Robert Hébras, the last witness to the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre, died at the age of 97

He was the last witness to the tragedy of June 10, 1944, in Oradour-sur-Glane (Haute-Vienne). Robert Hébras died on Saturday February 11 at the age of 97, his family announced. the mayor of the town as well as the National Association of the Families of the Martyrs of Oradour-sur-Glane, in a press release posted on Facebook. He “died this morning at 6:15 a.m. at the Saint-Junien Hospital Center (Haute-Vienne) surrounded by his relatives”they wrote, saluting “a transmitter of memory, craftsman of peace and reconciliation”.

DLast of the six survivors of the massacre in which 643 inhabitants perished, murdered by the Nazis, Robert Hébras had spent his life testifying, intervening in schools or with French and foreign delegations, as France 3 Nouvelle-Aquitaine relates. “It is essential to testify”he confided to franceinfo in June 2022.

That same year he had handed over the work of memory to his granddaughter, Agathe.

He was made Commander of the National Order of Merit in 2022.

The death of this latest witness comes on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the verdict in the massacre trial. Robert Hébras, who was soon to be 19 when, on June 10, 1944, the SS of the Das Reich division massacred the inhabitants of the commune of Haute-Vienne, leaving only six survivors.

After many years of wallowing in silence, Robert Hébras had testified for the first time at the massacre trial, organized in Bordeaux. “I did what I had to do”, said this former mechanic, to whom Emmanuel Macron had presented the insignia of Commander of the National Order of Merit in 2022. He had been also decorated with the Legion of Honor, then the German Order of Merit in 2012.