French resistance fighter comes out about execution of German prisoners of war

Shortly after D-Day during World War II, French resistance fighters brought 47 captured German soldiers to a small wooden area in southwest central France. In the scorching heat, they forced the soldiers to dig their own graves, shot them one by one and buried the bodies, covering the remains with quicklime, according to a witness.

The story of the mass execution was hidden from the public for decades, a blemish on the heralded resistance movement, until the last surviving witness broke his silence in front of a few people – then revealed it to a global audience in interviews conducted over the past few days. published. .

“We were ashamed,” the witness, Edmond Réveil, who is now 98 and was part of the resistance group, told the French newspaper La Vie Corrézienne. “We knew we weren’t allowed to kill prisoners.”

French historians have confirmed the main thrust of his story, but his version of events could not be independently verified. His public statements have sent a shock wave through the Limousin, a rural area in central France that has long prided itself on its history of resistance during the war and paid a high price for it. German Nazi officers of the military branch of the SS, the Waffen SSkilled hundreds of civilians there in retaliation.

Mr Réveil, who could not be reached for comment, told the paper he had witnessed the killings but had not taken part. He first revealed the grim details in 2019 at a veterans meeting. The French and German authorities were informed and planned to exhume the bodies. But the news was largely kept secret.

“We knew it was a story that could cause reactions and controversy because it undermines the history of the resistance a bit,” said Philippe Brugère, the mayor of Meymac, where Mr. Réveil now lives and near the place of the murders. (The mayor himself had participated in the veterans meeting.)

“It was a taboo, a memory we didn’t want to talk about,” Mr Brugère said.

The French Resistance consisted of underground organizations that fought against the Nazi occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy regime and played a key role in the liberation of the country. In the Limousin, they attacked and sabotaged German troops, eventually liberating the area by the end of the summer of 1944.

After France was liberated, Mr. Réveil joined the regular French army and went to fight in Germany. He then became a railway worker, married and had several children.

The execution of German soldiers followed the liberation of the town of Tulle by French resistance groups after two days of intense fighting in June 1944. About 50 Germans were taken prisoner and handed over to the detachment of mr. Réveil, he said in a 2020 taped conversation with Mr. Brugère which was shared with The New York Times.

“We couldn’t keep them,” Mr. Réveil said of the prisoners, explaining that the resistance group did not have enough food and that it was difficult to properly guard so many prisoners at once.

Then, says Mr. Réveil in the recording, his detachment was ordered to kill the prisoners by the leadership of the French Liberation Army. But that remains uncertain, says Xavier Kompa, head of the local department of the National Veterans Office.

Mr Réveil said his group took the prisoners to forests near a hamlet called Le Vert and that its commander, codenamed Hannibal, asked for volunteers to carry out the killings. Mr Réveil said he and a few others refused.

Hannibal spoke to each prisoner before he or she was shot, Mr. Réveil said. “He cried like a child when it was time to shoot them because it’s not fun to shoot someone,” added Mr Réveil.

Among the prisoners was a Frenchwoman who allegedly collaborated with the Gestapo. “No one wanted to kill her, so they drew lots,” Mr Réveil said. “It smelled like blood.”

Mr Réveil said the group decided never to speak of the massacre. He told La Vie Corrézienne that not even his wife and children knew about it.

Mr. Brugère, the mayor, said all that was known was that a group of German soldiers had been captured and that “suddenly, poof”, the group had disappeared.

In 1967, 11 German bodies were exhumed at Le Vert, in what Mr. Brugère described as a discreet operation: no records were kept at the local level, few people heard of them, and excavations were halted for unclear reasons.

“We’ve put a lid on this memory again,” he said.

It took another half century and Mr. Réveil’s revelations before the case was reopened. Mr Brugère and Mr Kompa, from the National Veterans Office, said they had informed the French and German authorities. Further research was delayed due to the pandemic, but is expected to start again next month.

A team from the German War Graves Commission will use ground radar to locate the graves, the French defense ministry said. Should the search prove successful, it will be up to Germany to exhume and rebury the bodies.

The Limousin area is known for its active resistance movement with several thousand fighters. In response to the uprising in Tulle, which is located in the Limousin, a Waffen-SS unit hanged 99 civilians and sent 149 others to the Dachau concentration camp. The same SS unit was involved in the massacre of 643 residents in Oradour-sur-Glane, considered the worst Nazi atrocity in France.

It is unclear whether Mr Réveil will be affected by his revelations. The mayor said he was unaware of an investigation into a possible war crime and that while it “may legally be regarded as such”, he saw it as “an unfortunate, tragic act of war” given the circumstances.

In the recorded conversation, Mr. Réveil was asked why he had broken his silence. He said he wanted to make the history of the executions “official.”

“Everyone knows about it,” he said of the veterans group and officials, “but nobody talks about it.”