more of that village than there actually is). Yet photographs of the real Le Chambon-sur-Lignon are not difficult to come by!

BRITISH AND CANADIAN EDITION COVER PHOTOGRAPH: As for the (sadly) colorized photograph on the cover of the British and Canadian editions—it was, at least, taken in the real Le Chambon during the Nazi occupation. But I can’t help wondering if Moorehead knows for a fact that there are any "Jewish refugees" in that photograph, as her caption asserts. The photograph, incidentally, contrary to her caption, was taken in 1944, not in 1943.

A photograph is identified as “Internees at Gurs, 1941.” The photograph is not of Gurs.

BRITISH AND CANADIAN EDITION ONLY: The wrong person is identified as Lucie Ruel in a photo caption.

BRITISH AND CANADIAN EDITION ONLY: It is doubtful that there any “Jewish refugees” in the (colorized) cover photograph book, despite the caption’s assertion. The photograph, contrary to the caption, was taken in 1944, not in 1943.

BRITISH AND CANADIAN EDITION ONLY: Madeleine Dreyfus is identified as Secretary General of the O.S.E.; she never held this position.

SOME OF THE MISTAKES...

IS VILLAGE OF SECRETS INDEED "RIDDLED WITH ERRORS?"

ERRORS—THE TESTIMONY OF MAX AND HANNE LIEBMANN

ERRORS—THE TESTIMONY OF NELLY TROCMÉ HEWETT

ERRORS—LIST OF ADDITIONAL MISCELLANEOUS ERRORS

ERRORS—THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, THE BIBLIOGRAPHY, PHOTOGRAPH CAPTIONS, PROPER NAMES…