88-year-old charged in Nazi-era massacre
Print Edition
German authorities have charged an 88-year-old former member of an SS armored division with 25 counts of murder over allegations that he took part in the largest civilian massacre in Nazi-occupied France.
Cologne state court said yesterday that suspect Werner C., whose last name wasn’t given in accordance with German privacy laws, was also charged with hundreds of counts of accessory to murder in connection with the 1944 slaughter in Oradour-sur-Glane in southwestern France.
Prosecutors allege that the suspect shot 25 men as part of a firing squad, and then helped as troops blockaded and then set fire to a church, in which dozens of women and children were burned alive. In total 642 men, women and children were killed.
The suspect’s attorney Rainer Pohlen said his client doesn’t deny being at the village but said he never fired a shot that day and was not involved in any killings. The suspect has until March 31 to respond to the charges.
On June 10, 1944, just four days after the D-Day landings in Normandy, the German troops attacked Oradour-sur-Glane in reprisal for the French Resistance’s kidnapping of a German soldier.
The troops herded the civilians into barns and into the church, blocked the doors and then set fire to the entire town. Those not killed in the blazes were shot as they tried to flee, though a handful managed to escape.
Oradour-sur-Glane today remains a phantom village, with burned-out cars and abandoned buildings left as testimony to its history.
(AP)
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