German specialists have found evidence of a mass grave in south-west France containing the remains of Wehrmacht soldiers who were shot there in 1944. The excavations should begin in the second half of August, the German War Graves Commission announced on Wednesday in Niesetal. “After the area investigations and evaluation of the georadar data, we have hopes of finding the mortal remains of the dead,” said Arne Schrader, head of the Graves Service department at the Volksbund.
The experts had examined an area of around 3,000 square meters since the end of June. Soil changes were discovered in an area of about 45 by 10 meters that could correspond to grave structures, it was said. To check this, French and German archaeologists and specialists wanted to carry out joint excavations there.
On June 12, 1944, French resistance fighters shot dead 46 Wehrmacht soldiers and a French woman suspected of collaboration near Meymac. This is a group of prisoners of war that the resistance fighters had brought from Tulle to Meymac.
The search near the town of Meymac was triggered by a report by the 98-year-old former resistance fighter Edmond Réveil from Meymac, who wanted to ease his conscience in the twilight of his life. He had recently reported publicly for the first time on the mass shooting of the captured German Wehrmacht soldiers. The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge provided a georadar for the search for the graves, which can detect changes in the ground at a depth of up to six meters.
At the end of the 1960s there had already been a first excavation in which the remains of eleven people were recovered. These excavations were not continued at the request of the then mayor. The specialists assume that the remains of 35 people can still be found. The identity of the missing soldiers has not yet been clarified.
According to Réveil’s account, the resistance fighters could neither care for nor release the prisoners for fear of reprisals. In nearby Tulle, where the Wehrmacht soldiers had been captured, SS soldiers in retaliation had hanged 99 civilians from lanterns and balconies on June 9. A day later, another SS unit in Oradour-sur-Glane, about a hundred kilometers away, wiped out almost an entire village community. There were 643 dead.
