“An officer came up at the end of this slaughter. He ordered the women who were still alive to get up, and called out to them, ‘Go to France.’”
At Lunéville
The murders at Lunéville were committed, according to the French Commission of Inquiry, under the following circumstances—
“On the 25th August, after firing two shots from the inside of the Worms tannery, to make it appear that they had been attacked, the Germans rushed into a workshop of this manufactory, in which an artisan named Goeury was working in company with Messrs. Balastre, father and son. Goeury was dragged out into the street, stripped, and brutally ill-treated, whilst his two companions, discovered in the lavatory where they had sought refuge, were shot.
“On the same day the soldiers came and called for M. Steiner, who was concealed in his cellar. His wife, in dread of some disaster, tried to keep him back. As she clasped him in her arms she was struck by a bullet in the neck. Some moments afterwards Steiner, having obeyed the command which had been given him, fell mortally wounded in his garden. M. Kahn also was murdered in the garden of his house. His mother, aged ninety-eight, whose body was burnt to a cinder in the fire, had previously been killed in her bed with a bayonet thrust, according to the story of an individual who was acting as interpreter to the enemy. M. Binder, who was going out to get away from the flames, was also struck down. The German by whom he was killed admitted that he had wantonly killed him when the poor man was quietly standing before a door. M. Vernier met with the same fate as Binder.
“About three o’clock the Germans, breaking the windows and firing shots, forced an entrance into a house in which were Mme. Dujon, her daughter, aged three, her two sons and a M. Gaumier. The little girl just missed being killed; her face was singed by a shot. At this moment Mme. Dujon, seeing her youngest son lying on the ground, begged him to get up and flee with her. She then noticed that he was holding with full hands his intestines, which were dropping out. The house was on fire and the poor lad was burnt to a cinder, as was M. Gaumier, who had been unable to escape.
“M. Wingstermann and his grandson, aged twelve, who had gone to dig potatoes a little way off from Lunéville, at a place called ‘les Mossus,’ in the Chanteheux district, had the misfortune to meet the Germans. The latter put them both against a wall and shot them.
“Finally, about five o’clock in the evening, some soldiers went into the house of a woman named Sibille, in the same place, and without any excuse seized her son, dragged him off 200 metres from the house, and massacred both him and a M. Vallon, to whose body they had bound him. A witness who saw the murderers just when they were dragging off their victim saw them return without him, and declared that their bayonets were covered with blood and pieces of flesh.
“On the same day a male nurse, named Monteils, who was tending a wounded enemy officer at the Lunéville hospital, was struck by a bullet in the forehead as he was watching through the window a German soldier firing rifle shots.