Former Execution Range La Butte de la Maltière

In the commune of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande, in a place called "La Maltière", before the Second World War, on a military field, existed the shooting range where the recruits of the Foch barracks, in Rennes, were trained. The Germans transformed the firing range into a mound shape into a place of executions. Nearly seventy patriots, nearly all sentenced to death by the German military court, were shot there between September 1940 and July 1944.

The first executed, on September 17, 1940, was Marcel Brossier for cutting a cable of the occupying army. There was only one execution in 1941, that of Roger Barbé, carried out on October 4. During a week from December 15, 1942, 30 communist resistance fighters, including 2 women, appeared before the court of the Feldkommandantur 748. 25 "terrorists" were sentenced to death: for transporting explosives and weapons, sabotage of railways, pylons, cables and attacks on different collaborating organizations. Several were members of the Special Organization of communist conviction.
The sentence was carried out on December 30, 1942. They were shot in groups of two or three. They were buried in the cemetery of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande.

From January 1943 to February 1944, resistance fighters arrested and imprisoned in Rennes were usually transferred to Paris and shot at Mont-Valérien. From March 1944, executions resumed at La Maltière, where forty-seven resistance fighters were shot from March to July 1944.

The commemorative plaque, erected in December 2017, bears 76 names of gunmen on seventy-six aisle posts.

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Source

• Text: Fedor de Vries + TracesOfWar
• Photos: Matthijs ten Napel