A few years ago we visited the charred ruins of what had once been a quiet, pleasant town in the French Limousine.
As we walked through what is left of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane we tried to fathom the hell some 642 innocent French men, women and children experienced at the hands of the Nazis on a nice summer day seventy years ago.
We tried to imagine how on June 10, 1944, some 200 French men were corralled into barns and other structures and machine-gunned by Waffen SS troops in cold blood. Those who survived the initial fusillade — the wounded and a few unscathed ones, pretending to be dead — were searched for among the bodies, chased out of hiding places and systematically murdered, given the coup-de-grace or burned to death.
We tried to comprehend, impossible as it is, why the same group of Nazi thugs herded 247 women, many carrying their babies in their arms or pushing them in baby carriages, 205 babies — the youngest only a week old — and school children into the town’s church, where they crouched in terror, awaiting the unspeakable massacre that followed: an orgy of wanton terror that left all 452 innocent, helpless human beings butchered and burned to death.
We were told that perhaps one of the reasons these unspeakable horrors occurred was because the French Resistance had blown up a railway bridge at St. Junien, a small town a few miles from Oradour, killing two German soldiers and taking one prisoner.
Perhaps these horrors of unbridled revenge were in consonance with Nazi doctrine and “efficiency” promulgated by the German High Command such as was reflected in a message received by Adolf Diekmann, the commander of the Nazi troops that committed the Oradour atrocities, on the eve of that massacre:
The operations staff of the Wehrmacht expects undertakings against the guerrilla units in southern France to proceed with extreme severity and without any leniency. This constant trouble spot must be finally eradicated… The forces of resistance are to be crushed by fast and all out effort…[T]he most rigorous measures are to be taken to deter the inhabitants of these infested regions who must be discouraged from harboring the resistance groups and being ruled by them and as a warning to the entire population. Ruthlessness and rigor at this critical time are indispensable…
Fast forward to March 24, 2014, barely a week ago.
The incredible New York Times headline: “Hundreds of Egyptians Sentenced to Death in Killing of a Police Officer.”
The “details”:
A crowd gathered outside a courthouse in the town of Matay erupted in wailing and rage on Monday when a judge sentenced 529 defendants to death in just the second session of their trial, convicting them of murdering a police officer in anger at the ouster of the Islamist president.
According to the Times, “the three-judge panel reached its verdict after two sessions of less than an hour each, and about 400 of those convicted were sentenced in absentia.”
The 529 defendants who were sentenced to death are accused of attacking a police station in Matay last August, about six weeks after the military takeover, allegedly killing one police officer and attempting to kill two others.
Last Tuesday, a second mass trial of 683 alleged supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi, accused of murder, incitement of violence and sabotage was adjourned until April 28.
The charges in Tuesday’s proceedings stemmed from rioting last August sparked by the security forces’ storming of two Brotherhood sit-ins in Cairo that killed over 600 people, says AlJazeera.
While the trials and the harsh mass sentencing will most likely be appealed and while they may pale in comparison to the events that took place in Oradour-sur-Glane 70 year ago, somehow they remind me of that mass revenge.
A stretch? Yes — nothing compares to the Nazi atrocities.
Relevant? You’re darn right!
Lead photo of Oradour-sur-Glane by author.
