An Austrian man who fled the Nazis with his family during World War II has remembered in his will a French village whose residents hid them from persecution, reports RFI.
Eric Schwam died aged 90 on 25 December last year. His will contained a surprise gift for Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small town on a remote mountain plateau in southeast France.
"It's a large amount for the village," Mayor Jean-Michel Eyraud said, while declining to say exactly how much since the will is still being sorted out.
But the former mayor told local France3 website that she had met Schwam and his wife on two occasions to discuss the gift and that it was around 2 million euros.
Chambon-sur-Lignon has a large Protestant community, and during the Second World War it symbolised French protestantism's defence of victims of Nazism, hiding many Jewish children to protect them from deportation.
Schwam and his family arrived in the village in 1943 and were hidden in a school until the war ended.