The tragedy of the Guerry's wells designates the massacre of 36 Jews during the summer of 1944 in Savigny-en-Septaine in France. It is located at 47°02′07″N02°31′26″E / 47.03528°N 2.52389°E . [1]
Contents
The tragedy of the Guerry's wells designates the massacre of 36 Jews during the summer of 1944 in Savigny-en-Septaine in France. It is located at 47°02′07″N02°31′26″E / 47.03528°N 2.52389°E . [1]
On July 21, 1944, men from the French milice led by Joseph Lécussan, and the Gestapo arrested 70 Jewish refugees.[ where? ] Most of them were from Alsace-Lorraine, but had managed to hide in Saint-Amand-Montrond and its surroundings since autumn of 1939. They lived there for five years in relative safety. On a farm, 36 persons were thrown in three different wells along with some stones in order to crush them alive. The victims were men and women aged from 16 to 85. [2]
Only one man, Charles Krameisen, [3] managed to survive and to crawl back alive from the well. After the Liberation, his testimony allowed the site of the massacre and the bodies of the victims to be found, on October 18, 1944.
The event can be seen as an example among hundreds which bear witness to the atrocity of the Jewish genocide undertaken by the Nazis in France with the help of French militias. [4] [5]
One of those responsible for the massacre was Pierre Paoli, a French agent of the SD of Bourges, acting under the orders of Friedrich Merdsche; he was condemned to death and executed in 1946. [6]
In 1992, a monument to commemorate the atrocity was made by Georges Jeanclos, who himself had hidden for one year in a forest to escape the Gestapo. His uncle Pierre Jeankelowitsch (number 18) and aunt Fanny Jeankelowitsch (number 29 on the list) were amongst the victims of the tragedy of Guerry. [7]
In 2013, tributes to the victims were held with a commemoration. [8] [9]
On 10 June 1944, four days after D-Day, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Haute-Vienne in Nazi-occupied France was destroyed when 643 civilians, including non-combatant men, women, and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company as collective punishment for Resistance activity in the area including the capture and subsequent execution of a close friend of Waffen-SS Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe, who an informant incorrectly claimed had been burned alive in front of an audience. Kämpfe was a commander in the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich.
Étienne Aignan was a French translator, political writer, librettist and playwright. In 1814 he was made a member of the Académie française, succeeding Bernardin de Saint-Pierre in Seat 27. He died on 21 June 1824 aged 51 years old.
The National Front for an Independent France, better known simply as National Front was a World War II French Resistance movement created to unite all of the resistance organizations together to fight the Nazi occupation forces and Vichy France under Marshall Pétain.
The Agency for French Education Abroad, or Agency for French Teaching Abroad,, is a national public agency under the administration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France that assures the quality of schools teaching the French national curriculum outside France. The AEFE has 495 schools in its worldwide network, with French as the primary language of instruction in most schools.
André Neher was a French Jewish scholar and philosopher.
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in 1969.
François-Thomas-Marie de Baculard d'Arnaud was a French writer, playwright, poet and novelist. His series of novellas Les Épreuves du sentiment inspired Bellini's opera Adelson e Salvini.
Pierre Marie Jeanne Alexandre Thérèse Guiraud better known as Alexandre Guiraud was a French poet, dramatic author and novelist.
Montévrain is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France.
The Tulle massacre was the roundup and summary execution of civilians in the French town of Tulle by the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich in June 1944, three days after the D-Day landings in World War II.
Plumelec is a commune in the Morbihan department of the Brittany region, in north-western France.
Couvonges is a commune in the Meuse department in Grand Est in north-eastern France.
The Five Martyrs of the Lycée Buffon were five students from the Lycée Buffon shot by the Germans in Paris at the Stand de tir de Balard on 8 February 1943 for their activities with the French Resistance. Also, their families were taken hostage. Following the war, each of the students was posthumously awarded the Legion of Honour, the Croix de guerre 1939–1945 and the Resistance medal.
Montluc prison is a former prison located on rue Jeanne Hachette in the 3rd arrondissement of Lyon, France. It was known for being an internment, torture and killing place by the Gestapo during the occupation of France by the Nazis.
The Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation was an independent French organization founded by Isaac Schneersohn in 1943 in the town of Grenoble, France during the Second World War to preserve the evidence of Nazi war crimes for future generations. Upon the Liberation of France, the center was moved to Paris. In 2005 it fused with the Mémorial de la Shoah.
Pierre-Marie Paoli, also known as Lamote, was a French agent in the Gestapo. The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe.
Claude Rodier was a physicist, teacher and staff sergeant in the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (MUR), part of the French Resistance in Auvergne, France.
Christian Biet was a French professor of theatrical studies. His main work focused on the aesthetics of theatre.
Georges Jeanclos was a French sculptor, and ceramic artist working mostly with terracotta, but also bronze. He is known for his sculptures of human figures made of and covered with thin sheets of clay, some bearing Hebrew letters.
Elise-Claire Dubost, better known as Clara Knecht or sometimes Klara Knecht, was a French Alsatian secretary and translator, employed during World War II at the Gestapo headquarters in Tours during the German occupation in France. She is known to have carried out cruel and sadistic interrogations using torture on behalf of the Gestapo.