A town of 330 souls located on a plateau at an altitude of 1,000 meters. A small, somewhat austere mountain village called Vassieux-en-Vercors. Emmanuel Macron is expected this Tuesday in Drôme, more particularly in this village which became a symbol of resistance during the Second World War.
The President of the Republic, who will be the first head of state to visit the site, will make the trip on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Liberation. And will not fail to recall the rich history of the place.
What happened in 1944?
The town was completely destroyed. In July 1944, it was the scene of both intense fighting against the Resistance and the massacre “in odious conditions” of 72 villagers chosen at random by Wehrmacht soldiers.
German troops landed in gliders above the village, deciding to raze it in retaliation for the operations carried out by the Vercors resistance fighters.
“Several kilometers before arriving at the village, a stale smell of corpse hits us in the throat,” said resistance fighter Maurice Rouchy, whose testimony appears on the website from the resistance museum. On site, the man discovered “heaps of ruins”, farms “burned, destroyed, ransacked”, “poor peasant herds” and “animal corpses” “lying around”. “The spectacle of these shreds of flesh is horrible,” he describes. There are “poor old people lying next to each other”, “young people surprised in their sleep”, hanged villagers.
More generally, German troops left the Vercors massif “in a state of complete desolation” when they withdrew on August 12, underlines historian Gilles Vergnon.
Who will be celebrated?
The ceremony of homage to the maquisards which is planned there constitutes the second stage of the long memorial cycle initiated at the beginning of the month by the president on the Glières plateau, another decimated maquis, and at the Izieu house, where Jewish children were rounded up by the Gestapo.
It will take place at the village necropolis and in front of the martyrology, a bas-relief listing the names of the victims (civilians and resistance fighters) on the main square.
The events that took place in the village earned it one of the five communes elevated by General De Gaulle to the rank of Companion of the Liberation in the same way as Nantes, Grenoble, Paris and the Ile de Sein.
Why April 16?
If Mayor Thomas Ottenheimer welcomes the presidential visit, he admits to having been “a little surprised” by the choice of the date. In Vassieux, commemorations usually take place on July 21, the date corresponding to the start of the Wehrmacht attack against the Vercors maquis.
The date of April 16 corresponds to the arrival of dozens of French militiamen in the village, which they will “terrorize” for a week by setting up a court in a hotel, reports Gilles Vergnon. Three people will be executed.
“The event is known and recorded but has never been commemorated except locally. This is a first,” he emphasizes, describing the choice as “surprising”. And to put forward the following hypothesis: Emmanuel Macron would perhaps have wanted to “do what no one has ever done”, and talk about domestic politics by highlighting the theme of “division” between French people.
According to someone close to the president, the choice of the date was indeed deliberate: it was a matter of “taking the story as a whole. Remembering also means showing all the gray areas. We fully accept doing it like that,” he told AFP.