We arrived in the Department of Meurthe-et-Moselle on the 26th of
October, and visited a great number of communes in the arrondissements
of Nancy and Lunéville.
Nancy, an open town into which the German Army has not been able to
enter, was bombarded without formal warning during the night of the
9th and 10th of September. About sixty shells fell into the middle of
the town and in the southern cemetery--that is, in places where there
is no military establishment. Three women, a young girl, and a little
girl were killed; thirteen people were wounded; the material damage
done was considerable.
The enemy's aviators have flown over the town twice. On the 4th of
September one of them dropped two bombs, by one of which a man and a
little girl were killed and six people wounded, in the Place de la
Cathédrale. On the 13th of October three bombs were thrown on the
goods station. Four persons employed by the Eastern Railway Company
were wounded.
When we reached Pont-à-Mousson, on the morning of the 10th of
November, seven shells had just been fired by the German batteries a
few hours before. It was the 24th day of the bombardment, which began
on the 11th of August. The evening before a young girl of 19 and a
child of 4 had been killed in their beds by fragments of shells. On
the 14th of August the Germans took as their special objective the
hospital, from whose towers floated Red Cross flags, visible from a
great distance. No less than seventy shells fell on to this building,
and we have witnessed the damage they have caused.
About eighty houses were damaged by the different bombardments, all of
which took place without any warning. Fourteen civilians, mainly women
and children, were killed. There were about the same number of
wounded. Pont-à-Mousson is not fortified. Only the bridge over the
Moselle had been put in a state of defense, on the outbreak of
hostilities, by the Twenty-sixth Battalion of Chasseurs, who were then
quartered in the town.
We experienced real horror when we found ourselves before the
lamentable ruins of Nomeny. With the exception of some few houses
which still stood near the railway station in a spot separated by the
Seille from the principal group of buildings, there remains of this
little town only a succession of broken and blackened walls in the
midst of ruins, in which may be seen here and there the bones of a few
animals partially charred and the carbonized remains of human bodies.
The rage of a maddened soldiery has been unloosed there without pity.
Nomeny, on account of its proximity to the frontier, received from the
beginning of the war the visits of German troopers from time to time.
Skirmishes took place in its neighborhood, and on Aug. 14, in the
courtyard of the farm de la Borde, which is a little distance off, a
German soldier, without any motive, killed by a rifle shot the young
farm servant, Nicholas Michel, aged 17.
On Aug. 20, when the inhabitants sought refuge in the cellars from the
bombardment, the Germans came up after having fired upon each other by
mistake and entered the town toward midday.
According to the account given by one of the inhabitants, the German
officers asserted that the French were torturing the wounded by
cutting off their limbs and plucking out their eyes. They were then in
a state of terrible excitement. That day and part of the next the
German soldiers gave themselves over to the most abominable excesses,
sacking, burning and massacring as they went. After they had carried
off from the houses everything which seemed worth taking away, and
after they had dispatched to Metz the product of their rifling, they
set fire to the houses with torches, pastilles of compressed powder
and petrol which they carried in receptacles placed on little carts.
Rifle shots were fired on every side; the unhappy inhabitants, who
had been driven from the cellars before the firing, were shot down
like game--some in their dwellings and others in the public streets.
MM. Sanson, Pierson, Lallemand, Adam Jeanpierre, Meunier, Schneider,
Raymond, Duponcel, and Hazotte, father and son, were killed by rifle
shots in the streets. M. Killian, seeing himself threatened by a sabre
stroke, protected his neck with his hand. He had three fingers cut off
and his throat gashed. An old man aged 86, M. Petitjean, who was
seated in his armchair, had his skull smashed by a German shot. A
soldier showed the corpse to Mme. Bertrand, saying: "Do you see that
pig there?" M. Chardin, Town Councilor, who was Acting Mayor, was
required to furnish a horse and carriage. He had promised to do all he
could to obey, when he was killed by a rifle shot. M. Prevot, seeing
the Bavarians breaking into a chemist's shop of which he was
caretaker, told them that he was the chemist, and that he would give
them anything they wanted, but three rifle shots rang out and he fell,
heaving a deep sigh. Two women who were with him ran away and were
pursued to the neighborhood of the railway station, beaten all the way
with the butts of rifles, and they saw many bodies heaped together in
the station garden and on the road.
Between 3 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon the Germans entered the
butcher shop of Mme. François. She was then coming out of her cellar
with her boy Stub, and an employee named Contal. As soon as Stub
reached the threshold of the entrance to the door he fell severely
wounded by a rifle shot. Then Contal, who rushed into the street, was
immediately murdered. Five minutes afterward, as Stub was still
groaning, a soldier leaned over him and finished him off with a blow
of a hatchet on the back.
The most tragic incident in this horrible scene occurred in the house
of M. Vassé, who had collected a number of people in his cellar in the
Faubourg de Nancy. Toward 4 o'clock about fifty soldiers rushed into
the house, beat in the door and windows, and set it on fire. The
refugees then made an effort to flee, but they were struck down one
after the other as they came out. M. Mentré was murdered first; then
his son Léon fell with his little sister, aged 8, in his arms. As he
was not killed outright, the end of a rifle barrel was placed on his
head and his brains blown out. Then it was the turn of the Kieffer
family. The mother was wounded in the arm and shoulder. The father and
little boy aged 10 and little girl aged 3 were shot. The murderers
went on firing on them after they had fallen. Kieffer, stretched on
the ground, received another bullet in the forehead, and his son had
the top of his head blown off by a shot. Last of all M. Strieffert and
one of the sons of Vassé were murdered, while Mme. Mentré received
three bullets, one in the left leg, another in the arm on the same
side, and one on her forehead, which was only grazed. M. Guillaume was
dragged into the street and there found dead. Simonin, a young girl of
17, came out last from the cellar, with her sister Jeanne, aged 3. The
latter had her elbow almost carried away by a bullet. The elder girl
flung herself on the ground and pretended to be dead, remaining for
five minutes in terrible anguish. A soldier gave her a kick, crying
"Capout."
An officer arrived at the end of this butchery, and ordered the women
who were still alive to get up, and shouted to them: "Go to France!"
While all these people were being massacred, others, according to an
expression used by an eyewitness, were driven like sheep into the
fields under the threat of immediate execution. The curé, in
particular, owed his escape from being shot to extraordinary
circumstances.
According to the depositions which we have received, all these
abominations were committed chiefly by the Second and Fourth Regiments
of Bavarian infantry. To explain them, the officers have alleged that
civilians had fired on their troops. As our inquiry has established
formally, this allegation is a lie, for at the moment when the enemy
arrived all arms had been deposited at the Mairie, and the part of the
population which had not quitted the country had hidden itself in the
cellars, a prey to the greatest terror. Besides, the reason alleged,
even were it true, would assuredly be insufficient to excuse the
destruction of a whole city, the murder of women, and the massacre of
children.
A list of persons who were killed in the course of the burning and the
shootings has been drawn up by M. Biévelot, Conseiller d'Arrondissement.
The list includes no less than 50 names. We have not quoted all of
them. For one thing, among the people whose death has been proved,
some died under conditions which are not stated with sufficient
precision; on the other hand, the dispersal of the inhabitants of the
town which has now been destroyed made our inquiry very difficult. Our
efforts will be continued. In any case, what we have already been able
to establish beyond dispute is enough to give an idea of what was, on
the day of Aug. 20, the martyrdom of Nomeny.
Lunéville was occupied by the Germans from Aug. 27 to Sept. 11. During
the first few days they were content to rob the inhabitants without
molesting them in any other way. Thus, in particular on Aug. 24, the
house of Mme. Jeaumont was plundered. The objects stolen were loaded
on to a large vehicle in which were three women, one of them dressed
in black and the two others wearing military costumes and appearing,
as we were told, to be canteen women.
On Aug. 25 the attitude of the invaders suddenly changed. M. Keller,
the Mayor, went to the hospital about 3:30 o'clock in the afternoon
and saw soldiers firing in the direction of the attic of a neighboring
house, and heard the whistling of the bullets, which appeared to him
to come from behind. The Germans declared to him that the inhabitants
had fired on them. He protested, and offered to go around the town
with them in order to prove the absurdity of this allegation. His
proposal was accepted, and as at the beginning of the circuit they
came across in the street the body of M. Crombez, the officer
commanding the escort said to M. Keller, "You see this body. It is
that of a civilian who has been killed by another civilian who was
firing on us from a house near the synagogue. Thus, in accordance with
our law, we have burned the house and executed the inhabitants." He
was speaking of the murder of a man whose timid character was known to
all, the Jewish officiating minister, Weill, who had just been killed
in his house, together with his 16-year-old daughter. The same officer
added, "In the same way we have burned the house at the corner of the
Rue Castara and the Rue Girardet, because civilians fired shots from
there." It is from this dwelling that the Germans alleged shots had
been fired on to the courtyard of the hospital, but the position of
the building makes it impossible for such a statement to be true.
While the Mayor and the soldiers who accompanied him were pursuing
their investigation the fire broke out on different sides; the Hôtel
de Ville was burned as well as the synagogue, and a number of houses
in the Rue Castara, and the Faubourg d'Einville was in flames. The
massacres, which were continued until the next day, began at the same
time. Without counting M. Crombez, the officiating minister, Weill,
and his daughter, whose deaths we have already mentioned, the victims
were MM. Hamman, Binder, Balastre, (father and son,) Vernier, Dujon,
M. Kahn and his mother, M. Steiner and his wife, M. Wingerstmann and
his grandson, and, finally, MM. Sibille, Monteils, and Colin.