Ascq massacre

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Graves of the victims of the massacre

The Ascq massacre was a war crime committed by a company of a reconnaissance division of the German 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth" on the night of April 1 to April 2, 1944 in occupied France , in which 86 civilians were murdered.

chronology

Funeral of the victims of the massacre in April 1944
Tertre des Massacrés
Ascq Mémorial Museum 1944

Ascq is a village eight kilometers east of Lille , through which the railway line from Lille to Tournai in Belgium runs. In anticipation of the Allied landing during the occupation of France , the 12th SS Panzer Division “Hitler Youth” was to be transferred from Belgium to Normandy . While the train with three companies from the reconnaissance department, about 460 men, was approaching the local station, an explosion occurred, as a result of which two wagons of the train derailed. The commander of the transport, Obersturmführer Walter Hauck , ordered all men in the village between the ages of 17 and 50 to be arrested.

After men of the division carried out this order, the prisoners were ordered to walk along the track. Seventy of them were gunned down while they were moving. Another sixteen had already been shot dead during the searches in the village and an additional eight men were injured. Five railway employees were among the dead. A notified patrol from the field gendarmerie ended the massacre. At the time of this massacre, the later SPD politician Carlo Schmid was active as a senior war administrator at Oberfeldkommandatur 670 of the German Wehrmacht in Lille. In his “Memoirs” of the Ascq massacre, it says: “I immediately wrote a report on the facts, which was forwarded by the Oberfeldkommandant to the judge of the SS unit.”

Commemoration

Today there is a museum at Ascq devoted to the crime itself as well as the victims.

On July 13, 1947, President Vincent Auriol laid the foundation stone for the memorial, which was completed in October 1955. The Tertre des massacrés memorial stone was erected on the site next to the railway line . A first museum was inaugurated in 1984, followed by the new Mémorial Ascq 1944 in 2005 .

Ascq in the literature

Louis Aragon processed the massacre in 1954 in a poem. Also played Marie-Paul Armand in her novel Le vent de la Haine (1987) and sorj chalandon in his novel légende La de nos pères at (2009) to these events.

Le Pen interview

After the founder of the right-wing extremist Front National party , Jean-Marie Le Pen , described the German occupation during World War II as "not particularly inhuman" and played down the circumstances of the massacre, he was sentenced to three months' imprisonment on February 8, 2008 sentenced to probation and a fine of 10,000 euros. This judgment was last confirmed in February 2012 in two appeal proceedings initiated by Le Pen.

Proceedings against those involved

After the war, the residents of the village campaigned for the perpetrators to be prosecuted. After a search of the Allied POW camps , nine people, including Hauck, were brought before a French military court in Lille . The sentence was initially for the death penalty in all nine cases , but was shortly afterwards commuted to long prison terms. Hauck himself was released again in 1957.

In January 2016, in connection with the massacre, the Dortmund public prosecutor carried out house searches of three former members of the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth". On October 9, 2017, it became known that the Public Prosecutor's Office in Celle was bringing proceedings against the then 94-year-old former SS Sergeant Karl Münter for aiding and abetting murder . The proceedings were discontinued in March 2018 because a new conviction based on the French death sentence was no longer possible according to the ne bis in idem principle.

On November 8, 2018, Karl Münter appeared as a contributor at a conference in front of 100 right-wing extremists in Thorsten Heise's (NPD) home in Fretterode, Thuringia . On this property there is also a monument to the Waffen SS with a badge of the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth". The relatives of the Ascq murder victims were shocked that not only can Münter no longer be prosecuted, but that right-wing extremists worship him.

On July 23, 2019, the Hildesheim public prosecutor's office announced that it had brought charges against the former SS man from Nordstemmen for sedition and denigration of the deceased before the responsible regional court (Hildesheim).

Münter died on September 20, 2019 at the age of 96.

literature

  • Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex. The National Socialist crimes in France and the justice system in the Federal Republic of Germany (= Modern Times, Volume 6). Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89244-693-8 .
  • Claudia Moisel: France and the German war criminals. Law Enforcement Policy and Practice after World War II. (= Contributions to the History of the 20th Century, Volume 2). Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89244-749-7 .
  • Ludwig Nestler (ed.): The fascist occupation policy in France (1940-1944). (= Europe under the swastika, volume 3). Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-326-00297-1 , pp. 88, 109, 307 f., 330.

Web links

Commons : Mémorial Ascq 1944  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Himmler's warriors: Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period by Jens Westemeier; P. 300.
  2. ↑ Peter Lieb : Conventional war or Nazi ideological war? Warfare and the fight against partisans in France 1943/44. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2007 ISBN 978-3-486-57992-5 p. 267f.
  3. ↑ Villeneuve-d'Ascq en 1939-1945 in "Anonymes, Justes et persécutés durant la période nazie 1939-1944".
  4. ^ Carlo Schmid: Memories. Book guild Gutenberg , Frankfurt 1980, p. 203.
  5. ↑ ajpn.org: Villeneuve-d'Ascq en 1939-1945
  6. ↑ Le Monde : Propos sur l'Occupation: Jean-Marie Le Pen condamné en appel à trois mois de prison avec sursis of February 16, 2012.
  7. ↑ Panzer Division "Hitler Youth": raid on former SS men ; Der Spiegel January 29, 2016
  8. ↑ Mass murder in northern France in 1944: Public prosecutor's office investigates 94-year-old ex-SS man. In: Der Spiegel. October 9, 2017, accessed June 10, 2018 . as well as NDR and Kreiszeitung
  9. ↑ Investigations against former SS men stopped , Focus , March 27, 2018
  10. ^ Robert Bongen, Julian Feldmann, Fabienne Hurst: SS crime: Without punishment, without remorse. In: Zeit.de. November 29, 2018, accessed December 3, 2018 .
  11. ^ Andreas Förster: Violence against journalists: When neo-Nazis hunt. In: FR.de. November 27, 2018, accessed December 3, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Robert Bongen, Julian Feldmann, Fabienne Hurst, Andrej Reisin: Interview with Nazi criminal: "I have no regrets!" In: daserste.ndr.de. November 29, 2018, accessed December 3, 2018 .
  13. ↑ https://www.haz.de/Nachrichten/Ppolitik/Niedersachsen/Prozess-in-Hildesheim-Anklage-gegen-frueheren-SS-Mann-aus-Nordstemmen
  14. ↑ Former SS man charged with sedition Der Spiegel July 24, 2019
  15. ↑ https://staatsanwaltschaft-hildesheim.niedersachsen.de/startseite/aktuelles/presseinformationen/anklage-wegen-volksverhetzung-nach-ausgestrahltem-interview-mit-ndr-reportern-179101.html
  16. ^ Karl M .: Indictment against a former SS man , Panorama , July 24, 2019
  17. ↑ Karl Muenter, German convicted of wartime massacre in France, dies at 96 , Washington Post , September 24, 2019 ( Associated Press )
  18. ↑ Ex-SS man Karl M. from Nordstemmen is dead , Hildesheimer Allgemeine , September 21, 2019
  19. ↑ Former SS soldier Karl Muenter who murdered at least 86 men dead at 96 , metro.co.uk, 23 September 2019

Coordinates: 50 ° 37 '16.4 "  N , 3 ° 10' 2.6"  E