28 French civilians shot dead by german policemen SS Polizei Regiment 19

On one day before D-day at 8.15am, members of the French Resistance exploded a roadside mine by remote control just as a column of German military police were passing by. Eleven of the policemen were killed and some twenty were injured.

At Ugine, about thirty-five kilometres of Annecy, the enraged survivors of the police unit immediately set about grabbing all males walking along the streets or road and even those descending from a bus that had stopped and shot everyone of them, twenty-eight all told.

Nineteen were taken to the exact spot where the mine exploded and there executed, their bodies falling into the hole. The youngest of these hostages was 17, the oldest, a man of 68.

Next day, three apartment blocks, each of forty units, were blown sky high by the by police survivors depriving around 500 residents of all they possessed. By late evening the bodies of those shot were retrieved and placed side-by-side on the floor of the local garage to await proper burial next day. (One has cause to wonder what was gained militarily by attacking German soldiers knowing that such an act would result in heavy casualties in the civilian population)

Photo: the Galbert Barracks on the morning of the 19th. It was here that Armée Secrète fighter Georges Gautard found a pack of photos in the pocket of a surrendering German that later proved to have been taken at Ugine and show the aftermath of a German act of vengeance that had taken place in June 1944