A
company of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, trapped in a cowshed, surrendered
to the 2nd Infantry Regiment, SS 'Totenkopf' (Death's Head) Division
under the command of 28 year old SS Obersturmfuhrer Fritz Knoechlein.
Marched to a group of farm buildings, they were lined up in the meadow
along side the barn wall. When the 99 prisoners were in position,
two machine guns opened fire killing 97 of them. The bodies were then
buried in a mass grave on the farm property. Two managed to escape;
Privates Albert Pooley and William O'Callaghan emerged from the slaughter
wounded but alive. When the SS troops moved on, the two wounded soldiers
were discovered, after having hid in a pig-sty for three days and
nights, by Madame Castel of Le Paradis who then cared for them till
captured again by another Wehrmacht unit to spend the rest of the
war as a POW. In 1942, the bodies of those executed were exhumed by
the French authorities and reburied in the local churchyard now part
of the Le Paradis War Cemetery. After the war, the
massacre was investigated and Knoechlein was traced and arrested.
During the war he had been awarded three Knight's Crosses. Tried before
a War Crimes Court in Hamburg, he was found guilty and sentenced to
death by hanging, and on January 28, 1949, the sentence was carried
out. Married with four children, his wife attended the trial every
day.
A
memorial has been erected in the village commemorating the men who
were massacred.
IN
THIS VILLAGE ON MAY 27TH 1940
97 MEMBERS OF THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY
FORCE WERE MASSACRED
THIS MEMORIAL IS ERECTED BY THE DUNKIRK
VETERANS ASSOCIATION AND THEIR FRIENDS
TO COMMEMORATE THIS TRADEGY
AND ITS TWO SURVIVORS
DANS
CE VILLAGE LE 27 MAI 1940
97 MEMBRES DE L'EXPDITION DE L'ARMEE
BRITANNIQUE ONT ETE MASSACRES
CE MEMORIAL EST ERIGE POUR COMMEMORER
CETTE TRAGEDIE PAR L'ASSOCIATION DES VETERANS
DE DUNKERQUE, LEURS AMIS ET LES DEUX SURVIVANTS
