A German court has sensationally thrown out a case against a former Nazi SS member accused of taking part in the massacre of hundreds of French villagers during the Second World War.
Werner Christukat, 89, had been accused of being a member of an armored SS division that attacked Oradour-sur-Glane on June 10, 1944 – savagely murdering nearly all of its inhabitants.
The case against the elderly suspect – who had been charged in January with the murder of 25 people committed by a group, and with aiding and abetting the murder of several hundred others – was dismissed recently for lack of evidence.
Overall, 642 people were killed in the massacre.
Christukat, who lives in Cologne, admitted being in the village with his S.S. regiment on the day, but denied ever killing anybody.
Had he been convicted, it is almost certain that Christukat would have spent the rest of his life in jail.
The massacre the man had been accused of taking part in took place in the tiny village of Oradour-sur-Glane in western France on June 10, 1944.
Today Oradour-sur-Glane exists as a massive memorial – a time capsule where the burned out homes remain exactly as they were on the day they were torched.
SS members stormed a barn where 181 men had gathered, using pistols and automatic weapons to murder them all before setting fire to the structure. They are believed to have then moved on to a church where a further 254 women and 207 children were killed using explosives and machine guns.
The remains of homes in can be seen in Oradour -sur-Glane, where inhabitants were massacred and all homes and businesses destroyed.
Christukat says he has had nightmares about the massacre ever since it took place, particularly overr one small boy whose life he was unable to save.
‘Not a night goes by in which I don’t think of Oradour. In front of me, I can still see the church through the treetops. I hear a bang and then the screaming of women and children.’
Last September German president Joachim Gauck (left) became the first German leader to visit the site when he joined François Hollande (right) and two of the three living survivors on a tour of Oradour-sur-Glane.
The village has been a ghost town since the massacre, with rusting cars nestled long-abandoned beside the rubble of the burned-out church.
Today Oradour exists as a massive memorial – a time capsule where the burned out homes remain exactly as they were on the day they were torched, and even the car of the mayor still lies rusting in the main street.
The location of Oradour-sur-Glane is in central France, approximately 250 miles south of the capital Paris.
Homes and business were all torched by rampaging S.S officers, leaving just empty shells remaining.
The atrocity is an understandably sensitive subjective for France, and last September German president Joachim Gauck became the first German leader to visit the site when he joined François Hollande and two of the three living survivors on a tour of Oradour-sur-Glane.
In a sign of post-war unity, Gauck said he felt a ‘mixture of gratitude and humility’ as he visited the site with his French counterpart Hollande.
The statesman added: ‘The Germany that I have the honor of representing is a different Germany from the one that haunts memories.’
In return, Mr Hollande said: ‘You have made the choice to visit – this is a tribute to you, and at the same time it forces us, once the past has been acknowledged, to go boldly into the future.’
Hollande and Gauck were accompanied by two of only three living survivors of the Oradour massacre – Robert Hebras, 88, and Jean-Marcel Darthout.
However, many could not be extradited from the new East Germany, and 14 of them were Alsatians – French nationals of German descent. 20 men were found guilty, but were all released from prison within five years.
In 2010, Germany re-opened the war crimes file into the massacre after a historian uncovered evidence from former East German files implicating several still-living suspects.
Prosecutors identified seven previously unknown members of the SS unit that carried the attack.
Investigations are now underway into six of the men. The other suspect is Christukat, against whom charges were recently dropped on December 9th.
OK, Fine. 