THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994 TAG: 9406130308
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Steve Harriman
DATELINE: 940612 LENGTH: ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE, FRANCE
By nightfall on June 10, 1944 - French President Mitterrand solemnly commemorated the 50th anniversary on Friday - at least 642 townspeople and refugees from other occupied areas of France who had sought refuge here lay dead under a blanket of ash, amidst the blackened crusts of the town's stone and brick buildings under a silent blanket of ash.
{REST} They had been systematically machine-gunned and burned to death by soldiers from the third company of the S.S. ``der Fuhrer'' regiment of the 2nd ``das Reich'' Panzer Division. Apparently for no reason other than the Nazi's reaction to the recent turn of events at Normandy.
The troops had arrived about 2 that Saturday afternoon, and everyone was ordered into the little town square about 2:45. The women and children were escorted to the old church with its stone floor and 16th century bell tower. The men thought, briefly, they would be safe there, in a sanctuary. The men were then divided into groups and taken to five different barns in the city.
Few imagined what lay ahead.
They had done nothing to provoke the mass murder. There was no resistance movement in this village. It had been out of the war's ghastly path. This was a peaceful place then as it is now - much like the rolling hills of central Virginia, with thick woods and green pastures where brown cattle and white sheep graze. The little river Glane winds and tumbles past the foot of the village.
No one knows to this day why S.S. Gen. Bernard Heitz Lammerding selected Oradour for this horror. The S.S. was not in the habit of explaining things. Some say one of his officers had been captured by the resistance and he wanted to set an example. Somewhere. Anywhere. Oradour, on Lammerding's way from his post in the south of France to the front at Normandy, happened to be convenient. Lammerding died in his sleep in Germany in 1971 without ever saying.
In any case, when all the inhabitants of Oradour were confined, the gunfire began on signal. Then the fires.
Most French towns quickly repaired wartime damage, but what happened at Oradour was too dreadful to forget. So, aside from burying the charred remains of the innocent victims of this little-known atrocity, the town has been left exactly as it was that day - an effective and strongly moving monument to the horrors of war.
Today, a sign along the main street requests SILENCE, and it is mostly quiet here. Visitors stroll singularly or in small groups through the several winding streets bordered by the shells of burned buildings. They talk with hushed voices . . . in several languages. The acrid smells of smoke and burning flesh are long gone, but the haunting presence of death is everywhere.
In the light brown dirt where eroding rains have been at work, I see pieces of china - a piece of a plate, or a teacup, perhaps. And there, thick with rust, nails, a belt buckle and a piece of bicycle chain. A small lizard scurries between a rusted iron pot and its lid. Electrical wires with large ancient ceramic insulators still stretch between concrete poles with metal signs that warn ``Danger de mort.''
There are cars, misshapen from the fire and badly rusted now, in the street and hunkered in the shells of garages where they were parked that Saturday in June. In a fireplace, andirons still hold a cooking pot. There are a pair of brass beds and springs twisted shapeless by the inferno. Bicycles and sewing machines everywhere, rusted as well.
Broken shutters, weathered gray, hang crookedly from hollow-eyed windows. Two mail slots at the post office slant to the moss-covered, rubble-strewn floor.
In what was once a family home, there are four small oval portraits on porcelain - three women and a child of four - mounted on a black stone that gives their ages and the day their life ended: June 10, 1944. They died in the church not 30 yards away. Beside this marker is a rusted, wheel-less baby carriage.
Perhaps it is ironic that the name Oradour comes from the Latin oratorium, meaning an altar or place to offer prayers for the dead.
Jean-Marcel Darthout, now 74, shows no evidence in his walk of the four bullet wounds in his legs, no sign of the burns to his face and upper body, as he tells me, through translator Stephanie Blondeau, of the events in the square and of his ordeal in one of the five barns in which the men had been herded.
Darthout is one of five men and one woman who survived. He is the only one who remains alive today. The memories of that day a half-century ago are carved into his mind as if by broken glass.
It is important for me to understand, he says, how methodical the Germans were as they prepared to wipe Oradour from the face of the earth. They removed the cattle and other animals from the barns in which they herded the men. It was humans, only humans, they intended to kill.
Then the troops carefully cleaned the floor where they set up their machine guns. They were nonchalant, Darthout remembers. ``One soldier,'' he said, ``kept reaching in his jacket pocket for little pieces of sugar and tossing them into his mouth.''
Darthout, then 24, found himself in a barn with five teammates from the local football (soccer) team. ``We were not frightened,'' he said. ``We talked at first about the match we were going to play tomorrow.''
The soldiers, with matte-black helmets, gray-green pants stuffed into heavy jackboots and jackets of thick waterproof cloth flecked in a camouflage pattern of mostly green and yellow, went about their business.
These were S.S. troops. Their cap badge was a skull and crossbones. Death was their business.
One of Darthout's friends overheard the soldiers talking. He recognized the dialect. He thought he understood.
``They are going to kill us!'' he whispered to Darthout.
Darthout replied, ``No, it is not possible. `You've misunderstood.''
``Well, maybe so.''
Those were his friend's last words.
Then it began. ``I was hit in the first strafe,'' Darthout recalled, more animated now, ``by two bullets in the lower legs. I was one of the first to go down, and I got two more bullets in the thighs. My friends began falling on top of me. It was awful, very noisy. The guns kept firing, and I could hear groans and cries all around me.''
When the machine guns stopped, the soldiers began to check for movement. ``I heard the cocking of rifles,'' Darthout said, making a motion with his hand as if moving the bolt, ``and then a bang. Cock . . . bang. One of the Germans was standing on my shoulder. I thought, `I am going to die.' I kept waiting for my final shot. I did not move. The shot was for my friend.''
When all was quiet - except for the chatting, laughing soldiers - the bodies were covered with whatever would burn. Then the match.
``The fire was so hot and so quick to ignite, I suppose they put something like phosphorus on it. Not petrol, I know that smell. My hair and my face were burned. All my clothes. I thought, `I'm going to be killed anyway,' and I stood up.''
The Germans had left.
Darthout and five other survivors struggled through a small hole in the wall into another barn and climbed into its loft. Many of the badly wounded remained on the barn floor to be burned alive. Darthout and his companions hid beneath piles of hay. Soon the barn door was opened by two soldiers who were talking.
``One of the Germans climbed the ladder to the loft. It was dark there and he lit a match to see if anyone was there. The match went out. He lit a second match, put it in the hay and climbed back down.
``The fire was burning my leg. I tried to put it out, but one of my friends said, `Stop it! The Germans are still here.'
``When the Germans finally left, we escaped again. I jumped to the floor and it hurt my wounded legs very bad. This time I hid in a rabbit hutch, only about this big,'' he said, holding his hand about 4 feet high.
One of the six men who initially escaped from the barn tried to make it across the market square. He was spotted and shot. Darthout and four others survived.
At dusk, and under cover of a dense pall of smoke that hung over the entire village, Darthout made it across the square and hid behind a hedge. The last thing he remembers before fainting was the terrible noise from the fire and the crashing of roofs and timbers.
He was found later that evening by people who lived not more than 600 meters from Oradour. They had been spared.
Darthout lost his wife, Angele, that day. Sitting under heavy guard in the Market Square, he recalled, ``I saw for the last time my wife, in tears, disappearing with the other women as they turned the corner toward the church.''
The lone woman survivor, Marguerite Rouffanche, made it out of the church where the other women and children were massacred. Then 47, she lost her husband, her son, two daughters and her grandson that day. She died in 1988.
Rouffanche, miraculously unhurt by the gunfire and hidden by dense smoke, climbed out of the church through the shattered stained-glass window above the altar and dropped about 20 feet to the ground. Another woman tossed her baby out and followed. But the baby's cries attracted the attention of the S.S. troops, who machine-gunned all three. Rouffanche was hit five times but survived by playing dead until nightfall.
Few knew of Oradour at the time. News of events in Normandy kept the free world transfixed, and France was still largely in German hands. After the war the Holocaust captured world attention.
Even today, what happened at Oradour 50 years ago is hardly known and rarely publicized. There is no mention that I can find in any official tourist publications about the Limousin region of France.
It's sad, I think, that so little is known of this dead piece of living history. The official death toll is 642, but many think it could be several hundred higher. No one will ever know. I have seen pictures of the bodies and parts of bodies charred beyond recognition. Only 52 were positively identified.
Those who do visit will always remember. Those who do will understand the words of a local official who cried out in his funeral speech over the victims: ``The French language does not possess strong enough words to describe this act.''
Interestingly, the German language does. The term ``Schadenfreude'' is translated as ``pleasure in doing evil.''
by CNB