The search for the mass grave of nearly 50 German soldiers has resumed using new tech after a French World War II resistance fighter broke his silence some 75 years after they were shot.
Almost 80 years after the killing of 47 German Wehrmacht soldiers who went on a final offensive for the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, the search for the soldiers’ remains has begun in Meymac, in the Correze department in France.
The Germans were housed in a barn and later led into a forest. There they had to dig their own graves and were all shot on 12th June 1944, shortly after D-Day.
The German War Graves Commission and French partner ONAC VG had said in August 2023 that after a fruitless search following a French resistance fighter breaking his silence, they would only continue the search if significant new leads came to light.
But now they have reportedly resumed their searches using new technology including a ground-penetrating radar.
The German Graves Commission said in a statement on 1st October: “In order to find the remains of the German soldiers who were shot near Meymac on 12th June 1944, the German War Graves Commission carried out a ground-penetrating radar survey for soil analysis at the end of June 2023, followed by excavation work in mid-August 2023.
“Neither measure brought the desired success. Only artefacts such as cartridge cases and coins from that time were found at the sites examined.”
The statement continued: “Further archive research since summer 2023 has not yielded any new findings. A flight over the area by a drone equipped with ‘LIDAR’ sensors in January 2024 also produced no results.
“However, it did confirm the existence of an old now-vanished path in the area, which had already been suspected during the georadar surveys in 2023.”
The experts also said: “After analysing the only two witness statements from the partial exhumations carried out by the Volksbund in the late 1960s – 11 exhumed bodies out of 47 suspected -it was found that there are still unanswered questions concerning two parcels adjacent to the already surveyed areas. However, these witness statements remain vague as to the exact location of the graves.”
A wooded hill is now being further investigated, with soil being excavated using georadar and heavy machinery.
Thomas Schock, head of the Volksbund Reburial Service, stated: “We need to keep working. Only the earth knows the truth.”
According to Meymac’s mayor, Philippe Brugere, the goal now is to exhume the remains of the forgotten German soldiers and “return them to Germany, but above all, if possible, to their families.”
