On 23 June 1944, soldiers from a company of the engineer battalion of the SS Division ‘Das Reich’ committed a massacre in Saint-Sixte (Lot-et-Garonne), in German-occupied France. During a reprisal operation against members of the Resistance in the village of Dunes (Tarn-et-Garonne), the soldiers discovered two caravans belonging to Manouches fairground families and shot the 19 people present. Fourteen people were killed, including eleven children. It is the only documented massacre of Sinti (Manouches) carried out in France during World War II.
Context
On 19 June 1944, the officers of the 2nd Company of the Engineer Battalion of the ‘Das Reich’ Division, stationed in Valence d’Agen, received a report listing the names of 46 families from Dunes and Sistels (Tarn-et-Garonne). In these villages, the Resistance was organised into local units of the Corps franc Pommiès [Pommiès Free Corps] (CFP) and the Armée secrète [Secret Army] (AS). The informant who authored the report and her husband maintained close contact with German officers. The list of names formed the basis for the military operation of 23 June 1944, which also targeted suspected resistance fighters in Caudecoste, a neighbouring village of Dunes.
On their way to Caudecoste, the soldiers noticed two caravans below the church in Saint-Sixte. They were occupied by the Vaise, Landauer and Wanderstein families, who were part of the fairground community. One of the women present, Rosalie Vaise (1879–1944), had worked as an acrobat, later as a singer and fairground vendor. One of her daughters, Adolphine (1898–1944), was married to Pierre Wanderstein (1897–unknown), whose parents were opera singers and acrobats. Marie Bouillon (1893–unknown) had a brother named Louis Bouillon (1897–1962), a cat and lion tamer who was known in south-western France, Spain and North Africa under the name ‘Ivanof’. One of the families ran a shooting gallery at funfairs. The families had only arrived in Saint-Sixte the evening before, so their presence was not known before the German operation.
The Massacre
After an initial group of soldiers had marched past and continued on their way to Caudecoste, a subsequent unit checked the families, searched the caravans and then herded everyone present into a nearby meadow. Immediately afterwards, they were shot. One of the victims, Paul Vaise (1894–1944), had previously called out to his relatives in Romanes: ‘Ker o mulo!’ [Play dead!].1CNAEF, 127C026. Fourteen people were killed: the eldest, Rosalie Vaise, was 75 years old; the youngest, Henriette Landauer, born on 4 June 1944 in Agen, was just 19 days old.
Among the victims were eleven older children and young people, six boys and five girls. The mayor of the village, Étienne Laffont (biographical data unknown), later reported seeing mutilated bodies, including that of a child whose legs had been severed, as well as that of a woman whose skull had been smashed, and another pregnant woman whose abdomen had been ripped open.
The soldiers did not check whether the victims were actually dead. Five survivors were rescued by local residents and a doctor, Dr Roger Escudier (or Escudié) (1909–unknown). Three injured people were subsequently taken by the Red Cross to the hospital in Agen.
The doctor had been brought in by bicycle from Lamagistère (which was six kilometres away), by a local resident, Omer Vergne (1905–2006), in spite of a curfew. Vergne recalled in 1996: ‘The Gypsies had stopped there (in Saint-Sixte) the day before, on 22 June. The Germans came across them by chance. They were on their way to Dunes and discovered the campsite. Everyone was asleep. We heard a commotion. Together with my wife and my mother-in-law, we heard screams, followed by gunfire. There was a few minutes’ silence, then it started again. There was a violent knocking at the door; the women didn’t want me to open it, but I insisted, wanting to know what was going on: ‘They’ve killed us, my poor sir. The Germans have killed us all.’’2Transcript of a conversation between Louis Chevalier and Omer Vergne, broadcast in 1996 on Radio Bulles’ programme ‘La vie des gens, l’air du pays’. Translation into English: Emanuel Marx L’Huillier.
In the course of the day, the mayor of the village arranged for coffins to be made and a grave to be dug in the village cemetery. He alerted the prefect of the Lot-et-Garonne department, Jean Giraud (1888–unknown), who, however, neither appeared at the scene in person nor sent a representative. The German officers present in Saint-Sixte justified the massacre by claiming to have discovered ten Herstal automatic pistols in the caravans. The officers sought to give the impression that they had encountered armed men and thus ‘terrorists’ (i.e. partisans) – a discovery which, in their view, would have justified an immediate execution. In reality, the ‘weapons’ were the wooden rifles used for the fairground shooting gallery, one of which was found broken by the village mayor.
The victims were buried at 6 p.m. the same day. Meanwhile, most of the soldiers moved on to Caudecoste, where they shot one resistance fighter and hanged another, and subsequently to Dunes, where they hanged eleven men from the balcony of the village post office and killed three further residents.
The bodies of the people murdered in Saint-Sixte were exhumed a few months later at the request of François Landauer (1894–1963), a relative, so that they could be reburied in the municipal cemetery of Saint-André de Cubzac (Gironde). The burial took place in a crypt dominated by an imposing memorial dedicated to the Vaise and Landauer families.
The Post-War Period and Remembrance
The Saint-Sixte massacre led to an investigation by the Permanent Military Court of Bordeaux, which had jurisdiction over war crimes committed by the SS Division ‘Das Reich’. Several officers had been identified by the United Nations War Crimes Commission for their involvement in the massacre.3UNWCC, IP/Arch/1/1/5, 1544. Adjutant Willi Goymann (1914–unknown), who had been captured by US troops in Normandy and named by local residents as having been present at the massacre, was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour on 1 February 1951; however, this sentence was overturned and declared null and void by a ruling of the Court of Cassation on 22 November 1951. On 18 October 1952, Goymann was acquitted: his direct involvement in the hangings at Dunes and the shootings could not be proven.
Until 2023, the Saint-Sixte massacre remained poorly documented and analysed. It is one of the few massacres committed by German units in occupied France: on 10 June 1944, more than two hundred children and youths were killed in Oradour-sur-Glane (Haute-Vienne); on the same day, thirteen children were killed in Marsoulas (Haute-Garonne); and on 25 August 1944, forty-eight children were killed in Maillé (Indre-et-Loire).
It is particularly noteworthy that this is the only documented mass killing of Sinti and Roma that took place on French soil during World War II. In contrast to the planned executions at Dunes, where only men were hanged, the Saint-Sixte massacre was a spontaneous act of annihilation directed against everyone present–children, women and men–and carried out by shooting. The event illustrates how the genocidal practices of the Nazi regime were also implemented on French soil.
For many years, a wooden cross was the only reminder of the crime committed in Saint-Sixte. In 1991, a memorial stone was erected bearing the following inscription: ‘In memory of the Tziganes who were shot by the German occupying forces on 23 June 1944.’ Thanks to the efforts of Alain Daumas (born 1952), President of the Union Française des Associations de Tsiganes (UFAT), a memorial was erected in 2016 not far from the site of the massacre. Conceived by Serge Carvalho (1949–1975), the memorial consists of a white stone with three stainless-steel panels, the central one listing the names of the victims. On the right-hand side is a stainless-steel sculpture depicting a father and his daughter. The male figure is wearing a travelling suit with a waistcoat and a short cape; the girl, who is almost sitting on her father’s shoulder, is dressed in a double-breasted jacket and a knee-length skirt. A cart wheel completes the monument. It is the first figurative monument in France dedicated to the Nazi extermination of the Sinti (Manouches) and Roma.
