Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed

Content Warning: This section discusses antisemitism, the Holocaust, war and violence, death by suicide, and death from a car accident.

Hallie shares the responses of several readers just after the book’s publication. He places the book’s events in the context of the conflict of World War II, in which he was a US soldier and played a part in the Allied victory. This book is the story of a small village that worked together to rescue hundreds of children, but the light in that message does not counteract the darkness of the Holocaust.

The first response to Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed was a letter from a reader who argued that because Le Chambon was a small place and not strategically important, the story was unnecessary to the broader discussion of the war. Hallie was deeply affected by this letter and questioned whether he should have written the book. Then, he received a letter from a teenage girl who grew increasingly despondent after studying the Holocaust. Her parents gave her Hallie’s book, and she could see the hope of humanity even amid horror. At Hallie’s public reading of the book, a woman stood and said that Le Chambon saved her three daughters during the war.