Oignies and Courrières massacre

Altogether, it is thought a total of 500 French civilians were murdered by German forces in Nord-Pas de Calais in May 1940.

[5] In response to the German invasion of Poland, France and the United Kingdom declared war on Nazi Germany in September 1939.

After a period of relatively inaction on the Western Front, German forces launched a major offensive against France on 10 May 1940 with a simultaneous attack through neutral Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.

Although fighting some successful engagements, they were soon outflanked as a result of an unexpected German breakthrough to the south and forced to retreat westerwards back into France.

On the southern side of the pocket, German forces began to push north-eastwards towards the major city of Lille through the region around the towns of Arras, Lens, Béthune, and Douai.

Courrières and Oignies were two small towns situated in the important coal mining basin approximately 20 kilometres (12 mi) south-east of Lille.

[a] The coal mining industry had drawn on immigrant workers in the interwar period including from Poland and French Algeria.

[6] Unable to achieve a crossing, the German units decided that their failure was caused by civilians at Courrières passing information to the French and the possible involvement of francs-tireurs.

[6] Early the following morning, they took roughly a dozen civilians hostage and attempted to use them as human shields to protect German artillery pieces near the bridge.

Eighty inhabitants, including ten women, were killed, shot for the most part, and the village was practically destroyed."

The men were sometimes the machine-guns or bayonetted infront of the horrified eyes of women and children; others were taken and everwhere were found tortured corpses.

Across Nord-Pas de Calais, the SS Panzer Division Totenkopf perpetrated a number of massacres of 92 people at Aubigny-en-Artois and 45 at Vandelicourt both on 22 May, and a further 48 at Beuvry on 24 May.