Thanks to one German who broke the rules…
They are being displayed to the public for the first time in Mont Valérien, a 19th century fort outside Paris, France, where the Nazis executed more than 1,000 resistance fighters and hostages during the Second World War – the largest number in one site in France.
The Nazis arrested Resistance members and “hostages” – mainly Communists or Jews arrested in reprisal for the death of German soldiers – and sentenced them to death in military tribunals. The convicted were then driven by military lorries to the isolated fort, west of Paris. They were kept in a chapel, and some of their scrawled final messages on the walls with their name, date of death and “Vive la France” have just been restored.
“They took them here, as they could kill them quietly and discreetly, without fear of rescue attempts” said Chloe Théault, from France’s war veterans office who works at Mont Valérien.
Photograph Clemens Rüter
The men – for all women were sent to Germany and decapitated so as not to enrage the local population – were attached to five wooden poles in a clearing, blindfolded and shot by a group of 60 fusiliers. The firing squad was large so that no German knew who he had shot. One random gun always carried blanks.
Despite the huge numbers shot, no photographs existed of these executions, due to Nazi fears they would be used for propaganda purposes. One German broke the rules, however. Clemens Rüter, a non-commissioned officer tasked with providing a motorcycle escort to the convicts hid in the bushes on February 21, 1941 and took three snaps of an execution with his Minox camera.
Read more here.
Categories: Miscellaneous
Tags: French Resistance, Nazis, WWII