Oradour massacre

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French charity stamp to mark the 1st anniversary of the destruction of Oradour-sur-Glane (1945)

The Oradour massacre on June 10, 1944 was a war crime committed by the Waffen SS against the population of the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane .

Almost all residents were murdered, there were only 36 survivors. The village was completely destroyed. The massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane it was with 642 victims to the most numerous massacres in Western Europe .

Historical background

Immediately after the Allies landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" stationed in south-west France under SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Lammerding received the order to march north to the invasion front .

At the same time, the partisans rose in the Limousin to support the invasion and prevent the supply of German troops to the invading front. The partisans of the communist-ruled FTP , which knew nothing of the advancing SS division, achieved a great success on June 7th and 8th, 1944. They managed to take Tulle , the capital of the Corrèze department , where several hundred German soldiers were stationed. In the previous fighting, the German defenders shot - possibly accidentally - 18 unarmed railway guards working on behalf of the German occupying forces and wearing white armbands on the afternoon of June 7th. When they captured Tulle, the Germans lost 122 soldiers - dead, wounded and missing. According to the military historian Peter Lieb , the corpses of the dead were partially desecrated, citing a report by the Prefect of the Corrèze Trouille department. When units of the division "Das Reich" reached Tulle on the evening of June 8th with superior forces, the partisans fled the city. The next day, the SS division “Das Reich” retaliated against the military success of the French resistance . As an act of revenge, soldiers of the Panzer Division hanged 99 hostages arbitrarily gathered from the population in Tulle on June 9, 1944 .

As a reaction to this war crime, several captured Wehrmacht soldiers were captured by the French resistance - including Adolf Diekmann's comrade in arms , the commander of the III. Battalion of the SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 4 "Der Führer" , Helmut Fights - murdered. In response, another reprisal against the French population, this time ordered by Diekmann, was planned.

course

On June 10, shortly after 2 p.m., around 150 soldiers of the 3rd Company of the 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich” surrounded the village of Oradour, 22 kilometers north-west of Limoges, the SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 4 “Der Führer” . sur-Glane. The villagers were first rounded up on the market square and then, after more than an hour, the SS split them up into men, women and children. The boss of the 3rd Company, Otto Kahn, testified in a court case in Dortmund after the war: "Diekmann told me that the order to burn down and destroy the village of Oradour had been received, which I had to carry out."

The more than 400 women and children were cooped up in the small church. After about an hour and a half, SS men detonated a smoke bomb in a box in front of the altar using nitrogen gas , which caused acrid smoke and panic. When the windows of the church burst, those trapped were shot at and thrown with hand grenades. Even attempts to escape were prevented by heavy fire. Finally a fire was started in the church; the wooden roof of the church tower went up in flames and finally hit the trapped crowd through the roof of the nave. The 47-year-old farmer Marguerite Rouffanche alone managed to escape through a window into a nearby pea patch, where she, seriously injured by five machine gun shots, held out until the next day and survived. Your eyewitness account is the only one of the crime from a victim's perspective; he was confirmed by several SS members at the hearing before the military court in Bordeaux in 1953. After the injured Rouffanche had first been questioned in the hospital by Pierre Povetin, a member of the MUR Resistance Association , the Prefect of Limoges took a testimony on June 13, the summary of which he sent to the German Armistice Commission in Wiesbaden, a Reich German authority for contentious matters between Vichy France and Germany, which had been established with the Franco-German armistice of 1940 .

Meanwhile, the remaining 200 men and older boys were detained in garages and barns. In response to a signal shot, the soldiers simultaneously opened fire to liquidate them. The piles of corpses were then set on fire with the help of straw, regardless of the injured survivors. Only five men managed to escape in time; some of them were also seriously injured.

A total of 642 people died in Oradour, of which only 52 could later be identified . 207 children and 254 women were among the dead. 36 people survived the massacre, including

Mme Taillandier (from Paris, has lived there for 10 years)
Martial Beaubreuil and his brother
Armand Senon
Hubert Desourteaux
the 3 children Pinède
Roger Godfrin (eight years old)
Marguerite Rouffanche
and Robert Hébras , who joined the resistance after this experience and emerged as a book author after the war. He became known for his efforts towards reconciliation between France and Germany . Hébras was honored many times; Among other things, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.

Prosecution

25 Pfennig - special stamp "Oradour sur Glane memorial" of the GDR Post 1966 with the Oradour memorial (series of international memorials and memorials )

Even if revisionist representations, such as memorial literature by former SS members, occasionally tried to justify the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane as war repression, it was a clear crime, according to Peter Lieb.

On the part of the German occupiers and the Vichy regime , the actions of the SS division were occasionally criticized, but judicial prosecution of those involved in the massacre was only initiated after the Second World War . In 1953 only 65 perpetrators could be charged, the rest either fell in the further course of the Second World War or could no longer be identified. On February 13, 1953, a military tribunal in Bordeaux sentenced 21 SS soldiers present at the trial, including 14 Alsatians . Since the French parliament had passed a law prohibiting the joint indictment of French and Germans, the judgments for the two groups were pronounced separately. A German and an Alsatian who had voluntarily entered the Waffen SS were sentenced to death , 18 defendants to terms of between eight and twelve years of forced labor. One defendant was acquitted. The judgment caused unrest in Alsace, so that the French parliament passed an amnesty law . The judgments against the Alsatians were thereby overturned. The sentences against the Germans were commuted to prison terms and the convicts were released shortly afterwards. The two death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment after some time ; In 1959 these perpetrators were also released from prison.

The Federal Republic of Germany did not hold anyone criminally responsible for the massacre. Accused were neither transferred to France for trial, since according to Art. 16 of the Basic Law, no German may be extradited abroad, nor was there a conviction in the Federal Republic of Germany. There were a number of preliminary investigations, but none of them resulted in charges. The reason for the termination of the proceedings was based on the extensive investigation results of the responsible public prosecutor in Dortmund, according to which the battalion commander at the time , SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, was solely responsible.

In the mid-1970s, the State Security - responsible for investigating Nazi crimes in the GDR - tracked down Heinz Barth . Initially, he was only investigated because of his involvement in shootings in former Czechoslovakia; After a few years, investigators discovered his involvement in the Oradour massacre. As SS-Obersturmführer, Barth was the leader of the 1st platoon of the 3rd company of the Panzergrenadier Regiment "Der Führer". 45 soldiers were subordinate to him, to whom he u. a. gave the order to shoot 20 men locked in a garage. He was tried in 1983 before the First Criminal Division of the Berlin City Court. Barth was sentenced to life imprisonment. This left him the only perpetrator convicted by a German court. In 1997 he was released from prison in the reunified Germany. Due to his severe war injuries (he had lost a leg) he was temporarily given a war victim's pension, which was withdrawn from him after protests and the amendment of the Federal Pension Act (BVG). Barth died in August 2007.

In 2011 the public prosecutor's office in Dortmund and the State Criminal Police Office of North Rhine-Westphalia began investigations into suspected murder against six former members of the 3rd Company of the Panzer Grenadier Regiment “Der Führer”. At the beginning of December 2011, at the instigation of the Central Office for the Processing of National Socialist mass crimes in North Rhine-Westphalia, a house search was carried out in the homes of six allegedly involved in the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Hesse and Brandenburg.

In January 2014, the Dortmund public prosecutor brought charges against an 88-year-old Cologne resident allegedly involved. In December 2014, however, the Cologne Regional Court refused to open the main proceedings against the now 89-year-old pensioner because he was probably no longer actively involved in the murders. The Higher Regional Court of Cologne confirmed the decision of the Regional Court of Cologne on June 12, 2015. This means that the refusal to open the main proceedings has become final.

Commemoration

Cimetière

Inscription: "Tomb for the 642 victims of the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre - remember"
The privately erected memorial at the Oradour-sur-Glane cemetery for the victims of the massacre

The Cimetière d'Oradour-sur-Glane (German cemetery of Oradour-sur-Glane ) is located on the northern edge of the ruined village, which was declared a historical monument in 1946.

With the exception of one building, the so-called Maison d'Oradour , it is the only infrastructure facility in Oradour-sur-Glane that survived the destruction of the place on June 10, 1944 by the SS unscathed and is still functioning today.

Due to the large number of visitors each year to the ruined village and the Center de la mémoire , which opened in 1999, the cemetery of this small municipality in the Limousin is one of the most visited in France . It usually forms the end of the tour of the ruined village.

Immediately in front of the cemetery is the state memorial for the victims of the SS massacre, which had been empty for 26 years. Due to a general amnesty for the murderers of Oradour-sur-Glane shortly after the Bordeaux Trial in 1953, the Association of Victim Families decided to erect a memorial for their murdered relatives in protest and not to bury them in the state memorial.

The Oradour-sur-Glane cemetery is home to two monuments: a state, which has been exhibiting everyday objects from the period before the massacre since 1974, and the private, donated memorial for the remains of those who were murdered as a result of the desecration and the burns could no longer be assigned: only around 10 percent of those murdered were identified. They found their final resting place in the respective family graves.

Center de la mémoire

The Center de la mémoire (Oradour-sur-Glane) opened in 1999.

Center de la mémoire

Visit of the German Federal President

On September 4, 2013, Federal President Joachim Gauck was the first German head of state to visit the village together with French President François Hollande as part of a state visit . The presidents commemorated the atrocities with a gesture of reconciliation: hand in hand, Gauck and Hollande had the massacre of Robert Hébras portrayed.

In France, the visit is seen in line with Verdun's gesture of reconciliation, for which then President François Mitterrand and then Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl met in 1984 (see also Franco-German relations ).

Cinematic reception

Le Vieux Fusil (“ The Old Gun ” or “Farewell to the Night”) is a Franco-German fictional film directed by Robert Enrico in 1975 with Philippe Noiret and Romy Schneider based on the Oradour massacre. Alternative scenes were filmed for West German cinemas that softened and relativized particularly inhuman dialogues by the Germans in the French original. Particularly brutal scenes have been removed. The film was released uncensored in the GDR.

gallery

Recordings from 2004

  • Destroyed main street with remains of the tram

  • The ruin of the church

  • The former post office

  • Burned out cars in a former workshop

  • Peugeot 202 in the market square

literature

  • Sarah Farmer: Martyred village. Commemorating the 1944 massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane. University Press, Berkeley, Calif. 1999, ISBN 0-520-21186-3 .
  • Andrea Erkenbrecher: A Right to Irreconcilability? Oradour-sur-Glane, German-French Relations and the Limits of Reconciliation after World War II. In: Birgit Schwelling (Ed.): Reconciliation, Civil Society, and the Politics of Memory. Transnational Initiatives in the 20th and 21st Century. Transcript, Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-8376-1931-7 , pp. 167-199.
  • Andrea Erkenbrecher: Civil society commitment to reconciliation in Oradour-sur-Glane. Look at a little-known chapter. In: Against Forgetting - For Democracy. No. 82, September 2014, pp. 15-17.
  • Andrea Erkenbrecher: Oradour-sur-Glane. Place of a late reconciliation. In: Corine Defrance , Ulrich Pfeil (Ed.): Understanding and Reconciliation after the “Civilization Break”? Germany and Europe after 1945. Brussels a. a. 2016, ISBN 978-2-87574-334-3 , pp. 329-348.
  • Jean-Jacques Fouché: Oradour. Levi, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-86746-271-1 .
  • Jean-Jacques Fouché: Oradour. La politique et la justice. Souny, Saint-Paul 2004, ISBN 2-84886-026-X .
  • Martin Graf, Florence Hervé (ed.): Oradour - history of a massacre / Histoire d'un massacre . Papyrossa-Verlag Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-89438-554-5 .
  • Henry Leide: Nazi Criminal and State Security. The secret past politics of the GDR. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-525-35018-X . (therein: The Heinz Barth case. pp. 131–142).
  • 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 .
  • Ahlrich Meyer : The German occupation in France. Fight against resistance and persecution of Jews. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2000, ISBN 3-534-14966-1 .
  • Ahlrich Meyer: Oradour 1944. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Places of horror - crimes in the Second World War. Primus, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-232-0 , pp. 176-185.
  • Claudia Moisel: France and the German war criminals. Politics and practice of criminal prosecution after the Second World War (= dissertation, University of Bochum 2002). Edition Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89244-749-7 .
  • Guy Pauchou, Pierre Masfrand: Oradour-sur-Glane vision d'épouvante. Édition Lavauzelle, Limoges 1970, OCLC 804541047 .
  • Guy Penaud: La "Das Reich" 2nd SS Panzer Division (= Parcours de la division en France ). Éditions de La Lauze, Périgueux 2005, ISBN 2-912032-76-8 .
  • Lea Rosh , Günther Schwarberg: The last day of Oradour. Steidl, Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-88243-092-3 .
  • Herbert Taege: Where's Cain? Revelations and documents on the Tulle + Oradour complex. Lindhorst: Askania 1981. 389 pages with 54 illustrations and maps. ISBN 978-3-921730-09-6 .
  • Herbert Taege: Where's Abel? Further revelations and documents on the Tulle + Oradour complex. Lindhorst: Askania 1985. 287 pages with illustrations and maps. ISBN 978-3-921730-16-4 .

Web links

Commons : Oradour-sur-Glane  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Lieb: Conventional war or Nazi ideological war? Warfare and the fight against partisans in France 1943/44. Munich 2007, p. 368.
  2. ^ Bruno Kartheuser: The hangings of Tulle. June 9, 1944. St. Vith / Belgium, 2004. ISBN 2-87316-020-9 . P. 331 f.
  3. ↑ Peter Lieb: Conventional war or Nazi ideological war? , P. 364, footnote 568 and p. 365, footnote 571.
  4. ↑ Peter Lieb: Conventional war or Nazi ideological war? Warfare and the fight against partisans in France 1943/44. Munich 2007, p. 364.
  5. ^ The massacre in the French city of Tulle in 1944
  6. ^ Sarah Bennett Farmer: Oradour-sur-Glane: Memory in a Preserved Landscape. French Historical Studies 19/1 (1995), pp. 27-47, p. 29.
  7. ↑ a b Torsten Migge: The SS massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane. geschichtsthemen.de, 2005, accessed on September 17, 2014 .
  8. ↑ a b Eugen Georg Schwarz: 60 years of sadness. In: Focus . June 7, 2004, accessed September 17, 2014 .
  9. ↑ a b Andrea Erkenbrecher, Martin Graf: The day on which time stood still. In: Der Spiegel . June 14, 2014, accessed September 17, 2014 .
  10. ^ Hellmuth Auerbach: Oradour-sur-Glane . In: Wolfgang Benz , Hermann Graml and Hermann Weiß (eds.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1997, p. 626.
  11. ^ Process report by a participant, in English: Hélène Jeanty Raven, Without frontiers. TB Hodder & Stoughton, London 1966, pp. 185-193 = chap. 23 (first 1960)
  12. ↑ Florence Hervé , Martin Graf (ed.): Oradour - history of a massacre / Histoire d'un massacre. Cologne 2014.
  13. ↑ Oradour-sur-Glane massacre: Investigations against former SS members. In: Focus Online . December 5, 2011, accessed September 5, 2013.
  14. ^ Raid on suspected German war criminals ( memento of December 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). In: tagesschau.de . December 5, 2011, accessed January 10, 2012.
  15. ↑ Press release of the Cologne Regional Court ( Memento of the original from January 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) of January 8, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lg-koeln.nrw.de
  16. ↑ Rejection decision of the Cologne Regional Court  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) dated December 9, 2014.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.lg-koeln.nrw.de  
  17. ↑ See context: Andrea Erkenbrecher: Oradour-sur-Glane. For the 70th anniversary. In: Against forgetting. For Democracy eV gegen-vergessen.de
  18. ↑ Florian Gathmann: The exhausting guest. In: Spiegel Online . 4th September 2013.
  19. ↑ Daniel Friedrich Stumm: "I bow my head before your victims" In: Die Welt , September 4, 2013.
  20. ↑ Before that, Gauck had already traveled to other places with massacres for which Germans were responsible: Sant'Anna di Stazzema (Tuscany), Lidice (Czech Republic), Breda (Netherlands).
  21. ^ Commemorating SS crimes: Gauck in Oradour hand in hand with Hollande. In: Spiegel Online. 4th September 2013.
  22. ↑ Dr. Emile Desourteaux. According to Sarah Farmer in Martyred Village (see literature), however, his vehicle was parked on his property a few days after the massacre and the vehicle currently standing there was the car of the wine merchant.

Coordinates: 45 ° 55 ′ 40.8 "  N , 1 ° 2 ′ 27.6"  E