Maillé massacre

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The maillé massacre is on 25 August 1944 by German soldiers at the civilian population south of the 30 kilometers from Tours nearby French community Maillé in Indre-et-Loire perpetrated war crimes .

The massacre was carried out in retaliation for an attack by French resistance forces on two military vehicles the night before. The soldiers killed 124 of the approximately 500 residents of the village, including 43 children up to the age of 12. Then the place was shot at with grenades and destroyed. After the Oradour massacre, the Maillé massacre is considered to be the most serious war crime committed by German troops in France.

As early as 1952, Gustav Schlueter , a German reserve lieutenant, was sentenced to death in Bordeaux in absentia for aiding and abetting intentional homicide. He was never caught or extradited and died in Hamburg in 1965 . It is believed possible that he led the action, but could not be proven. In addition, it has not yet been possible to clarify which troops were used to carry out the act. It was probably the "field replacement battalion" of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division stationed nearby . After Schlüter's conviction, the massacre fell into oblivion. It was rediscovered when the United Nations (UN) released files on war criminals in 1987. The central office in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for the processing of National Socialist mass crimes , located at the Dortmund public prosecutor's office , was commissioned with the investigation, but came to no results and discontinued the investigations in 1991.

After French historians and the media resumed research into the massacre, the case was reopened in 2004. French authorities questioned over 50 contemporary witnesses and in July 2008 investigators from the central office of the Dortmund public prosecutor's office headed by public prosecutor Ulrich Maaß went to the town near Tours on the Loire for a week to find residents who had survived the atrocity. He also looked in French archives for clues to those responsible. The perpetrators of the massacre had been identified by a German historian before the proceedings began. Three suspects were identified, two of whom had already died. The fate of the third party could not be determined. The Dortmund public prosecutor then announced on January 16, 2017 that the investigation had been discontinued.

On August 25, 2008, Nicolas Sarkozy was the first French President to commemorate the massacre by inaugurating a small memorial . According to his own statements, Sarkozy wanted to send a sign of reparation 64 years after the event. "France has made a moral mistake by being indifferent to the pain of the survivors and having the memory of the victims erased from its memory," said the president.

On January 4, 2018, a memorial stone in honor of the perpetrators with the inscription "In honor of the fallen of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division - Drauf, Dran und durch" was discovered in a field in Bitcher Land. The author is said to be a right-wing extremist known to the police from Püttlingen , who has had to answer to the court in Sarreguemines since February 24, 2020. On March 25, 2020, he was sentenced to nine months suspended prison sentence.

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  1. ↑ The names of the victims on the memorial stone
  2. ↑ wdr.de: World War One Massacre remains unpunished, from January 17, 2017 ( Memento from October 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Die Welt January 16, 2017: War crimes - Dortmund prosecutor closes the Maillé file, retrieval March 13, 2017.
  4. ↑ cf. AP : Sarkozy commemorates the Nazi massacre in France at pr-inside.com, August 25, 2008 (accessed on August 26, 2008)
  5. ^ Message from the SR from January 4, 2018, " Nazi Memorial in Bitcher Land " (accessed on February 24, 2020)
  6. ^ Nazi memorial stone erected: Nine months in prison for Püttlinger, " [1] " (accessed on May 18, 2020)