Only known photographs of French Resistance fighters facing Nazi firing squad are shown for first time



The only known photographs of French Resistance fighters facing a Nazi firing squad at an execution site on the outskirts of Paris have gone on display for the first time.

The three pictures were taken by a German soldier who hid in the bushes on February 21, 1941 and secretly captured the executions at Mont-Valerien.



Despite more than 1,000 'hostages' being killed at the site, it was thought no pictures existed as Nazis prohibited the taking of photographs for fear they would be used as anti-propaganda.

Unseen photographs of French Resistance fighters being executed by a Nazi firing squad on the outskirts of Paris in February 1941 have gone on public display for the first time

Taken only months after the French surrendered to the Nazis in June 1940, members of the Resistance fought the Nazi occupation as well as the collaborationist Vichy regime.

After four years of occupation, France was liberated by Allied forces in August 1944.

The photographs are being permanently exhibited at Mont-Valerien - the 19th-century fort in a Paris suburb that was the Nazis' largest execution site in France during the Second World War.

German soldiers sit outside a Paris cafe on the Champs Elysees on Bastille Day in 1940. France was invaded by Nazi Germany earlier that year and was liberated in 1944

France's most famous Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfield identified those being executed as members of an anti-Nazi network led by Missak Manouchian

The condemned, who were captured in revenge for the death of German soldiers and tried by military tribunals, were driven in lorries to the remote fort in western Paris and held in a chapel before they were executed.

Some scrawled their final messages on the walls of the chapel, which have recently been restored.



Men were blindfolded and tied to wooden poles in a clearing before being shot by a group of 60 soldiers. Women were usually sent to Germany and beheaded.

Clemens Ruter, who provided a motorcycle escort to the prisoners, took the photographs with his Minox camera.

The non-commissioned soldier never told anyone about the shots and the film was left in the camera for 40 years.

Shortly before his death, while on a pilgrimage, Roman Catholic Mr Ruter confided his secret to a fellow German pilgrim.



Mr Ruter's confidante worked for the Franz Stock association, who developed the negatives, although the pictures were not made public until France's most famous Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfield took an interest in those members of the Resistance captured in the photographs.