German authorities have charged an 88-year-old former member of an SS division with 25 counts of murder over allegations that he took part in the largest civilian massacre in Nazi-occupied France.
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Cologne state court spokesman Achim Hengstenberg said 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.
Dortmund prosecutors allege that the suspect shot 25 men as part of a firing squad. The men were killed in a barn, which was then set on fire. The village’s women and the children were being held prisoner in the church and were killed by explosives and hand grenades, before the building, too, was set ablaze. In total 642 men, women and children were murdered.
The suspect’s attorney, Rainer Pohlen, told the 'Associated Press' his client did not deny being at the village but said he had never fired a shot that day and had not otherwise been involved in any killings. “My client contests any participation in this massacre, which he finds a truly terrible act,” Pohlen said, adding that he had fully cooperated in giving statements to investigators.
The court now needs to decide whether to move ahead with a trial, but the suspect first has until 31 Marchto respond to the charges. If the case does go to trial, it is possible it would be held in a juvenile court because Werner C. was only 19 at the time.
On 10 June 1944, just four days after the D-Day landings in Normandy, the SS division 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 burnt-out cars and abandoned buildings left as testimony to its history. In September, German President Joachim Gauck and France’s Francois Hollande met in the ghost town in a visit aimed at underscoring French-German postwar reconciliation. Gauck told a crowd there at the time that he shared their “bitterness over the fact that the murderers have not been brought to justice.”
