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Just after 20.00 hours in the evening of Monday, October 20th, 1941, the Feldkommandant of Nantes, Colonel Holtz, was shot and killed while walking in the Place de la Cathédrale. In accordance with Hitler’s rule of one hundred for one, notice was given in the next day’s edition of le Phare that fifty hostages would be executed on the 22nd, with a further fifty being summarily disposed of before midnight on the 23rd if the killers of Colonel Holtz were not handed over to the Security Police. Most of those selected to die by Vichy Minister of the Interior, Peucheu, were members of the French Communist Party, some were students who professed sympathy with the left, and a few were nonaligned academics whose removal could be masked by the dubious necessity of reprisal. Despite a substantial reward being offered, the gunmen were never arrested.
The records of the Chief of Security Police for Nantes reveal that all those shot in reprisal for the killing of Colonel Holtz were secretly buried in the graveyards of surrounding villages, no more than three victims to each to avoid creating a collective martyrs’ shrine.
Not all of them were dead. One was buried alive, only to be rescued from the horror by a local priest. But although his bullet-riddled body could be repaired and nursed back to health, nothing could be done for his twisted and insane mind, a mind that thirsted for bloody vengeance on those collaborators and SS killers who had played a part in the massacre.
The records of the Chief of Security Police for Nantes reveal that all those shot in reprisal for the killing of Colonel Holtz were secretly buried in the graveyards of surrounding villages, no more than three victims to each to avoid creating a collective martyrs’ shrine.
Not all of them were dead. One was buried alive, only to be rescued from the horror by a local priest. But although his bullet-riddled body could be repaired and nursed back to health, nothing could be done for his twisted and insane mind, a mind that thirsted for bloody vengeance on those collaborators and SS killers who had played a part in the massacre.
