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Welcome to Tuesday, where global calls are issued for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, Navalny shows up in court and there s real-life drama at the French opera. Le Monde also goes to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky s hometown to report on the disillusions, two years into his term.
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Feb 2, 2021 An Austrian man has left a bequest to a French village as a gesture of gratitude decades after residents took in his family during World War Two.
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in south-east France, protected thousands of Jews and has a long-standing reputation for shielding people from persecution.
Eric Schwam, who died last month at 90, arrived there with his family in 1943.
The town s mayor says he left the village a large amount in his will, without confirming a figure.
But his mayoral predecessor told local media Mr Schwam had enquired with officials years ago and the total is thought to be about €2m (£1.7m; $2.4m).
French Village Receives $2.4M Decades After Hiding a Man From the Nazis
Tobias Carroll, provided by
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In 1943, Eric Schwam and several members of his family arrived in the French town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon from Austria, where they had been trying to avoid capture by the Nazis. Residents of the town took them in and hid them from a horrific fate. As
The Guardian notes in a recent article, they weren’t alone: Le Chambon-sur-Lignon gave shelter to around 2,500 Jewish people during World War II.
Schwam and his family stayed in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon until 1950, and he ended up marrying a woman from a nearby part of France. Schwam recently died at the age of 90, but he never forgot the town that kept him and his family safe; upon his death, he donated €2 million (or just over $2.4 million) to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. His one request, according to the article? That “the money be used for educational and youth initiatives, in particular scholarships.”