LES S.S. NAZIS MASSACRENT LE CLERGE & LA POPULATION D'ASCQ LE 1er AVRIL 1944 - A rare and early publication about the massacre perpetrated by the Nazis on the Ascq population [France] on April 1, 1944, by Fernand Beurtheret. January, 1945. French.
The Ascq massacre is a horrific event in which 86 men were executed by the Waffen SS on April 1, 1944 in Ascq, France, towards the end of World War II. The 12th SS Panzer Hitlerjugend departed by train to Normandy in late March, 1944. On April 1, their train approached Gare d'Ascq, a junction where three railroads intersected, when a mysterious explosion blew up the line, causing two carriages to derail. The commander of the convoy, Walter Hawk, ordered the forces to search and arrest all the members of the houses who lived on either side of the track. A total of 86 men of all ages were massacred near the railway line, while another 16 were massacred in the village itself. Six other men were arrested and charged with burying the bomb after a Gestapo investigation, and were executed by a firing squad later.
Before us an early publication that came out about six months after the massacre on January 18, 1945, and details the events based on testimonies of people who saw for themselves both the explosion and the collective punishment - from the first shots the Germans fired indiscriminately at any civilian near the railroad, the first victims Nearby, the forced expulsion of the villagers from their homes to the horrific massacre, and also those who were tortured and shot in their homes inside. Names of many of the victims and the manner in which they were killed, the destruction of nearby homes and businesses, the Nazi hunt for civilians trying to escape the massacre and their execution in hiding places, and a detailed description of the massacre itself that took place near the railway tracks. At the end of the war, several SS men stood trial in the French military court in Lille. They were sentenced to death; Their sentence was later commuted to imprisonment. The last inmate Walter Hawk was released in July 1957. Hawk also initiated a similar massacre in Leskovich in May 1945.
A rare and early publication about a difficult event that has been somewhat forgotten in Holocaust literature. Does not appear in the National Library.
24 p. Stains. moderate condition.
