The Children of Chabannes

Some of the Holocaust's most remarkable heroes never fired a shot...

Though SCHINDLER'S LIST was a grim but grand recounting of a remarkable act of heroism in the face of unspeakable evil, we need to be reminded of how there were many stories just like it unfolding simultaneously, and that the smaller, unheralded tales of people responding to the better side of their nature to help others in peril, can engage the mind and touch the heart as profoundly as a thousand Hollywood reenactments.

Gossels and Wetherell have done an astonishing job of preserving the story of the children and their protectors for generations to come, but more importantly, to remind us that even the smallest act of kindness performed, has repercussions into the future that we can't even begin to realize. And what the people of Chabannes did for those children, who became the resilient and remarkable adults we see today in this film, was by no means insignificant, or any less heroic than the exploits of Oskar Schindler for not having been duly recognized, until now.

FOOTNOTE: You can try as you might to remain unaffected by this story, until Chabannes refugee Wolfgang "Wolfie" Blumenreich recounts his desperate ruse to stay alive at Auschwitz, and you realize with a dawning sense of awe and disbelief, that his story provided Spielberg with one of the most haunting images from SCHINDLER'S LIST: of a terrified, rail-thin young boy hiding in the unimaginable muck of a stool pit, to avoid being selected as fodder for the gas chambers.