the revelations of a former resistance fighter on a massacre of German soldiers in Corrèze

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Video length: 2 min.

France 3

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A. Mikoczy, J. Perrier, R. du Rusquec, F. Bidault, E. Denanot, C. Maillard, P. Goldmann – France 3

France Televisions

A former resistant reveals having witnessed the massacre of German soldiers in Corrèze in 1944. Summary executions, which no one had spoken of until now.

A heavy secret haunts the village of Meymac (Corrèze) since 1944. Edmond Clock, 98, decided to speak while he could still do so. He is the last survivor of a network of resistance fighters who attacked the German army in Tulle (Corrèze) on June 8, 1944. They took 47 soldiers prisoner, and a Frenchwoman who worked for the Gestapo. After 70 km of walking, arrived at Meymac, they receive the order to execute them. “The captain in command was crying when he told them. He spoke to them one by one, because he was Alsatian, he spoke German very well”he recalls.

“It’s a historical truth”

A mass grave was dug in the forest. The bodies of German soldiers were hastily buried there. Limousin was then martyred by the SS Das Reich division, the one that fought the next day at Oradour-sur-Glane (Haute-Vienne). “The world needs to know what happened. It’s a historical truth”believes Edmond Réveil, before adding: “The event is not glorious, because we do not have the right to kill prisoners”. The city’s mayor discovered that 11 German bodies were exhumed in 1967, although there were no “no trace in the archives of the town hall”as confided by the current mayor, Philippe Brugère.


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