Pete26 wrote: ↑20 Oct 2013, 14:45
I found a reference to a 15 year old Frenchman Henri Deist who was guillotined in Brandenburg Görden prison. As mentioned before, the minimum execution age in the Third Reich was lowered to just 14 years old. Sometimes, children younger than 14 were executed. I found an article on an 11 year old boy who was executed together with his parents by shooting at Kounicovy College in Brno, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
http://www.dpjw.org/gedenkstaetten/de/i ... 254&id=239
Das jüngste Opfer war der Franzose Henri Delst, der im Alter von 15 Jahren unter dem Fallbeil starb.
http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... S:official
The youngest victim was Frenchman Henri Delst, who died at the age of 15 years under the guillotine
Note: During the French revolution the youngest victim beheaded was 14, the oldest 92 (based on those for which the records exist).
I have read some documents saying that the guillotine was not suitable for executing children because their necks were too small for the lunette. One of the youngest guillotine victims during the French revolution died horribly- the guillotine failed to cut off the whole head of the 13 year old boy, while only half of the skull.
By the way, France should abolish death sentence of people under 18 soon after the revolution, and I have found no record of minors guillotined in the post-revolution period.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Th ... Carrier%20
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ar ... 3%20ans%20
The four boys 13 or 14 year old guillotined in Nantes at the present of Jean-Baptitste Carrier were Julien Peigné, René Charon, René Bertaud and Louis Guillocheau. Because that child's death shocked the executioner, Jean-Baptiste Carrier decided not to guillotine children anymore, but used shooting and drowning.
Pete, as you said the Nazi executed a 11-year-old boy by shooting, I guess that the fallbeil may have a problem similar to what the guillotine has- the lunette cannot suit a person of small body size. (Executing a child is always brutal and inhumane in my opinion, so here I use "a person of small body size" as a euphemism.)