[3] On the same day that Paris was surrendered to the Allies, an estimated 80 Waffen-SS soldiers of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division entered the village of 600 people in the morning, and killed 124 residents, including 46 children under the age of 14, and 42 women.

"[4] The reasons for the massacre are still unknown, although on the previous day a group of French resistance fighters had killed several German officers travelling in a car,[3] and in a separate incident ambushed a Waffen-SS column to the north; the district was also at the time safeguarding a United States Army Air Forces pilot who had crash-landed in the area.

[4] Only one person has ever been held accountable, when in 1952 former German army lieutenant Gustav Schlueter was tried in absentia by a French court and found guilty.

After the massacre featured in a German newspaper article in 2004, Dortmund-based prosecutor Ulrich Maas, who specialises in hunting down war criminals, started an investigation.

After a television documentary on the massacre, Maas visited the village in July 2008 to collect more information, and laid a wreath at the memorial.