L'Epuration Sauvage en Normandie

TEXT IN FRENCH

The Savage Purification of Normandy is an account of retribution against enemy collaborators that took place between 1943 and 1946 and was a microcosm of the legally sanctioned reprisals that took place after the war between 1944 and 1947—some 39 people were condemned to death by firing squad in legal proceedings. But as early as 1943 some resistance fighters couldn’t wait for the restoration of the French Republic and began to eliminate collaborators they considered a threat to the Resistance. Outside of any legal framework and often with a fake judgments, extra-judicial executions and retribution were carried out quickly and violently, including the now notorious practice of shaving the heads of women collaborators to mark them out amongst their peers. Violent as all this was, the so called “savage purification” was relatively moderate in the end as the new rulers at the end of the war wished to avoid a civil war between the French.