The Plateau

the long version

During World War II, French villagers offered safe harbor to countless strangers - mostly children - as they fled for their lives. The same place offers refuge to migrants today. Why? In a remote pocket of Nazi-held France, ordinary people rescued hundreds, maybe thousands, of strangers fleeing the Holocaust, mostly Jewish children, at mortal risk to themselves. Was this a fluke of history, or something more? Certainties shaken by a decade of fieldwork in strife-torn places, anthopologist Maggie Paxson arrived on the Plateau to explore this phenomenon. What are the customs and traits that make a group choose selflessness? And what can we learn from them? In this beautiful, wind-blown place, Paxson discovers a tradition of offering refuge that not only dates back centuries but is also very much alive today, when global conflict has set millions adrift. It is the history of a distant relative, however, that provides the beacon for which she has been searching. Restless and idealistic, Daniel Trocmé had found a life of meaning and purpose--or it found him--sheltering a group of children on the Plateau, until the Holocaust came for him too. Paxson's journey into past and present turns up new answers, new questions, and a renewed faith in her own purpose, and the possibilities for us all. Riveting, multilayered, and intensely personal, *The Plateau* is a deeply inspiring journey into the central conundrum of our time.