“In this affair there are many question marks…” This Wednesday, the prefect of Corrèze Etienne Desplanques, could not answer all the questions of the fifty journalists who had made the trip. They all came to attend the start of the exhumation site of 35 bodies of German soldiers and a Frenchwoman, who would have been executed in June 1944 in Meymac, in Corrèze, by French resistance fighters.
It is because the affair fascinates, well beyond the French borders, because it tells an unknown, and rather dark, side of the end of the Second World War and the actions of the Resistance from this month of June 1944. .
“We must treat this subject with a lot of responsibility and dignity, insists the prefect. Today, France has a legal obligation to return the remains of German soldiers who fell in France, and it is also a moral obligation. But we have to do it taking into account the families of resistance fighters here in Meymac, which means putting these elements in the context of June 1944.
Georadar campaign
The exhumation site, which started at the top of a hill a few kilometers from Meymac, on the Millevaches plateau, should last until August 27. Two diggers are busy for the moment making trenches, on a perimeter of 45 meters by ten, and a depth of 1m80. It was delimited following a georadar campaign carried out by the VDK, a German organization created after the First World War to find the German war dead, identify them and inform the families. This campaign made it possible to identify ” anomalies ” in the earth, without certainty, however, that they correspond to the presence of bodies.
This is why today we must dig. “We are carrying out a longitudinal stripping to have an exhaustive view of the whole site, based on these georadar points which have noted anomalies in the ground” explains Marine Meucci, archaeoanthropologist of the National Office of Combatants and war victims.
“We are waiting to find either bone remains or military artefacts [vêtements, plaques…], before starting a fine excavation, with classic archaeological methods, that is to say with dental tools, trowels and brushes. In the event that we find bodies, we will exhume them and then take them to the Aix-Marseille laboratory and carry out further anthropological analyses: age, sex, height, stature, injuries… All this information will help us identify the soldiers. »
“We are not on an archaeological excavation site, specifies for his part the prefect of Corrèze, but an exhumation site, which means protection of the dignity of the bodies. This is the reason why there will be no access to the site until August 27th. »
Eleven bodies exhumed in the late 1960s
How many German soldiers would be in this pit? Today, authorities expect to find 36 bodies, including 35 soldiers and a Frenchwoman. But it is in all 46 soldiers and a Frenchwoman who would have been executed on June 12, 1944, if we stick to the testimony of Edmond Réveil, now 98 years old. This former member of the local Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP) group, of communist allegiance, wished in 2019 to “relieve his conscience” by publicly evoking this execution, even if it was already known in certain Corrèze circles.
A first campaign of excavations carried out, under conditions which remain to be clarified, at the end of the 1960s, had indeed made it possible to exhume eleven of these bodies, seven of which had been identified. “There is an exhumation document, which dates from 1969, details the prefect Etienne Desplanques. It is a German document, and to date we have not found a French document, even if I dare not imagine that at the end of the 1960s, the Germans could have come here to carry out exhumations without the French authorities are aware. This document had made it possible to glean initial information on these soldiers, in particular that they came from a unit based in Tulle, made up of soldiers from different corps.
“A very heavy context” in June 1944
This execution ordered by the FFI (Forces Françaises de l’intérieur) in June 1944, intervened while the Das Reich division was going up France to reach Normandy, “with the watchword to demolish and frighten the French population,” recalls Xavier Kompa, director of the departmental service for combatants and war victims in Corrèze. “On June 9 in Tulle, 99 people were hanged from lampposts, and 101 died in deportation, on June 12 it was Oradour-sur-Glane, 640 dead, and on the same day in Ussel, 46 young FTPs were murdered. The context is therefore very heavy. »
Nevertheless, today, French and Germans want to offer these soldiers “a decent burial” which should be in a German cemetery in France, if they are indeed found.