Albert Camus and André Chouraqui, August 1942

In August 1942, two young men arrived at the small train station of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, on the Vivarais-Lignon plateau — a Protestant region that would become the only French municipality honoured with the title “Righteous Among the Nations.” Their names were Albert Camus and André Chouraqui, and they already knew each other. Camus was twenty-nine and had just published The Stranger; Chouraqui was twenty-five and still torn between a legal career and Hebrew studies.

What brought them together: their roots in Oran, their youth, their commitment to the Resistance — Camus through the underground newspaper Combat, Chouraqui through the OSE (Organisation de secours aux enfants) and the rescue of hundreds of Jewish children. They also shared a passionate, spiritually charged relationship with the plateau’s landscape.

What separated them: the reasons for their exile. Camus was fleeing tuberculosis, seeking the plateau’s pure air; Chouraqui was fleeing anti-Jewish persecution after the expulsion of Jews from Clermont-Ferrand. Their experiences diverged sharply: Camus was bored, fished in the Lignon, and wrote The Plague in melancholic exile — “this country weighs on me,” he confided. Chouraqui, by contrast, lived there “the happiest and most fruitful years” of his life: engaged in civil resistance, surrounded by refugee Jewish intellectuals (Georges Vajda, Jules Isaac, Léon Poliakov), he began in Chaumargeais the translation work that would eventually lead to his Hebrew Bible.

A twist of history: their fates reversed after the war — Camus returning to Paris, Combat, and overflowing creativity, while Chouraqui suffered a psychotic episode upon discovering the camps.

Text read by Nathalie Heinich during the “march of remembrance” held on 10 August at Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.