When Dan Preston decided to buy and restore a 140-year-old ruined château in the French countryside, the Hampshire chef knew he was in for a challenge.
But since finding out its history as a secret refuge for Jewish children in the Holocaust, bringing it back to life has become a labour of love.
Preston’s two-year challenge to restore Château de Chaumont, in Mainsat, in central France, features in the latest series of hit Channel 4 show Help! We Bought A Village.
In one very special episode, he comes face to face with a French Jew who owes his life to the château that was home to around 200 children hiding from the Nazis during the early years of the war.
Work in progress: Dan Preston at the château (Photo courtesy of 'Help! We Bought a Village')
“The most important part of the history is that it housed Jewish children that were escaping from the Holocaust,” says Preston.
“They were extracted to here and given a safe haven. There were 150 children at any one time.
“It does spur me on, it makes you feel like you’re doing something purposeful and worthwhile and leaving more of a legacy.”
The château, built in 1886 for an opera singer called Eugénie Bardet, was rented by children’s charity Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) from 1939.
The château in its heyday (Photo courtesy of 'Help! We Bought a Village')
OSE worked with the French resistance and Jewish children came from all over France to the house. They were then often moved on to other countries or parts of France where they would be safe from the clutches of the Nazis.
Some children stayed for a long time even though the house was within Vichy France. Among them was French actor and comedian Judka Herpstu, who is better known by his stage name Popeck.
Herpstu, who starred in Roman Polanski’s 2003 Holocaust film The Pianist, was a small child he was taken to the château by his parents, who then went into hiding (only his father survived the war).
In the programme, which airs this week, Preston meets Popeck, now 89 and one of the last survivors to have stayed at the château, at a theatre where he is performing.
Memories: Actor and comedian Popeck recalls his days as a child refugee at the Château de Charmont as he talks to Dan Preston (Photo courtesy of 'Help! We Bought a Village')
“The work of the OSE was to hide the children in homes, to keep them as far away from the danger as possible,” Popeck tells Preston.
“We slept two per bed. I remember that I already had the gift of making people laugh. I made my little friends laugh after the lights went out.”
Recalling the exterior – the château is hidden away in a forest and has huge grounds – he added: “The swimming pool in the summer, even if it was dirty we would get in the water.
“We would go into the deep end and we swam through critters, the snakes, oh my!”
Renowned concert promoter Bill Graham was another young Jew who spent part of his childhood at the château before he escaped to the United States.
Memoirist Fanny Ben-Ami wrote about her time there with 72 other children in a story that was turned into the film Le Voyage de Fanny.
“There we forgot the war,” she has said. “And what we always say, by day we were laughing and by night, crying.”
While villagers kept their secret – with teachers, other pupils and their parents never betraying them – a newly-installed village priest reported them to the Nazis in 1943.
It was only thanks to a tip-off from local police that the house was rapidly shuttered and the children staying there were hastily moved on.
After the war, the house was sold to a former associate of Coco Chanel.
It was destroyed when a fire ripped through it in February 1986, leaving only the external walls standing.
Preston bought it in 2022 and has been broadcasting his long struggle to bring it back to life on a YouTube channel called Escape to Rural France.
The series shows him putting the finishing touches to new floors and replacing the roof.
“I’m so glad I had the privilege to speak to someone and get his recollections of the château,” says Dan, who also talked to historians about the house’s history. He depends on contributions from his YouTube fans to continue the restoration. “To have someone in front of you that went through it adds a proper depth to the whole story. Those stories have given me that extra push to keep going.”
The new series of Help! We Bought a Village is on Channel 4 daily at 5pm
