Route details
Description
To reach the last point, take your vehicle.
Your itinerary
Step 1: Corner of 41 rue Ricard-Place de la Brèche: June 22, 1940, entry of the Germans into Niort
Saturday, June 22, 1940, around 19 p.m., coming from Thouars occupied the day before, German troops entered Niort, declared an open city (not defended) like all the towns of more than 20 inhabitants. Armored vehicles were parked on Place de la Brèche, in a town overwhelmed by the exodus of refugees, particularly from the Ardennes. The pharmacist Pierre Bruneteau, whose pharmacy was at the bottom of Avenue de Paris, testified: "My small town of 000 inhabitants was just taken in ten minutes by ten motorcyclists and two armoured cars [...] A dense crowd surrounded a tracked vehicle at the corner of [a] cinema. A German officer, standing in the car, examined a road map [...] People were ecstatic in front of the German war material. [...] A few excited people were almost delighted." The same day, the armistice requested by Pétain, the new head of government, was signed in the clearing of Rethondes.
Step 2: 9 av. Jacques Bujault, Hôtel de la Brèche (now Best Western): 1st Kommandantur (June 22-28, 1940).
Niort is in the occupied zone. The Kommandantur is the headquarters of the German military command (Wehrmacht). Niort initially depends on the Feldkommandantur of La Roche-sur-Yon before becoming a Feldkommandantur (FK) installed in the premises of the Chamber of Commerce, Place du Temple. The Feldkommandant resides at 87 rue Chabaudy. German policy consists of setting up a surveillance administration that is economical in terms of resources. The French State is required to collaborate by the armistice agreement. Pétain and Laval make Collaboration the official policy of the French State, hoping to obtain concessions from the victor. It is a fool's bargain that makes the Vichy regime an accomplice in the crimes of the Nazis. The Germans increasingly interfere in the functioning of the French State to fight the Resistance, deport Jews, plunder the economy, and impose forced labor (STO).
Step 3: 6 av. Jacques Bujault, headquarters of the German Military Tribunal
Each FK has a military tribunal to judge individuals accused of acts prejudicial to the occupying authorities. It can remove the case from the French justice system, even when the latter has already rendered its verdict. In the early days, judgments are rendered by FK 605 of La Roche-sur-Yon. The communists Eugène Poupot, Roger Dejameau and Jean Ravard, already convicted by the Niort criminal court for having painted anti-Nazi slogans on Avenue de Paris in July 1941, are retried. Sentenced to deportation, the first two will not return. In 1942-1943, it was the FK court in Niort that sentenced to death Raymond Gendrot (possession of weapons), Louis Girault (possession of weapons, approved resistance fighter), Lucien Brun and Léon Jean, two communist resistance fighters, and Julien Schutee-Schwarze, an Austrian deserter from the Wehrmacht. They were shot in Chizon de Sainte-Pezenne.
Step 4: 12 rue Alsace-Lorraine, so-called Gestapo House (plaque)
In each occupied city, the Germans had a branch of their political police, the Sipo-SD (Security Police and Intelligence Services of the SS), of which the Gestapo (Secret State Police) was a component. In Niort, the Sipo-SD detachment moved into this house, confiscated from the Léon family of Jewish origin. From June 1, 1942, the direction of repression in France passed from the army (Wehrmacht), considered too ineffective, to the Sipo-SD, led in Paris by SS General Carl Oberg. The Sipo-SD police officers, few in number, relied on the French police and gendarmerie, the collaborationist parties and on a large number of French auxiliaries called VM (Vertrauen Mann, trusted man), informers, double agents infiltrated into the Resistance. This house was also a place of detention and torture.
Step 5: Duguesclin barracks, Place Chanzy
The Duguesclin barracks housed the German garrison. It also served as a prison, managed by the Sipo-SD. The captives were locked in cells overlooking the inner courtyard and in front of which a wire fence was installed. After a few days of detention, the prisoners were transferred to Poitiers and then deported. In 1944, when the maquis developed, repression columns were sent to track them down. One of them was sent to free 16 German soldiers captured by the FFI during the fighting in Melle on August 13, 1944. On the 14th and 15th, they captured resistance fighters, took hostages and murdered residents. Four resistance fighters, after being tortured in the barracks, were summarily executed in Chizon on August 19: Raymond Kopp, Charles Lainé, Renée Goguelat (Secret Army), and Camille Gratien (FTP).
Step 6: Rue de la Juiverie, renamed on the orders of the Germans.
Rue de la Juiverie indicates the location of the old Jewish quarter in the Middle Ages. This community disappeared with the expulsion of the Jews from the kingdom by Philip the Fair in 1306. The Germans ordered the street to be renamed and implemented an anti-Semitic policy in the occupied zone from the fall of 1940. The many Jews who had taken refuge in Niort were victims of this. 9 ordinances followed one after the other. September 27, 1940: definition of the Jew and census; October 18 and November 12, 1940: census of businesses; April 26, 1941: new definition and prohibitions; August 13, 1941: confiscation of radio sets; February 11, 1942: curfew; March 24, 1942: new definition of the Jew; May 29, 1942: obligation to wear the yellow star; July 8, 1942: Ban on visiting public places. Vichy adds its own anti-Semitic legislation applicable in both zones.
Step 7: 4 Rue Barbezière, Niort, Deux-Sèvres, home of Friedel Kœnigsberg, refugee of Jewish origin.
From 1941, the Germans carried out isolated arrests of Jews. Thus Friedel Kœnigsberg, a Jewish refugee of German nationality, a saleswoman, born on May 19, 1920 in Berlin, was arrested by the Feldgendarmerie on November 19, 1941 for not having complied with the instructions of the Kommandantur of Niort. Incarcerated in the Niort remand center, she was transferred to the camp on the road from Limoges to Poitiers by order of the prefect of Deux-Sèvres dated December 5, 1941. In 1942, the deportation of Jews from France to the killing centers began. The first convoy left Drancy on March 27. Friedel Kœnigsberg was deported without return by convoy No. 8 which left Angers on July 20, 1942, bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau, via the Bourget-Drancy station. Of the 831 deportees, including 390 women, a 13-year-old girl and 3 nonagenarians, 14 survived.
Step 8: 41 Boulevard Main, BOINOT patronal house
In 1944, in Niort as everywhere in France, the German authorities arrested personalities. The aim was to intimidate the population and deprive the Resistance of potential leaders. On June 10, the following were arrested: René Richard, former radical-socialist deputy; Félix Lelant, deputy mayor of Niort and future mayor of Niort after the war; Alexandre Loez, secretary general of the Chamber of Commerce; Joseph Boinot, industrialist; Jean Thorigny, head of department at the General Supply; Roger Gadille, departmental director of the PTT; de Beauchamps, chief engineer of the Bridges and Roads Department. Added to these were Jacques Sauvé, mayor of Coulonges-sur-l'Autize and André Côme, insurance agent in Chiché. From Compiègne, they were deported on July 15 as hostages to the Neuengamme concentration camp, then to the Theresienstadt camp and finally to Brezany where they were liberated by the Soviets in May 1945.
Step 9: Stele in memory of the Jews arrested in Deux-Sèvres and deported
This stele in memory of the Jews arrested in Deux-Sèvres between 1941 and 1944 and deported was inaugurated on February 3, 2012. It is located near 92 rue des Trois Coigneaux, the site of a now-defunct slipper factory, a transit center for Jews from Deux-Sèvres rounded up on January 31, 1944. The list contains 143 names, including those of 33 children aged 3 to 14. A new, updated stele will soon be created, and 153 names will be inscribed on it, including 78 who lived in Niort. The extermination of the Jews of Europe, now called the Shoah, was decided and carried out by the Nazis, but the roundups (October 9, 10 and January 1942, 31) were carried out by the authorities of the French State. In fact, while the Germans arrested 01 Jews, 1944 were arrested by the French police and gendarmerie. There were four survivors, including Ida Fensterszab [Grinspan] (16-137).
Stage 10: Chizon de Sainte-Pezenne, Parthenay road (D 743)
Stele in memory of the 9 shot by the Germans, inaugurated on September 28, 2019. The place called Chizon de Sainte-Pezenne is a dry valley that is accessed by a path on the right of the departmental road 743 towards Parthenay. To the south, a farm overlooks the valley. The shooting range was "created in 1942 in the valley. This place specially designed for executions consists of: a covered shooting range and a shooting mound in the center of which a post was placed. Several tons of earth were brought in order to constitute this mound which is 4 m high by 10 m long. The shooting distance between the range and the mound is 25 meters." (Report of the Commissioner of General Intelligence of Niort of 4/11/1945). The Germans shot nine people there, five after conviction in 1942 and 1943 and four others summarily executed on August 19, 1944.