They spoke the same language. They have grew up in the same villages. Some have even been to school together. However, this 1944, in a barn near demand, French people prepare to execute from other French people. The men on their knees are not soldiers Germans, they are militiamen, compatriots who tortured, denounced, kill other French people during 4 years.
Now they are crying, they they implore, they call upon their children, their mother, God himself. Facing them, the resistant remain unmoved. Not one muscle in their face does not move. These men who beg for their lives are the same ones who ignored the cries of their victim a few weeks more early. One of them, Joseph Torres, respected teacher became torsionary, personally oversaw the death of 15 resistance fighters, including a young woman aged 22 years old died under his blows.
But here is the paradox which tears consciences. An order has just arrived from London. De Gaul demands an end to executions. The resisters must choose, obey and let live their executioner or accomplish this which they consider to be justice. What happened in that barn reveals the hidden face of liberation when victims become judges, when pity has disappeared, when even the heroes are no longer entirely makes heroes.
Mand bells liberation rings. It’s August 25 1944. The last German convoys left the city at night, fleeing towards the north in front of the Allied advance. In the streets, residents come out carefully from their house. Some wave tricolor flags hidden for 4 years. Others remain suspicious, waiting to see who really controls the city.
But at three kilometers away, in a barn isolated near the hamlet of Chanac, the atmosphere is not festive. 23 men are sitting on the straw, the hands tied behind the back. They hear the bells in the distance and each bronze shot reminds them that for them liberation probably means death. These men are not Germans, they are French militiamen captured keeps watch during their escape attempt towards the north.
Among them, Joseph Torres, years old, adjusts his broken glasses while arrest. Teacher before war, he became head of hundreds of French militia. This political police created by Vichi in January 1943 to track down resistance fighters and the Jews. Torres observes his fellow prisoners. There is Paul Delmas, stuffy from his state, who joined the militia after his trade has declined. Marcel Bonnefo 19 years old, the youngest group who were trembling all over. François Renault, former policeman who still retains a certain presence despite his torn clothes.
All have in common that they have chosen the bad camp, but above all to have been more German masters in repression. The archives of defense historical service opened to the public in 2005 reveal the extent of the militia’s action in Lauser. Between January and August 1944, these men arrested more than 300 people. 87 were performed often after torture sessions in the cellars of the modern hotel transformed into headquarters of the militia.
What makes these crimes particularly odious. This is their intimate dimension. The militiamen knew their victims. They knew where their family, where their children went at school, what were their weak points. This proximity transformed the repression into something personal, visceral. When a German arrested a resistant, it was war. When a militiaman did it, it was a betrayal.
The personal diary of Raymond Dubrac, FFI leader of sector, discovered after his death in 2012, offers us a testimony live from these crucial hours. He writes “The morning of August 25: “My men want onfel blood”. They have recognized among the prisoners twisters of their comrades. How to maintain discipline when each Makisar has a personal reason to want the death of his traitors?
Outside, the resistance fighters stand guard. They are hard men, aged prematurely by 4 years of clandestinity. Many still bear traces of torture. Henricos has scars from burning on the arms. Memory of his passage in the hotel cellars modern. Pierre Malzac is hot since May. His left arm having been methodically broken during an interrogation. Jean Rouset box right leg having been crushed in a vice. His men look at the barn with cold hatred.
For them, the militiamen locked up there are not not prisoners of war. They are criminals, traitors, executioners. The Geneva Convention does not does not apply to them. They don’t deserve no pity. But the situation is more complex than there appears. A radio message has just arrived from London. The provisional government of the French Republic led by de Gaulle orders the cessation of any summary execution.
The collaborators must be judged by regular courts. The order causes consternation among the makizars. He asks us to be civilized with these grumpy barbarians resistant. Where were the courts when they shot us in the ditches? The tension rises. Some talk about disobeying orders, to put an end to the militia now before the regular army arrived and does not protect them.
It is in this context explosive that ak makes a decision that entered until his death. He goes hold a trial, not a real trial with lawyer and procedure, but a confrontation, the victims facing their executioner, the testimonies against denials, the truth against the lies. In the barn, Thor comes out from its inside pocket a photo wrinkled. His three children smiles at the camera. He contemplates her for a long time then puts it away.
He knows what that he is waiting for. In his personal notebooks seized during of his arrest, we find this sentence written the day before: “I am going die tomorrow, I deserved it, but my children will bear my shame all their life.” This consciousness of fault makes his case even worse disturbing. Thorres is not a monster without conscience. He is an educated, intelligent man who made an ideological choice and went for it held to the end, even when this choice transformed him into an executioner.
How does a respected teacher does it become a twister? This is the question which hovers over this barn, on this day, on all this dark period in the history of France. The trial begins 2 p.m. The militiamen are brought in one by one in the main part of the barn transformed into a court improvised. Boards on trôau serve as office. Au brac presides flanked by two deputies. In front of them, around thirty resistance fighters and civilians, all direct victims or indirect militia.
The first to appear is Paul Delmas, the stocky butcher, the bald head. He sweats profusely despite the coolness of the barn. Before same as Obrac don’t speak, a woman gets up in the audience. It’s Jeanne Martel, 52 years old, widowed for three month. He was the one who arrested my husband, she said in a voice strangely calm. May 15, my Robert wasn’t even resistant. He had just refused to sell black market meat for the militia.
Delmas tortured him for two days for nothing, for pleasure. Delmas tries to defend. Those were the orders. I was told that he was hiding weapons. His voice is acute. Panicked, I did my duty to French. The Communists were going to take power. A laugh bitter runs through the audience. Peter Malzac stands up, showing his stump. Your French homework, you have me held personally while he broke the arm. You laughed. You said that that would teach me to be smart.
The testimonies follow one another. Each accusation is more damning than the previous one. Delmas participated in 37 arrests. He supervised torture sessions. He has personally executed four resistance fighters in the hotel courtyard modern. The evidence is in his own reports meticulously written and signed. Comes then the turn of Marcel Bonneviens, the younger. He cries even before being questioned.
“I was only ten years old when I joined the militia,” he says. “My father forced me. He said it was that or the sto in Germany.” But again, the testimonies are relentless. Good faith was one of the cruelest during interrogations. His youth, far from being an excuse, seemed to exacerbate his violence. Mary Rousseau, 28 years old, tells in a voice broken. He punched me in the face while laughing. He said I was too pretty for one terrorist. He broke three of my teeth.
It was then that Joseph Torres is brought in. Its entry causes a heavy silence. Unlike to others, he stands straight, almost worthy. He adjusts his broken glasses and looks at the audience without a trace. Obrac speaks. Joseph Torres, you are accused of having oversaw the torture and execution of fifteen resistance fighters, for having organized the deportation of 23 Jews and having led the retaliatory operations against civilian populations. Torres neither nor anything.
His response stunned the audience. I acknowledge all the facts. I have acted in accordance with my beliefs. I thought he would save France from communism. I was wrong but I was sincere. This sincerity in horror triggers fury. Henricos jumps: “Sincerely, you tortured Marie to death Duran, a 22-year-old year old. She was a teacher like you.”
Thor palite at this name. For the first time, its facade is cracking. “Marie Duran”, he whispers. “She, she doesn’t have never spoken. Three days interrogation, she didn’t give any names.” There is almost respect in his voice, which makes the even more scene unsustainable. Father Bernard, homonier underground of the resistance, then takes speech. He is a 60 year old man face marked by the tests.
“I gave the last sacraments to Marie Duran. She told me ‘My father, forgive them, but I can’t. God me forgive me but I can’t.'” The hours pass, 23 militiamen parade. Everyone tries to justify themselves. Orders, fear, the ideology, the pressure, the threats. But in front of them, the victims and their loved ones remain inflexible. 4 years of suffering have killed in them all capacity to compassion.
Torres’s notebooks read at high voice reveal the magnitude of collaboration. Lists of names, roundup plans, interrogation techniques learned Germans and improved with a French touch. The teacher cultivated noted everything with precision manic, including the screams of his victims, described as resistance gradually decreasing or psychological collapse reached. Versite hours, Obrac suspends the session.
The militiamen are brought back in their corner of the barn. The resistance members meet to deliberate. The debate is heated. Some want shoot them all immediately. Others, a minority, plead to wait for the arrival of the regular army and a real court. A real court explodes Makisard with lawyers paid for the defend, with judges who have never known the torture. They will get away with a few years in prison.
The the most moving testimony comes of a 16-year-old teenager, André Blanc. His father was executed by Thores, his mother raped by the militia before being deported. “I want just know why,” he said looking at Toress. “Why so many cruelty? We were your neighbors, your compatriots.” Torres looks at him at length before answering because you were the enemy within, no more dangerous than the Germans. They would leave one day, you stay.
Night falls on Chanac. In the barn, the kerosene lamps cast dancing shadows on the walls. The militiamen are grouped in their corner. Some pray, others stare into space. Joseph Torres writes on a piece of paper with a pencil. that was granted to him. These are his last wishes. One message for his children that he will never see again. Outside, the resistance are still deliberating.
The debate took a unexpected twist when a messenger arrived from Mend with a new directive from London. The provisional government insists: “No performance without judgment regular.” De Gaul wants to show the world that liberated France is a rule of law, not a land of revenge. Raymond Obrac is torn. He wrote in his diary that night: how do I explain to my men that they must spare those who do not have them spared. How do I tell them that justice must take precedence over revenge when revenge seems to be the only possible justice?
It is then that an event occurs which will change everything. A new witness arrives, it is Louis Tores, 68 years old, the father of Joseph. The old man, vowed by age and grief, asks to speak to the resistant. Its presence causes a discomfort. He is a respected man, veteran of the Great War, decorated in Verdin. “My son is a monster,” he said in a broken voice. “I did not come to plead for life. I came to tell you that I understand your hatred. He dishonored our name, our family.” It marks a pause, tears streaming down her cheeks wrinkles. “But I ask you one thing, let me talk to him one last time times, father to son, before you only do what you need to do.”
The request divides the resistance. Some see it as a maneuver. Others are touched by the dignity of old man. At the point, slice granted, you have ten minutes. The meeting between father and son is poignant. They are alone in a corner of the barn, but their voice carries in silence. “Why Joseph? Why did you do that? Ask for it father.” The son’s response is barely audible. “I thought I was doing the right thing, Dad. I thought I was protecting France that you taught me to love.”
“France that I taught you to love Don’t torture your children,” replies the old man man. Then more gently, your mother died of shame. She doesn’t have put up with what you have become. This revelation breaks something in Joseph Torres. For the first time since his arrest, he has collapsed. The sobs of a man who realizes the magnitude of what he destroyed. not only his victims, but his own family, his own honor.
The scene has an unexpected effect on the resistance fighters. See this militiaman crying does not cause satisfaction hoped for. Jean Rousset murmurs: “Even monsters have pairs.” It’s a humanization that he did not want, which complicates their thirst for revenge. But it is Henricos who revive the debate. My brother had a father too. He was 16 when Toress tortured him to death. Where were the tears of Toret at that moment?
At night advances, the resistance fighters vote. 17 death sentences, six to labor forced. The sentence for the younger and those whose crimes are less serious if such a distinction can exist. Marcel Bonnefoie does part of the spared, his youth playing ultimately in his favor despite his cruelty. Arac announces the sentences to 2 a.m.
Those sentenced to death react differently. Some fall apart, others stay stoic. Paul Delmas yells: “You you don’t have the right. I want a real trial. A lawyer.” François Renault, the former gendarme, just nods the head. “This is the law of retaliation. I understand.” Joseph Torres requests a favor. May I finish my letter to my children? Aurac accepts.
Thores writes for an hour covering three pages in his tight teacher writing. This letter kept in the national archives is a document upsetting. He doesn’t look for it of excuses. Don’t ask for sorry. He simply writes: “My children, your father did things terrible in believing they are doing good. Don’t be ashamed to bear my name, but promise me you’ll never hate in the name of an idea.”
Preparations execution begins. 17 posts are erected in the adjacent field. The resistants clean the back sestoi their weapons. Some volunteers for the peloton, others refuse. “I killed Germans in combat,” said one of them. “But shooting French people attached to poles, even traitors, it’s beyond my control strengths.” Father Bernard is called to the last rites. Several condemned refuse. “God has abandoned me for a long time,” said Delmas.
But Thor accepts. His confession to priests will last 40 minutes. The father Bernard will say later “I heard many confessions in my life. This one entered me as far as my dead.” Dawn is approaching. In a few hours, ten men will die. French people killed by French in the name of justice or revenge depending on your point of view. In the barn, the silence is total. Each is alone with his conscience. executioner as victim, all prisoners of this French tragedy.
Marcel good once curled up in his corner, constantly whispers: “I just 19 years old. I’m only 19.” As if age could erase his crimes, as if youth were a absolution. 6 a.m., August 26 1944, the sky is pale in the east. The 17 condemned are brought towards the posts. their footsteps Christ on the gravel. Some walk alone, others must be supported. Paul Delmas fainted and two resistance fighters drag him. François Renault marching in military step, last remnant of dignity of an elder policeman.
Joseph Torres asks not to be blindfolded. “I looked at my victims face to face,” he said. “I can look death in the face.” His request is accepted. The other condemned are attached to the post. One of them, a young 23 year old militiaman named Robert Fourt calls his mother. The sound of his voice broken makes even the most shivered hardened resistance fighters. Raymond Obrac reads the sentences. His voice carries through the still air of morning.
“For crimes against the population civil, torture, assassination and intelligence with the enemy. You are condemned to dead.” No proper military tribunal and form. No lawyer, no of appeal, expeditious justice or legal murder. History will judge. The firing squad is set up. Two men, all volunteers, all having personally suffered from the militia. Henricos in fact part. His gun pointed at the man who killed his brother. Peter Malzac too, awkwardly holding his weapon with his only valid hand.
These men are not executioners natural. They are peasants, workers, traders transformed by vigilante war. It is then that comes a moment that will remain engraved in all memories. Joseph Torres asks to speak one last time. In a loud voice, he says: “French, we are going to die French. We betrayed, we wrong, but we die for our beliefs, even if they were bad. May our death serve as lesson. May never again French people don’t kill each other in the name of foreign ideology.”
These words cause a visible disorder in the platoon. One of the rifles lowers momentarily. The man who holds it, a resistance fighter named Claude Bertrand hesitates. His comrades look. The tension is palpable. Then Bertrand raises his weapon. The moment of doubt has passed. “In jou”, orders the brac. The guns are raised. In the silence, we can clearly hear Paul Delmas recite a “Hail Mary”. François Renault cry. Long live France without us knowing which France he invokes. Robert Fort engulfs himself always. Fire!
The salvo tears the air. Several condemned immediately collapse. Others remain standing. injured. The blows of grace are necessary. It’s on the brac himself who administers them. The marble face. Later he will write down “every bullet fired that morning took away a little of my soul. We have does justice. But at what cost?”
Joseph Torres takes a long time to die. Hit in the chest, he remains conscious several minutes. Father Bernard approaches defying protocol. The Thor’s last words as reported by the priest: “tell my children that I regrets.” It will never end his sentence. 7:15 a.m., it’s over. 17 bodies hang on the post. The silence is total. Even the birds seem to have fallen silent.
The resistance remain motionless as petrified by the magnitude of what they just did. Some don’t cry out of sadness for them dead, but of relief, of exhaustion. empty after so many hatred, the six militiamen spared are brought back to the barn. They heard the gunshots. Marcel good times is in shock. He keeps shaking. He will spend 8 years in prison. But this morning August 26, the entered until his death in 2003.
Bodies are detached and put in a false commune. No coffin, no ceremony, just a wooden cross where someone will engrave more late: “Here rests 17 French dead of the civil war.” Louis Torres, the father obtains authorization to recover his son’s body for a family funeral. When he takes the body in his arms, the old man collapses. “My son, my poor son”, he repeats. A resistance fighter approaches to help him. It’s Henricos, the one whose brother was killed by Joseph Torres.
The two men look at each other. No forgiveness, no reconciliation, just the mutual recognition of a shared pain. The report of Abrac on the executions sent to London and the conic. “Justice rendered according to the circumstances. 17. Execution. Order maintained.” de Gaulle, they say would have commented: “necessary but regrettable.” The formula summarizes all the ambiguity of these dark hours.
In Mand, the news of the executions divides the population. Some applaud, others murmur that it is the assassination. Families of militiamen do not dare claim the bodies. They will live with this shame for generations. The children of Joseph Torres will change his name, will move away from the tempting place to escape the ghosts of their father.
The resistance disperses during the day. Many do not will never see again. They return to their life before, but marked forever. Pierre Malzacra years later: “We are called heroes. But that morning I didn’t feel heroic. I felt that I became like them. And that is a victory they won, even dead.”
40 years later, in 1984, an American historian Robert Paxton arrives in Mend for his research on the Vichi France. He wants to understand the wild purification, these thousands of serious executions which marked the liberation. In the archives departmental, he comes across a file dusty. The trials minutes of the executions of August 26, 1944.
Paxton finds Raymond Obrac, then elderly 70 years old in his house retirement near Lyon. The old man agree to speak for the first time in detail about this day. “You know”, he said, staring at his wrinkled hands, “I never regretted for having ordered these executions, but I I could never forget it either. Every August 26, I see their faces again. Not the resistant ones they have killed. No, theirs is the price of revenge, even just. She marks you as much as those she hits.”
Marcel Bonneviens, one of the six spared, still lives free from the penal colony in 1952 he settled in the south, changed its name, became married, had children who are unaware everything about his past. Paxton the found. The sixty year old man who opens the door for him, nothing more cruel young militiaman. He is a hunched old man, eaten away by guilt.
“Not a day goes by without that I think about it,” trust in good faith. “I had 19 years old. I was a fool, a coward, a monster. But I was also a kid who was scared, who wanted impress adults. This is not an excuse. There is no of apology. But it’s the truth.” He comes out a Johnny letter. It’s a letter that he wrote to Henricos in 1980. 40 years after the fact, he asked forgiveness not to be forgiven but so that K knows that the monster who had participated in the death of his brother at least had the conscience of its monstrosity.
Kos never responded. Paxton finds also Henry Kos. At 75 years old, the former resistance fighter refuses categorically to talk about executions. “It was war. We did what we had to do. Item final.” But his wife confides to the historian that her husband still makes nightmares, which he sometimes wakes up in shouting “Fire!” In his sleep!
The children of Joseph Torres have redone their life under another name. The eldest is became a doctor as for redeem the lives his father took. He agrees to speak to Paxton under condition of anonymity. “My father was a monster, but he was also my father. How to reconcile the two? I passed my life trying to understand how the teacher who taught me to reading could become a twister. I I still don’t have the answer.”
He shows Paxton the last letter from his father, that written in the night before the execution. The pages are worn out from having been read and reread. “He doesn’t Don’t ask for forgiveness. He is not looking of excuses. He just says he loves us and that he hopes that we will do better than him. This is both insufficient and everything I have.”
In 1995, France commemorates the 50th anniversary of liberation. Fine, no ceremony for August 26. The official silence on the wild purge remains. But in the little cemetery of Chanac, someone leaves flowers on the false commune of militiamen. No name on the bouquet, just a word: “So that never again.”
The purge debate still divides historians. Some people talk about justice popular necessary, other regulation disguised accounts. The numbers vary between 9,000 and 10,000 executions summaries according to the best estimates reliable, France took 50 years to face this reality. What hits in the late testimonies, it is the absence of satisfaction among veterans resistant.
They had their revenge, but it did not appease them pain. Pierre Malzac, the resistance fighter Manchaud, expressed it thus shortly before his died in 1990: “We thought that by killing them, we would erase what they had from us stuffed, but it doesn’t work like that. The pain remains and the more we have to live with the weight of having killed.”
Father Bernard, the omonier resistant left behind memoirs published after his death. There writes “I saw men die this that morning. culprits, certainly, monsters maybe, but also men. And their last words was not different from those of their victim. They were calling their mother, prayed to God, cried. The death makes us all equal in terror.”
Today in Chanac, the false commune still exists. Weeds and brambles have invaded it. The wooden cross has rotted away, replaced by a simple stone where we can still read barely “civil war 1944”. No name, no specific date, as if even memory wanted to forget. But history refuses to die.
She resurfaces in the nightmares of the last witnesses, in the archives that we exume, in the questions of little children who want to understand. She us reminds us of this terrible truth. When a nation is torn apart, when brothers become enemies, there is no no winner, just survivors who must learn to live with their ghosts.
The militiamen begged, The resistance did not have pity. Who can judge them? We who do not have not known torture, betrayal, hatred that consumes everything. This story does not offer us the comfort of judgment simple moral. She leaves us with this question: in the same circumstances, what would we have done? And honesty requires us to admit that we don’t know, that we can’t know and it’s maybe so much the better.
