Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed

Ethics philosopher and professor Philip Hallie focused much of his research on the nature of cruelty. That research led him to recognize a sense of becoming calloused and desensitized to the suffering of victims: “I was a monster […] who could look upon torture and death without a shudder, and who therefore looked upon life without a belief in its preciousness” (2). The story of Trocmé and Le Chambon cut through that callousness so that Hallie again saw the beauty and value in humanity and in life itself. His perspective as a philosopher of ethics, his personal relationship with World War II as an infantryman, and his identity as a Jew all informed his emotional and intellectual perspective on Le Chambon.

Although he wrote Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed largely as an outside observer and a collector of stories, at the beginning and end of the book, he places himself into the narrative. Especially in the last section, he uses his philosophy expertise to frame the story of Le Chambon, illuminating the concept of positive versus negative ethical action. In the Prelude and the Postscript, he shares his own emotional and physical struggles to highlight the universality of the story he felt compelled to tell.