WWII commemorative plaque - charleville-mézières

This memorial plaque commemorates the execution of 13 prisoners:

On the eve of the liberation , as the Allied troops approached, the leaders of the Ardennes resistance , having learned that the Germans were collecting carriages to transport the patriots interned in the Charleville prison to Germany, decided to destroy them.

Following this sabotage of thirteen carriages, Commandant Fritz Bauckloh, head of the SD of Saint-Quentin, which had authority over the Ardennes department, ordered the execution in reprisal of thirteen prisoners from the prison of Charleville . On 29 August 1944, eleven men and two women were taken from their cells, lined up along a wall and then loaded into a cell van parked in the prison yard, which took them outside the town. They were executed on the edge of the Bois de la Rosière in the territory of the commune of Tournes.

willem vandenameele