On Remembrance Day, a Cranbrook B.C. woman is remembering her older brother.
Cecile Wasylyk still has all the letters her brother Herve Labrecque sent home to his family, saying “My mother didn’t get many letters from him, and she kept every one of them.”
Labrecque was just 22 years old when he was murdered in 1944.
During the Battle of Normandy, he was among the estimated 156 Canadian soldiers taken prisoner by German forces. All of them were executed.
“He had been taken prisoner of war and after the war was done, he was shot in the back of the head, not once but twice,” Wasylyk told Global News.
General Kurt Meyer, one of the 12th SS commanders, was put on trial by Canada and sentenced to death. Later it was commuted to life imprisonment.
Meyer was transferred to a German jail and after serving nine years he was freed in 1954.
It remains one of the worst war crimes in Canadian history.
Labrecque is buried in Beny-Sur-Mer, France at the Canadian War Cemetery.
Wasylyk has never had a chance to visit her big brother’s gravestone, but says her brother’s memory remains very much alive, adding “You don’t forget, you should never forget what all these people have done for you.”