Word: oradour
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...lawyers refused to appear in court, and church bells tolled-all in protest against the verdict of a French military court 350 miles away in Bordeaux. Among the 20 former SS soldiers found guilty that morning of having taken part in the massacre of 642 men, women & children at Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944 (TIME, Jan. 26) were 14 Alsatians. Mostly youths of about 17 at the time of the massacre, all but two had been pressed into German service against their will, their lawyers said...
...Bordeaux, Judge Marcel Nussy Saint-Saëns (nephew of the composer) had delayed his verdict until 1 a.m. to avoid a public demonstration of quite another kind. There, not far from the desolate ruin of Oradour, feeling had run high all month long as witnesses told of the grisly mass murder. Paris newspapers had built the story up into one of the year's great controversies; it proved particularly timely, as a reminder of past German cruelties, for politicians who oppose a European army in which Germans and Frenchmen will wear the same uniform. The verdict: death...
Choose Thirty. They were, in fact, a company of the SS division Das Reich, commanded by 55 Major Otto Dickmann. Through an interpreter Major Dickmann now called for the mayor of Oradour...
...have a report that arms are cached in Oradour...
...mayor spoke the truth: there were no arms hidden in Oradour. But the SS herded the men into six large barns on the outskirts of Oradour and drove the women & children into the church. A large smoke bomb was exploded inside the church and, as the women & children panicked, the SS men mowed them down with machine guns. The explosion of the smoke bomb was the signal for the soldiers stationed outside the barns to fire point blank into the massed groups of men. The soldiers then walked in among the fallen bodies, firing with their pistols on any that...