Georges Blind - A Member Of The French Resistance - Smiling Defiantly At A German Firing Squad In October 1944
This was a mock execution attempting to get the resistance fighter, Georges Blind, a blacksmith and volunteer firefighter, to talk.
It didn’t work.
Georges did not divulge any information.
A mock execution is a stratagem in which a victim is deliberately but falsely made to believe that his execution or that of another person is imminent or is taking place.
This might involve blindfolding the subjects, making them recount last wishes, making them dig their own grave, holding an unloaded gun to their head and pulling the trigger, shooting near (but not at) the victim, or firing blanks.
Mock executions are categorized as psychological torture.
The Germans thought the best way to fight resistance movements was to be utterly brutal in putting them down.
If a village housed a few resistance fighters, they would murder the whole village.
Special SS squads were dedicated to this task.
In addition, they would incorporate and co-opt any local police forces to get a good lay of the land and a line to insider information.
Georges Blind was eventually transported to a concentration camp, where he later died in December 1944.
He was 40 years old.
This historic photograph came to the publics attention, because a German soldier placed the film containing the mock execution in a shop in Belfort, France.
The photo was then published in La Jeune Alsace in May 1945 and later made the front page of Le Figaro on July 3, 1945.
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