Malmedy Massacre Memorial
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The massacre de Baugnez is a war crime committed on December 17, 1944 by a German unit, the Kampfgruppe Peiper which, during the Battle of the Bulge, murdered American prisoners of war at the Baugnez crossroads located a few kilometers south of the town of Malmedy in Belgium. From a historiographical point of view, this event is generally known as the "massacre of Malmedy", although the town was never reached during the offensive. This war crime, part of a series of crimes perpetrated by the same unit on the same day and in the days that followed, was the subject of a judgment handed down by the Dachau Military Tribunal at a trial held in 1946.
When the Germans open fire, panic breaks out among the prisoners. Some try to escape. Most are shot. Others try to take refuge in a café at the crossroads. The Germans set fire to the building and kill anyone who tries to escape. Others, seeing their comrades collapse, drop to the ground and play dead, which does not save them. The SS will circulate between the heaped-up bodies and give the coup de grâce to anyone who gives a sign of life
Other bodies of GIs found lying in the snow by an American soldier.
After a few hours, some men, though wounded or shocked, get up and, escaping German surveillance, manage to reach their lines, then at Malmedy. Forty-three survivors managed to reach the Allied lines, sometimes after several days of wandering and with the help of the local population. All the accounts of these survivors, collected immediately after the massacre, are similar and convergent, even though those involved did not necessarily have the opportunity to consult each other
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