On the night of June 5-6, 1944, British and Canadian paratroopers were dropped over the marshes between Dives-sur-Mer and Varaville, east of Sword Beach. Since June 6, German martial law has been in force: anyone helping Allied troops risks execution or deportation.
It was against this backdrop that on July 2, 1944, the Caen Gestapo, who had been based in Argences since June 10, made arrests in the Dives-Cabourg area. The head of the youth center at Dives-sur-Mer and the parish priest of Dives were arrested, accused of aiding or hiding British soldiers. Three days later, the Gestapo carried out a major round-up in the Dives, Bas-Cabourg and Varaville marsh areas. Men and women were brutally arrested and taken to Pont-l?Évêque and Glanville. The prisoners were suspected of having taken in and led British paratroopers through the Divette marshes. While some were released, others, accused of being resistance fighters, were summarily executed in the woods around Saint-Pierre-du-Jonquet. They were secretly buried in a mass grave.
On September 17 and 23, 1944 and November 15, 1946, 28 bodies were exhumed from a field in Rupierre, a small hamlet in Saint-Pierre-du-Jonquet. To date, only 17 victims have been identified: eight resistance fighters from Dives-sur-Mer, two from Cabourg. The bodies of the remaining 11 were reburied together under 11 white slabs in front of the Saint-Pierre-du-Jonquet church.
On November 22, 1946, the remains of the eight Dives Resistance fighters murdered by the Gestapo were returned to Dives-sur-Mer.
Eleven years later, on November 11, 1957, a memorial was inaugurated at Saint-Pierre-du-Jonquet to pay tribute to the civilians of Dives and Cabourg massacred in July 1944.
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