French War Graves Maillé

Maillé cemetery contains several (family) graves of the victims of the 1944 SS massacre.

On the morning of 25 August 1944, the village was surrounded by German troops. A group of SS entered the village and murdered all the people and animals they encountered and set fire to their houses. The village was almost completely destroyed and a total of 124 out of 500 villagers died that day. 44 of them were children.

The reason for the massacre never became entirely clear but may have been related to the murder of 2 German officers by the resistance. After the Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre, this was the deadliest massacre of French civilians during the German occupation.

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Source

• Text: TracesOfWar
• Photos: Koos Winkelman