The year after the Nazi’s overran Paris, Rose Valland began bookkeeping in the occupied capital. Her role wasn’t an official one. If the Nazi’s had known, they might have killed her. They certainly would have destroyed her catalog. But Valland risked her life and continued her record keeping.
She was recording all the art that the Nazi’s were confiscating from around occupied Europe. In Italy, Greece, France, and elsewhere, a Nazi-backed taskforce joined with the German SS and seized tens of thousands of works of art and confiscated or burned millions of books. What wasn’t destroyed they trucked to Paris, where they sifted through it and then packed it into train cars bound for Germany. The whole effort was well-orchestrated with typical German efficiency. Together, battalions of men conspired to pull off the greatest art heist the world had ever known. But for all its machine-like engineering, the regime couldn’t account for one Rose Valland.
In the recent film The Monuments Men, Rose Valland and her story were the inspiration for the character of Claire Simone played by Cate Blanchett. Simone is an unremarkable subject living in Paris during the Nazi occupation. She works in the Jeu de Paume Museum, where the Nazi’s store and sort their loot. 1941 gives way to 1942, and ’42 gives way to ’43. With each passing year, who knows if liberation will ever come?
Valland, despite her uncertainty about the future, carefully cataloged each piece, marking them with small stickers, mere specks of color. She kept this catalog, not knowing if it would ever be useful. Would it simply gather dust someday, or, worse, cost her her life? Would her Nazi oppressors confiscate and destroy all her work? Despite her uncertainties, Valland kept meticulous records. Not until James Granger, played by Matt Damon, shows up asking about the plundered art, does it appear that her risky bookkeeping might come to something.
But those years until he arrived.
Valland kept her records, but how would mere records ever protect the stolen art? She kept a catalog, but what could a catalog do? She had no idea that The Monuments Men would one day slip in behind enemy lines. She was one woman in a city occupied by arguably the most powerful military on the planet. She was one woman battling the Nazi machine. Yet for all that time before James Granger arrived, she kept working subversively, risking her life with no assurance it would be worth it.
In a similar way, Christians live in territory occupied by the Enemy. He and his demons work hard to ruin the image that God endowed in humanity. They attempt to cut us off from the hope we have. Human trafficking and slavery continue to be a lucrative international trade. Meanwhile, greed at the highest levels of business plunged us into a recession that rippled across the globe. The power of the Enemy seems overwhelming at times.
These seemingly hopeless circumstances can often paralyze Christians, and they can be tempted to abandon their meager endeavors—showing kindness to a bitter colleague or ministering haphazardly to a smattering of unthankful people. Will we see the fruits of our effort? Is our obedience to God doing any good at all? Christians, it seems, risk living good lives that may not accomplish anything.
But in fact, unlike Claire, Christians do have a sure hope. Every minor kindness is anchored to the Resurrection. That Sunday morning on the margins of an Empire is a history that establishes the future with certainty. Yet, many of us work—toil even—in jobs, relationships, or ministries that feel meaningless or unproductive. We struggle to keep hope. We don’t know if anyone will show up who could actually take our meager compassion and make it mean something. Will our inconsistent kindness bring any real healing? Will our erratic prayers amount to anything substantive?
Rose Valland’s very insignificance was her most valuable asset to the cause of The Monuments Men. For the Nazis, only power attracted their attention, and Valland had none. She was invisible to them. But her long days of quiet work planted the seeds. Others whom she did not yet know would come along and water them. Planted seeds, thousands of tiny deaths, quietly being raised up to new life. The fruit is in the seed, but only the seed that is scattered bears it. Only in the small deaths.
What Valland saw in Paris was the Nazi flag flying, high and sure, but what she believed in was something she could not see. A seed planted in the ground. In her small actions, she exemplified for Christians how to live faithfully in territory where the Enemy’s flag still flies.
