Abuse and Humiliation for Collaborators

From: The Resistance, World War II

All over France, patriots celebrated liberation by rounding up collaborators and settling long over due debts of vengeance.

Physical punishments were meted out to men who had collaborated in even minor ways such as entertaining German soldiers or soliciting their business. Women who had fraternized with German soldiers suffered more humiliation than pain. Their heads were shaved, their clothes torn off, and many of them were paraded through the streets draped with signs reading: "I whored with the Boches".

Once a crowd had spent its wrath, minor collaborators were usually turned loose to be scorned and shunned by patriots for the rest of their lives.