Faith in Action: Madeleine Barot and La CIMADE’s Humanitarian Resistance, 1939–45

Abstract This article examines Madeleine Barot’s leadership of La CIMADE (Comité Inter- Mouvements Auprès des Evacués) during World War Two, demonstrating how faith- based humanitarian resistance could effectively combine theological conviction with practical action. Drawing on newly available archival materials, oral histories, and recent scholarship, it argues that Barot’s emphasis on “practical ecumenism” – the collaboration of different faiths in addressing urgent human needs –proved crucial to both La CIMADE ’s wartime success and its enduring influence on humanitarian work. Under Barot’s leadership, La CIMADE evolved from a Protestant refugee aid organization into an ecumenical network that saved over 500 Jewish children while establishing patterns of interfaith cooperation that would prove vital to postwar reconciliation efforts. This study makes three primary contributions to the historiography of wartime resistance and humanitarian aid: it demonstrates the effectiveness of interfaith collaboration in crisis response, challenges prevailing narratives about religious responses to the Holocaust, and illuminates the origins of postwar Franco-German reconciliation initiatives. Barot’s innovative approach to humanitarian resistance, combining local engagement with international networking and documentation with direct assistance, provides valuable lessons for contemporary crisis response.