Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944

Good lord, just read this story about this SS Officer involved in the massacre of a whole town (and others) in France in 1944. I know a lot of atrocities happened all over the war zones areas and for the duration of WW2, but learning about ones I hadn't heard about before is always so astounding to me ... that so many people were victims of the SS. Atrocious events and numbers are incomprehensible.

As far as I'm concerned NO Mr. Barth, you did not pay long enough or in the right way for what you done, especially considering you bopped along free from responsibility and accountability until 1981 leaving ended lives and grief that never quits for the losses and destruction in your wake!!!

Sigh.

August 14, 2007

Ex-SS officer Heinz Barth dead at 86

By THOMAS SEYTHAL

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - Heinz Barth, a former SS officer convicted of involvement in the massacre of an entire village in Nazi-occupied France, has died, a priest in the town where he lived said Tuesday. He was 86.

Barth died of cancer in the past few days, said Heinz-Dieter Schmidtke, the parish priest in Gransee, north of Berlin. He could not provide the exact date of Barth's death and did not say where he died.

In 1983, a court in East Berlin convicted Barth and sentenced him to life in prison for his role in the slaughter of villagers in Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944, widely considered the worst atrocity in Nazi-occupied France.

On June 10, 1944, as they headed toward Normandy to combat D-Day invasion forces who landed four days earlier, German troops of the armoured SS Division "Das Reich" slaughtered 642 men, women and children in the village.

The Germans rounded up the village men, forced them into barns and machine-gunned them. The 241 women and 209 children were herded into the church, which was set afire with grenades, and then were shot at with machine-guns.

In addition to involvement in the massacre, East German judges also found that Barth volunteered to participate in an execution of 92 Czech civilians in 1942.

Barth lived under a false name in communist East Germany, working as a decorator in Gransee and running a grocery store, until his identity emerged in 1981 and he was imprisoned.

In 1997, a state court freed Barth on health grounds, commuting his sentence to probation. Barth, who lost a leg in the war, suffered from diabetes, high blood pressure and other ailments.

"I feel guilty about the terrible crimes in Oradour," Barth was quoted as telling the Berlin tabloid B.Z. at the time of his release. "But I have paid long enough."

Barth's death "reminds France of one of the most tragic episodes of its history," French President Nicolas Sarkozy's office said in a statement. Sarkozy "pays tribute to the victims and to the pain of his descendants," it added.