A common propaganda tool of secularists is to de-Christianize famous historical figures or movements. Examples abound: the Founding Fathers were mostly atheists, Galileo was a religious freethinker, and all successful scientists between years 1600 to the present were above superstition. This is another, lesser known example of a Christian-inspired action that has been largely off the radar. This should not be a surprise; explicitly Christian efforts at social justice go as far back as the 1st century, when the nascent church spoke out against the common Roman practice of child abandonment and continued with the Temperance Movement, the Abolitionist Movement, and the Civil Rights Movement amongst others. The following is the beginning of an extensive article found in the Christian Science Monitor with a link offered at the end.

Chambon-Sur-Lignon, France - The mostly Protestant villagers of this tiny mountain plateau didn't talk about it at the time. Today, they still mostly don't talk about it.

But during World War II, in defiance of the Vichy and Nazi regimes, they hid some 4,000 Jews, many of them children. Ordinary French farmers and shopkeepers risked their lives to rescue Jews from the Holocaust in the largest communal effort of its kind in Europe. What they did has been largely ignored or forgotten in France, experts say.

Yet in Israel, Chambon is one of two European towns honored at Yad Vashem, the official Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Opposite a stone Protestant church in this French hamlet sits a plaque presented by Jews to "the righteous."

Source:

Marquand, Robert, "A Protestant town's 'conspiracy of good' in Vichy France", Christian Science Monitor, May 14th, AD 2008, located at http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0515/p01s01-woeu.html on June 7th, AD 2008.