The Sound of Wooden Shoes

Vicki Chelf, Artist, Writer, & Producer

In France, there is something called a vide-grenier—literally, "empty the attic." Similar to an American garage sale, a vide-grenier brings together dozens of vendors in one place, creating a lively community market. As an artist, I love wandering through them in search of unusual objects for my still-life paintings, as well as beautiful and useful treasures for our home. A weekend spent exploring les vide-greniers and the brocantes (antique and secondhand shops) is a weekend well spent.

One item we see again and again is the humble wooden shoe. Today, they are sold as charming decorations—used as planters or hung on walls filled with dried flowers. But recently, I came across a pair unlike any I had seen before. They were handmade, with leather uppers and laces that transformed simple wooden clogs into sturdy boots.

Immediately, I was transported to the opening lines of our Virginia Hall vignette in Women of Resistance:

"Great excitement! It looks quite possible to have some butter! Everything revolves first around your stomach, and second around the inability to buy some shoes. Do you hear that sound? It's wooden shoes on the pavement. It's all we had for the duration of the war. It was the background noise of every city and village."

Virginia Hall, unlike many of the women featured in our production, never wrote an autobiography. Yet historians have documented the extraordinary life of the woman whom the notorious "Butcher of Lyon," Klaus Barbie, reportedly considered the Allies' most dangerous spy. Those opening words are attributed to Hall and offer a glimpse into the everyday hardships of life in occupied France.

Virginia risked her life for years. When the Gestapo closed in, she escaped by crossing the snow-covered Pyrenees on foot. And I mean that literally—she had only one foot. After losing her left leg below the knee in a hunting accident, she made the grueling, two-day journey over the mountains on a wooden prosthetic, covering nearly 50 miles at an altitude of more than 7,000 feet. It was an astonishing feat of endurance and determination.

Hall was known for being disciplined, resourceful, and remarkably self-contained. Yet among the few personal remarks attributed to her are simple expressions of delight at the possibility of finding butter—or a comfortable pair of shoes. Those small pleasures remind us just how much ordinary people sacrificed during the war.

Standing there at the vide-grenier, holding those old wooden shoes, I found myself thinking of Virginia. I imagined the constant clatter of wooden soles on stone streets, the discomfort they represented, and the scarcity that made even butter a cause for celebration. Suddenly, these weren't quaint decorative objects. They were tangible reminders of lives lived under extraordinary hardship.

My thoughts then turned to the people living in war-torn regions around the world today. Their circumstances are different, but the uncertainty, loss, and daily struggle are all too familiar.

Am I as brave as Virginia Hall? No. Few people are.

But her story reminds me that courage takes many forms. While most of us will never be called upon to perform acts of extraordinary heroism, each of us can choose kindness, compassion, and gratitude. Sometimes, making the world a better place begins simply by appreciating the abundance we so often take for granted.

By Vicki Chelf