The Children of Château de la Hille
Sebastian Steiger
Preface by Henry Massie
“Spellbinding...comparisons with Anne Frank’s diary are inevitable... an extraordinary chronicle.”
—Gilbert Kliman MD”
Published August 2017, paperback 372pp — ISBN 978-09847142-5-4) $18.95, order here
The Chåteau today.
The Château de La Hille is a stolid, forbidding manor that sits on a hillside shelf (hilla in old Norse) above the Lèze River in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains in the south of France. In the early 20th century it was abandoned. Then came World War II and it rang with the laughter of barefoot children in the summer and the clatter of their wooden clogs on cold, bare floors in winter. One hundred Jewish children found shelter there from the Nazis after their parents were sent to death camps.
ORDER NOW $18.95
The story of how young volunteers from the Swiss Red Cross—Aid to Children (Croix Rouge Suisse—Secours aux Enfants) took over the abandoned Château and gave a refuge to the children during the German occupation of France is not unknown. A few of the survivors have written their story as adults, as have some of the adults who protected the children. However the most detailed account of the children’s time at the Château de La Hille, by their school teacher Sebastian Steiger, The Children of Château de La Hille, has not been available in English until now.
Read the introduction and flick through an extract of the book below.
“Under the threat of death one hundred children were hidden at an abandoned château in Vichy France, it’s gate painted with the Swiss Red Cross. The cross was not enough to protect them from the SS nor the French melice. You can see the children’s faces in the photographs, hear their voices in their diaries, and feel the guiding voice of Sebastian Steiger who came from Switzerland as a young man to teach and try to keep them alive. ”