Nazi war criminal Heinz Barth, infamously known as the "Assassin
of Oradour" for his role in the 1944 massacre in the
small French town of Oradour-sur-Glane, died last week of
cancer at his home in Gransee, near Berlin, at the age of
86, the town's pastor Heinz-Dieter Schmiedkte announced Monday
night.
Barth, a former SS lieutenant, was convicted and subsequently
jailed by a West German court in 1983 for committing war
crimes toward the end of World War II.
He was also tried in absentia by a French court on February
12, 1953, and was sentenced to death.
"[Barth's] case is a classic one of someone who eluded
justice for many years," Efraim Zuroff, Israel director
of the Simon Wiesenthal center, told The Jerusalem Post.
According to the charges, Barth took part in the drowning,
burning and shooting of 642 people, including 247 children,
during the Oradour massacre on June 10, 1944.
In his testimony, Barth took responsibility for rounding
up villagers into a barn and ordering it to be burned down.
He also admitted to personally shooting into the crowd.
Barth was released from prison in July 1997 due to deteriorating
health caused by diabetes. The courts also cited his public
admission of remorse for his crimes as grounds for release.
For Zuroff, these are not grounds for release, but simply
help prisoners trim time off their sentences. Barth's remorse
remarks caused a public outcry from Jewish communities in
France and around the world.
"The burial will be in September, and I have already
declared myself ready to preside over it, as everyone has
the right to a burial," Schmiedkte said.
Zuroff said that Schmiedkte's prioritizing of Barth's burial
rights and human dignity were not a matter for public scrutiny,
and that the appropriate religious authorities had the right
to proceed according to custom.
However, he said that reducing the significance of Barth's
crimes was regrettable.
"The attempt to represent him as just a commoner who
happened to die is reprehensible. He is not an ordinary person,
but someone who did terrible things," Zuroff said. "The
families of the victims will remember him forever."
jpost.com
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