One of the photos unpublished until 2003 of a mass execution of French partisans of the Manouchian group, taken by an anti-Nazi NCO hiding in the bushes at Mount Valerien, Paris, February 21, 1944.
One of the photos unpublished until 2003 of a mass execution of French partisans of the Manouchian group, taken by an anti-Nazi NCO hiding in the bushes at Mount Valerien, Paris, February 21, 1944.
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I’m back!
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[Context in French](https://www.liberation.fr/societe/2009/12/11/mont-valerien-21-fevrier-1944_598543/)
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The German NCO’s name was Clemens Rüther and this is one of 3 photos of the executions. This is where 1,007 people, including 174 Jews were shot by the Nazis. Is probably a quarter of total executions in France during World War II.
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Translation:
The last moments of the Manouchian group, seized clandestinely by a German non-commissioned officer and unveiled Wednesday by Serge Klarsfeld, are the first images of a collective execution on the site of the fort.
For forty years, he treasured the negatives with himself without telling anyone. It was not until 1985, a few months before his death, that Clemens Rüther confided in a friend during a pilgrimage to Rome: on February 21, 1944, this non-commissioned officer of the German, Catholic and resolutely anti-Nazi, had sneaked photos of a collective execution on Mont Valérien, on the heights of Paris. Not just any: that of the Manouchian group, the resistance fighters – mostly foreigners – who appeared on the famous red poster plastered on the walls of the capital.
It is these three photos, taken with a Minox, that lawyer Serge Klarsfeld, the founder of the association of sons and daughters of Jewish deportees from France, unveiled in Paris on Wednesday. Completely unpublished photos: until today, there was no image of collective executions at Mont Valérien. It was here that 1,007 people, including 174 Jews, were shot by the Nazis. This is probably a quarter of the total number of executions in France during World War II.
To reach the office of Serge Klarsfeld, who for years has been working to identify all those shot at Mont Valérien, it has been a long journey. On the advice of his friend, Clemens Rüther decides to entrust his negatives to the German committee Franz Stock, named after a chaplain who once officiated at Mont Valérien. In 2003, he sent three photos to the Photographic Establishment of the Defense Archives (ECPAD), located at Fort d’Ivry (Val-de-Marne). There, we seem not to have perceived the scope of these documents, qualified as “reconstructions” . Recently informed of their existence, Klarsfeld, by cross-checking, managed to authenticate them. He established that these men who face the firing squad, blindfolded,
The lawyer, who does a titanic work of memory on the victims of the Holocaust, had already got his hands in the past on exceptional documents: photos of the Auschwitz extermination camp taken by the SS, the only known snapshot of the Vél d’Hiv under the Occupation. He decided to unveil these images a few days before the annual gathering in memory of those shot on Mount Valérien organized this Sunday, the anniversary of the first collective execution, on December 15, 1941, in which the Communist Gabriel Péri perished.
He also exempts from anonymity this German non-commissioned officer who, at his own risk, took these photos. Little is known about Clemens Rüther, except that he became bank manager after the war. Assigned in 1944 to the fort of Nogent-sur-Marne, he was in charge of the security of the German military court and supervised the trial of the Manouchian group. On February 21, he escorted those condemned to death to Mont Valérien. And decided to fix their execution on film. Like a silent act of resistance.
This guy has a nazi fetish
The founder of this partisan group Missak Manouchian was a genocide survivor.