One Day in Oradour (20 page)

The amazing story of Alfred Fournier’s escape follows very closely the accounts given by Roger Godfrin when he was interviewed as a witness at the 1953 trials of the SS soldiers involved in the massacre. Roger’s family had an agreed plan that, if the Germans ever came to Oradour-sur-Glane, they would all go to hide in the woods behind Oradour cemetery. Their previous experience in fleeing from Charly in 1940 had taught them never to trust their German enemy.

On the afternoon of 10th June, Roger was at the Lorraine refugee school on the road to Peyrilhac with his two eldest sisters, Jeanne and Pierette. When the sound of machine guns was first heard, their teacher, Monsieur Goujon, originally took his pupils to the infants’ school, further up the road into the village and closer to the church. It was into this classroom that the German soldier arrived to order the staff and children to join the rest of the villagers on the fairground.

Despite Roger’s pleas, his sisters decided to obey the soldier’s order, crying that they wanted to be with their mother. We do not know why Roger’s parents, Arthur and Georgette did not stick to the plan that day, nor do we know exactly what happened to his youngest two siblings, Claude (age four) and Josette (age three). All we do know is that their names appear alongside those of his two elder sisters on the memorial plaque to the forty-four refugees from Charly in Lorraine who lost their lives that day.

Having made his decision not to follow his sisters to the fairground, Roger, who had a reputation for being a bit of a daredevil, took advantage of a moment when the SS soldier who had come to round them up was distracted. While the German was talking to Monsieur Goujon, Roger sneaked out of the classroom into a play room on the back of the school and then out of an open
window. He climbed a fence behind the school, losing a shoe as he did so, but then, hearing two German sentries laughing and joking, was forced to hide. He was joined in his hiding place by Monsieur Thomas, his father’s boss, and three others.

Roger stayed hidden there for some time, but when he heard the machine gun fire breaking out all over the village, he fled for the cemetery. As he reached the corner of the road to the cemetery, he was spotted by a soldier who fired at him. In our story, this soldier becomes Dietrich, fresh from the murder of Alfred’s father, and this is the only moment in which the two central characters meet.

Roger’s next move was, for a seven-year-old boy, incredibly brave and showed amazing presence of mind. Having been shot at, Roger fell to the ground and pretended to be dead, successfully fooling the soldier who even kicked him in the kidneys to see if he moved.

Roger lay there for more than two hours before continuing his race for the woods. Even so, he was spotted by another German soldier. Luckily this man showed him some mercy, telling him to run away fast, rather than shooting at him. It may have been at this point that Roger decided to change his route, abandoning his attempt to reach the woods behind the cemetery and to head instead for the River Glane.

His new route was safer, leading him through long grass, and it was here that he was joined by a black and white dog called Bobby who ran with him. But as the pair approached the river, six soldiers in a truck saw them from the road and opened fire. Roger dived across the river to safety and, suffering scratches to his body and thighs from the brambles on the river bank, hid behind a large oak tree, while the little dog was not so lucky.

Roger Godfrin was the only school child in Oradour-sur-Glane that day who survived the massacre by the SS. After the horrific event, he returned to the ruined village several times for special commemoration events and the photographs taken of him, standing among the ruins and the memorials in the cemetery, came to symbolise the many innocent victims who lost their lives that day.

After the war, in the early 1950s, Roger became an Air Force cadet and went on to marry and have two children of his own. Right up until his death at the age of sixty-four, on 10th February 2001, he always played down the bravery of his actions that day in 1944. It was, he said, ‘Just fate, I did like the others did. Cleverer ones died in it. It’s just destiny, nothing heroic at all.’

Of the 644 people who lost their lives in Oradour-sur-Glane, 191 were men, 247 were women and 206
were children. Almost 170 were people from the surrounding villages and hamlets who were either rounded up and brought to the fairground by the SS or who were in Oradour on 10th June voluntarily. Many of these were school children who had come into Oradour for the vaccination programme being carried out that day. Another thirty-three of the victims came from Limoges and twenty-five were from other parts of the Haute-Vienne. Only eighty-six residents of Oradour survived, fifty-seven of whom were not in the village that day and twenty-three of whom, including Roger Godfrin, escaped death by hiding around the village or by fleeing to safety. Only six people escaped from the execution sites: the five men who fled from the Laudy Barn, and Madame Rouffanche, who climbed out of the church window.

According to the museum at the Memorial and Visitor Centre at Oradour-sur-Glane, the blame for the massacre is laid firmly at the door of General Heinz Lammerding, Commander of the Das Reich division. Indeed it is his name that appears on a plaque in the cemetery which bears the inscription:

‘Crime committed by the 2nd SS Division Das Reich under orders of General Lammerding.’

Furious about the increase in Resistance attacks and under pressure to move the troops rapidly north
to Normandy to defend against the Allied invasion, Lammerding had, on 5th June 1944, issued an anti-terrorist memorandum in which he outlined the repressive measures to be taken against civilians in areas in which the Resistance was operating. In response to this and to a Resistance attack on a garrison at Tulle, near Limoges, Lammerding had ordered the hanging of ninety-nine male hostages from the village.

The abduction and kidnap of the SS commander Major Helmut Kämpfe (upon whom the character Major Thomas Klausner is based) led Lammerding to issue a further Order of the Day, dated 10th June, called ‘The Position with Regard to Guerrilla Bands and Tactics for Combating Them’. This order outlined the punitive measures to be taken against anyone who threatened the established order of the German occupation. There was to be a ‘brutal crackdown in the zone’.

However, whether or not that specifically ordered the massacre which took place in Oradour-sur-Glane is the subject of much debate.

According to the Police Superintendent Massièras in his testimony at the Bordeaux trials in 1953, the Germans were keen to take reprisals for the murders of Kämpfe and the driver of Karl Gerlach (Gerlach becomes Heinz Goth in our story) and ‘wanted to terrify the French people.’ He suggests that Oradour-sur-Glane
was an ideal target for a reprisal as, ‘they could not do so in a town of 10,000 inhabitants [like Saint Junien] but they could do so in a village’.

Other historians agree that Oradour-sur-Glane was specifically chosen as a target by the Nazis because of its size, and they also point to the fact that it was defenceless and easy to encircle. Certainly, the village was only a few kilometres from the place where Kämpfe was ambushed, and according to Karl Gerlach, his abduction and narrow escape from execution also took place in the vicinity of Oradour.

So there were clear reasons to search the area, and maybe even to demand hostages in order to negotiate with the Resistance, but there is no solid evidence linking Oradour-sur-Glane to any Resistance activity, and no documented proof that Lammerding specifically ordered the massacre of innocent civilians here. Even if Major Adolf Diekmann did have orders to search the village and take hostages, it is quite possible that he was not ordered to do any more than that. This is why many historians and commentators on the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane point the finger of blame primarily at this man.

Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann was described by his superiors as a ‘very brave, go-getter’ who was ‘very deliberate in the leadership of his Battalion’. He could
be short-tempered and brusque with his men and there are even suggestions that he was a drinker (although this is not backed up by the official assessment of his character which was made and documented by his superior, Sylvester Stadler, just a few days before the massacre, on 1st June 1944).

Diekmann is reported to have been enraged about recent Resistance attacks, and his own battalion had been one of their targets while crossing the Dordogne on their march north. Diekmann and his fellow SS commanders were also furious about the abduction and kidnap on 9th June of the SS commander Major Helmut Kämpfe, a man whom he is reported to have known well, and to have fought alongside.

So when he was given orders from his regiment to go into Oradour and search for Kampfe and to take hostages, it is quite likely that Diekmann relished the opportunity to take revenge. According to massacre survivor Robert Hébras in his book
The Slaughter of our Village
, Diekmann took matters into his own hands in Oradour, going way beyond his orders in his lust for retribution:

‘The decision had been taken to carry out a punitive operation, it appears, by the senior staff of the Das Reich division. Its organisation and execution were entrusted to Diekmann … I am also persuaded that
Diekmann went beyond the initial order, as could be proved by the sadism with which he exterminated the women and children.’

We cannot be sure whether Diekmann knew that Major Kämpfe had been murdered by the time he entered Oradour, but it does seem that the meeting he had in Saint Junien, just a couple of hours before the first troops arrived in the village, was crucial in some way. If Diekmann received news about Major Kämpfe from his informants at that meeting, it could have influenced his decision not to take hostages, as ordered, but to seek revenge instead.

Certainly, when Diekmann returned to the headquarters of the Der Führer Regiment in Limoges at the end of the day on 10th June, we hear that his commanding officer, Stadler, was ‘shaken to the core’ by his report. Not only did Stadler consider Diekmann’s actions to be a huge overreaction to events, he was also quick to insist that Diekmann would have to face a court martial. ‘I cannot allow the regiment to be charged with something like this!’ Stadler is reported to have said.

However, Diekmann did not live long enough to face a court martial. He was killed just nineteen days after the massacre on the battlefield in Normandy, so we can never know the real reasons behind his appalling actions.

In the days, weeks and months after it happened, the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane shocked the whole of France, and in 1953 in Bordeaux, it led to one of the most significant series of post-war trials of German officers.

Although many of the accused, including Diekmann, were dead or missing, eight German SS soldiers were present at the trial, alongside fourteen soldiers from the Alsace who had taken part in the massacre. Forty-four men were also tried
in absentia
(in their absence).

Diekmann’s death on the Normandy battlefield in 1944 made him an easy scapegoat for the atrocities. Since he was not present to defend himself to the French courts, it was simple to blame him for everything as the commander of the exercise.

General Lammerding was also absent. By then he was living in Düsseldorf, in an area which fell under British authority. Before they would agree to allow the French courts to summon Lammerding to trial, the British authorities demanded strong proof of guilt. They were keen to ensure that the trial was genuinely about bringing justice and was not simply a way of seeking revenge. In Lammerding’s case, the French courts could not convince the British authorities that there was sufficient evidence to prove his involvement in the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane, and so their
request to extradite him was declined. Lammerding did, however, send a letter to the courts in which he confirmed that he had been informed by Commander Sylvester Stadler that Adolf Diekmann had exceeded his orders at Oradour, and that he would have faced an enquiry, had he not been killed before it took place.

In the end, all the 46 accused, including Lammerding, who were not present at the trial were sentenced to death ‘in absentia’. The rest were given prison sentences of between eight and twelve years, with the German defendants being given longer sentences than the Alsatians.

The verdicts created uproar. Many thought they were far too lenient while others, who argued that the SS were reacting to attacks by the Resistance and that they were carrying out Diekmann’s orders, claimed that they were far too severe.

Amazingly, the latter won the day as, following a series of protests which led to an amnesty, all twenty-one men were soon released. This decision was met with outrage by the survivors of Oradour-sur-Glane who felt that their village was being punished and sacrificed for a second time.

The people of Oradour-sur-Glane may yet get some justice. At the end of 2011, the German police raided the homes of six men, all aged between 85 and 86
years old and all known to have belonged to the 3rd Company of the 1st Battalion of Der Führer in the SS Das Reich division, which carried out the atrocities at Oradour-sur-Glane on 10th June 1944. No names have been released but it has been suggested that these men did not stand trial at Bordeaux in 1953.

During the raids, the police searched for wartime documents, photographs, diaries and any other evidence which might prove the role that these men played in the massacre. All of the men arrested were low-ranking officers and two have denied taking part in the murders, while the other four have declared themselves unfit to be questioned.

However, investigations continue and if sufficient evidence is found, the accused could be put on trial for murder or accessory to murder.

For now, the men who killed so many innocent men, women and children at Oradour-sur-Glane may have escaped punishment, but their actions – and the lessons learned from them – will never be forgotten. The stories of the survivors, of people like Roger Godfrin, Marguerite Rouffanche and Robert Hébras, serve to teach us about the very worst and the very best of human nature.