Weapons Of The Spirit: The Astonishing Story of a Unique Conspiracy Of Goodness

Weapons of the Spirit tells the extraordinary wartime story of Le Chambon, a tiny Protestant farming village in the mountains of France that defied the Nazi occupation and provided a safe haven throughout the war for thousands of Jews - many of them children.

One of those children was the infant Pierre Suvage, who grew up to chronicle the village's remarkable but little-known history.

Interweaving filmed interviews with striking and rare visual material, Weapons of the Spirit constitutes a memorable historical document.

But even more important, the film is a fable-like account of the triumph of good over evil. It is a joyful, moving, realistic celebration of humanity's capacity for good, a parable with applications for everyone, everyday.

Who were these villagers who daily risked their lives to help total strangers of another faith? Most of them were proud descendants of the Huguenots. The history of their own persecution at the hands of their countrymen was keen in their memory, as was the biblical admonition to love your neighbor as yourself.

"The responsibility of Christians," their pastor had reminded them the day after France surrendered to Nazi Germany, "is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on their consciences through the weapons of the spirit."

There were many other uncelebrated individual and collective acts of good will and righteousness throughout the dark war years. But nowhere else did a persistent and successful moral consensus develop on a scale approaching that exhibited at Le Chambon