German Christmas tree not appreciated in occupied Dreax

An unusual Christmas tree story inside a longer story written by a decorated World War II French Resistance fighter came to me a couple of years ago from the man’s daughter.
About 20 years after the war ended friends had convinced Francis Dablin, the grandfather of my brother-in-law, David Bounds (Trudy’s husband), to write about his experiences in the Resistance — the French men and women who secretly organized to conduct clandestine operations against their Nazi occupiers, always at the risk of summary execution if captured. Dablin gave his book the name that the French called their time of occupation — 1940 to 1944 — Les Annees Les Plus Longues (The Longest Years).
Several years ago, Dablin’s daughter (and David’s mother), Liliane, and Dablin’s great-granddaughter, Nathalie, translated Dablin’s work into English. They gave me a copy, which I have treasured, especially with its inscription: “To John from Granny Frog.”
Dablin’s underground work of psychological warfare and sabotage against the Germans culminated on July 17, 1944 when he and his son led a team of Resistants to the base of a key railroad bridge between Paris and the Norman coast where Allied troops were fighting desperately to enlarge the hold on Europe they had seized on D-Day.
Repeated bombing by Allied aircraft had failed to disable the bridge, but the explosives that Dablin’s team laid at the bridge’s foundation completely destroyed it, significantly cutting into the Germans’ ability to resupply the troops holding back the Allies’ advance toward Paris.
For that, Dablin received commendations from Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight Eisenhower and Deputy Commander, British Air Marshal Arthur Tedder. His own government gave him its highest award, the the Legion of Honor.
But Dablin’s resistance had begun on a far more modest scale. Christmas, 1940 — the first Christmas of German occupation — found the French defeated and demoralized. Their armed forces had been outgunned and outflanked into surrender or exile. Their country had been divided; rationing had begun and there was little reason for them to hope that the Germans would ever be run out of their country.
Then in Dablin’s hometown of Dreax, the Germans erected a large and beautiful Christmas tree that was even illuminated between the hours of darkness and curfew. For the Germans, it was a sign of victory and joy. For the French, it was humiliating.
Dablin decided there needed to be a fly in the ointment to show the Germans that they were not all lying down. From a local cobbler he  procured a rabbit’s skin. Why that? He does not say. Maybe it was just the idea of dead rabbit hanging in the tree the Germans held in such regard. He walked to the tree in the darkness before blackout and was able to fling the rabbit into a place where it hung on the branches.
Word spread among townspeople about the rabbit, and many of them managed to stroll by the next morning and see for themselves before the Germans discovered it.
When they did figure out that their tree had been turned into a symbol of defiance, they removed it, with an indignation that quite gratified townspeople, and placed a watchman beside the tree. It was too late.
Dablin and the people of Dreax had landed the first of many psychological blows on their occupiers. By 1944, these had turned into acts of sabotage that would culminate with the destruction of that Cherisy rail viaduct.
But the Germans never put up another Christmas tree in Dreax.