A GAELIC bible that belonged to a brave Scottish minister who helped save more than 2000 soldiers during the Second World War has been returned to his former church.
Rev Dr Donald Caskie, who was known as the Tartan Pimpernel, was leading the Scots Kirk in Paris when France was invaded in 1940.
He fled to Marseille where he helped British and Allied soldiers escape to Spain. He was eventually arrested and banished from the city, but he moved to Grenoble and continued to arrange for the escape of soldiers while a university chaplain.
Dr Caskie, who was born in Islay, was finally imprisoned by the Gestapo and sentenced to death, but the intervention of a German pastor saw the minster moved to a Prisoner of War camp instead.
After the war, he returned to the Scots Kirk near the Champs-Elysees in Paris and stayed until 1961.
His nephew Tom Caskie, 76, decided to gift his uncle’s bible to the Scots Kirk in Paris, which is creating a permanent exhibition in honour of the war hero.
Rev Jan Steyn, 56, the current minister in Paris, is delighted the bible had been gifted to the congregation.
“I gladly accepted it and, as the inscription in the front of the bible indicates, he acquired it while still in Paris,” he said.
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