Bordeaux, France ? The bodies of 17 German soldiers executed in an act of reprisal during World War II were exhumed Tuesday from a grave kept secret for decades by a village in southwest France.

The soldiers, who were buried in a mass grave after they were executed in the village of Saint-Julien-de-Crempse in 1944, will be laid to rest Nov. 16 in a military cemetery off the Atlantic coast.

Buried in a narrow, unmarked grave in a meadow after they were shot, the soldiers may have remained forgotten by history had it not been for a former Resistance fighter who knew of their deaths.

Emile Guet had taken part in the capture of an 82-man German battalion on Aug. 24, 1944. The head of Guet’s Resistance group had promised the captives that they would be treated as prisoners of war.

On Aug. 9, 1944, French Resistance fighters killed a number of German soldiers in a battle in Saint-Julien-de-Crempse in the southwest region of Dordogne. In retaliation, the Germans rounded up all males from the village between the ages of 18 and 80 — 17 in total — and executed them.

One month later, 17 German prisoners were removed from their cells at the Bergerac prison to Saint-Julien-de-Crempse, where they were summarily executed and buried in a 30-foot-by-6-foot grave.

Since the end of the war, the village kept secret this tale of revenge.

Guet, the Resistance fighter who was scandalized that his group had not kept its word, contacted Julien Hauser, curator of the German military museum at Berneuil in the Charente-Maritime region off the Atlantic coast.

In May, Hauser met with local leaders. Village Mayor Yves Blondit agreed to a plan to rebury the dead.