Andr Obrecht

Vocation

Official executioner of France from 1951 until 1976. Obrecht was the nephew of the chief executioner Anatole Deibler. Deibler had a fatherlike relationship with the young André, he was only one month younger as his own son, who died as a baby. The affection between the two men never ceased. Due to financial obligations Deibler's widow allowed Obrecht's cousin Jules-Henri Desfourneaux and not Obrecht to succeed Deibler despite her late husband's indication that he would prefer Obrecht as his successor. Obrecht subsequently took Desfourneaux's former place as first assistant. Obrecht and Desfourneaux disliked each other. Obrecht thought his cousin too slow and badly organized. In late 1943, after having executed many French resistance fighters, Obrecht and his colleagues and friends, the Martin brothers, quit. Obrecht resumed his job in 1945, but his animosity towards his cousin had grown. After an execution in 1947, the cousins fought and Obrecht decided, for the second time, to quit. When Desfourneaux died in 1951, Obrecht wrote to the ministry of Justice, proposing his candidature as chief executioner. This was agreed and on November 1, 1951, he was officially nominated. On November 13 he performed his first guillotining as chief in Marseilles when he executed the police killer Marcel Ythier. Link to Wikipedia biography