French President Emmanuel Macron will be in Strasbourg on Saturday to mark the 80th anniversary of the city's liberation from Nazi rule. He will also visit Natzweiler-Struthof, the site of the only fully operational concentration camp on French soil.
Strasbourg, the capital of the Alsace region, was freed on 23 November 1944 by General Leclerc and France’s Second Armoured Division, several months after the D-Day landings in June and the liberation of Paris in August.
During a desert campaign in Kufra, Libya, in 1941, Leclerc had vowed to retake Strasbourg, swearing: "Swear to lay down your arms only when our colours, our beautiful colours, once again float over Strasbourg Cathedral."
His words are now inscribed on a memorial in Place Broglie, where Macron will attend a ceremony after laying a wreath at Place de la République.
The city is hosting a series of 80th anniversary commemorative events, including "dancing battalions" performed by 190 participants, a reenactment of the flag raising on the cathedral, and evening concerts.
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At the time of its liberation, Alsace was under Nazi control, having been annexed – along with Moselle – by the Reich in 1940. The region was treated as German territory, unlike the rest of France, which was under occupation.
Adolf Hitler ordered fierce resistance when Allied troops reached the area. However, French forces surprised the Germans by entering Strasbourg at dawn on 23 November. The German military governor surrendered the next day.
"Inhabitants of Strasbourg, the spire of your cathedral has remained our obsession. The invader will not return," Leclerc declared on 24 November.
The city faced danger again in January 1945 during Operation Northwind, Germany’s final major offensive on the Western Front. It wasn’t until March 1945 that Alsace was declared free, several months after much of France had been liberated.
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Macron will also visit the village of Natzwiller, home to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in the foothills of Vosges mountains.
The camp received its first inmates in May 1941, who were put to work at a local quarry and dismantling aircraft engines.
From 1943, so-called "Nacht und Nebel" (Night and Fog) detainees from Western Europe – arrested under the December 1941 decree of that name which allowed German authorities to arbitrarily detain individuals deemed to be "endangering German society" – were sent to Natzweiler-Struthof.
These included people politically opposed to the Nazi Party, homosexuals and Jews.
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Of the 50,000 prisoners interned at the camp and its annexes, "17,000 died or disappeared, notably during the death marches of spring 1945, which makes a death rate of around 40 percent," according to historian Cédric Neveu.
On 25 November, 1944, two days after the liberation of Strasbourg, American soldiers found the camp deserted.
Until 1949, it was used as an internment site for collaborators, then as a penitentiary centre, before becoming a memorial, visited each year by more than 200,000 people.
(with newswires)
