Village of Ashes and Tears.

For sheer brutality and depraved disregard for human life, few military organizations have come close to the calculated slaughter perpetrated by the Waffen SS during the Second World War. Case in point is the appalling fate of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in the Limousin region of France.

It was four days into the Normandy invasion, (D+4) when troops from the der Fuhrer regiment of the Das Reich Division entered the village of Oradour-sur-Glane on Saturday, June 10th, 1944. The village, which stood for hundreds of years, would by nightfall become a charnel house filled with ruined buildings and charred corpses. The perpetrators of this horrific crime were members of the elite 2nd Panzer Division and were, oddly enough, Frenchmen themselves……1 in 3 soldiers in der Fuhrer were from Alsace which was annexed into the 3rd Reich in 1940. Prior to this day, French resistance activity had been ramped up due to the D-Day invasion and the German high command was issuing strict orders on how to deal with the resistance fighters. At this point, there was no reason for the SS troops to enter the village of Oradour…..there were no hidden weapons, no resistance fighters and no partisan activities anywhere near the village. In all, the village of Oradour went about its daily business with little thought of the war that was surrounding them.
There are conflicting theories as to why Oradour was chosen for destruction out of many villages. One theory has is that the massacre was simply a case of mistaken identity and the Germans meant to carry out their reprisals at a nearby village with a similar name, Oradour-sur-Vayres. Other accounts say that a popular battalion commander was killed in the nearby village of Ouradour-sur-Vayres and the SS troops entered the wrong village to search for partisans and resistance fighters. Furious at not being able to extract any information from the bewildered inhabitants, the troops began shooting the hapless villagers out of rage. Another account tells of the town of Saint-Junien being the original target, but was changed to Oradour-sur-Glane due to a rumor of 1800 resistance fighters being holed up in Saint-Junien…….it was easier to attack an unarmed town.

In any event, around 1:30 p.m., 180 soldiers from the Der Fuhrer regiment began to search the isolated farms just south of Oradour-sur-Glane. The occupants were forced to accompany the troops as they entered the village proper. Eyewitness accounts of the few survivors tell of the soldiers being dressed in the green and brown camouflage smocks favored by all members of the Waffen SS. In addition to the uniforms, it was noted that almost all the soldiers were very young…….some under the age of 18. The roads in and out of town were then sealed off to prevent escape. The commanding officer of the soldiers, Adolf Diekmann, located the mayor of Oradour and ordered him to have all the inhabitants gather at the local fairground for an identity check. At this time, only a few villagers sensed impending doom and either fled or hid. The vast majority co-operated quietly with the soldiers. The male villagers were then separated from the women and children, with the later being sent to the nearby church. The men were made to sit down, in three rows facing the wall. It was a little after 3 p.m. and the SS troops started a systematic search of the town. Search is perhaps too kind a word…in reality; it was wholesale pillage of any and all valuables. At 3:30 p.m., the men were split up and sent to six different locations in town, three barns, a garage, a wine storehouse and a blacksmith shop. A few minutes after being herded into the confined areas, the young SS troops leveled their weapons, a collection of machine guns and rifles, and began shooting the unarmed villagers. The first men to fall were protected by the bodies of those who fell on top of them. After the shooting stopped, the soldiers methodically finished off any survivors with their pistols. Hay, straw and sticks were then hauled into the buildings, thrown on top of the bodies and set alight. In at least one of the barns, the men were shot through the legs to prevent escape and where then burned alive when the SS set fire to the structures.

In one barn, the Laudy barn, five men managed to escape when they feigned death. When the soldiers left to gather wood and hay, the lucky five escaped through a hole in the side of the wall that led to an adjoining building where they hid for several hours. Over at the church, over 500 women and children were packed into a building with a seating capacity of 350. The church at Oradour-sur-Glane was built in the 15th century, with the bell tower being constructed about a century after that. With no regard for the sanctity the place or indeed of human life, the SS began tossing grenades and firing their weapons at the women and children inside. It was all too terribly easy. Once the shooting stopped, the same methodical “mopping up” operation was conducted by the SS……shooting the survivors, and then burning the building with the bodies inside. Only one woman, Marguerite Rouffanche, survived the massacre at the church. When the shooting started she managed to throw herself out a window into the ground below where she ran and hid in a garden where she waited for help to arrive.

Having liquidated the population of Oradour-sur-Glane, the SS then set about burning the town to hide their crime. In one rare instance of humanity, several children who hid in a nearby house, apparently missed during the initial roundup, ran into an SS trooper who was searching nearby homes. The oldest of the girls asked the soldier what they should do, and the trooper pointed towards a field and indicated that they should run there and hide.

By Sunday, June 11th, the soldiers from Das Reich had moved out of Oradour by 6 a.m. and villagers from the surrounding towns made their way in to search for survivors and to see what had happened. Once the shocked people reached the center of town, the true scale of the disaster became apparent. This was no military action, but total barbarity and murder. A final death toll stood at 642 men, women and children with only 52 being able to be identified due to the fires.

Even members of the German high command were appalled at the brutality of Das Reich. Field Marshal Erin Rommel himself had offered to conduct the court marshal of der Fuhrer’s commanding officer, Adolf Diekmann, who would not live to answer for his crimes. He was killed on June 29th by a shell splinter to the head. No one was ever held accountable in the German armed forces for the massacre of the unarmed civilians of Oradour-sur-Glane. It wasn’t until 1953 that the surviving 65 out of 200 members of der Fuhrer would be tried for the crime. The survivors to a man claimed to have been drafted into the SS against their will and by 1958, all charged were dropped against the men after an amnesty law was passed for all Alsatians who fought for the Germans during WW2. The last trial for a Waffen SS member associated with the massacre took place in 1983. SS-Oberturmfuhrer Heinz Barth was charged with ordering the shooting of 20 men in a garage. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released in 1997.

General Charles de Gualle made the decision that Oradour-sur-Glane would not be rebuilt, but rather left in place as a memorial to the Nazi barbarity. Today, the Village Martyr, (martyred village) is a ghost town and a poignant reminder of the atrocities committed by the Germans towards civilians all over Europe. Nothing has been removed, save for the human remains…….rusting cars slowly sink into the ground, remains of bicycles, sewing machines and cookware can be seen where they originally stood in the now empty village. Signs in French call for reverence and silence while walking the now empty streets where only ghosts of the murdered villagers now travel.

Fire At The Grove

It was a cold November evening when 24 year old Boston University medical student Daniel Weiss reported to his job as bartender at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub. Weiss was working the cash register that Saturday evening in the Melody Lounge of the Grove. It was November 28th, 1942. Boston College lost to Holy Cross during a huge upset played at Fenway Park and the war was starting to ramp up in the Pacific. Servicemen in uniform filled Boston and many of them were in attendance that evening at the Cocoanut Grove.
It was a little before 10 p.m. and already the Cocoanut Grove was filled beyond capacity. During the prohibition years, the Grove had served as an illicit speakeasy, but with the repealing of the 18th Amendment, the liquor flowed like water. The Cocoanut Grove was THE place to be in Boston at the time and this evening it was as crowded as ever. Downstairs in the Melody Lounge, a female piano player began to play a popular wartime tune and the patrons began to sing along with her. It was just about 10:15, when Daniel Weiss noticed a white jacketed bar boy had just turned a light in a dim corner back on after a love struck patron had unscrewed the bulb to give him and his date more privacy. There seemed to be some sudden movement in the dark corner as several patrons suddenly jumped up as if startled. Weiss then noticed a flickering blue light at the top of one of the fake palm trees that were used as decoration. Within seconds, the blue flame widened into a ring of orange fire in the fabric of the palm tree. “Get water, there’s a fire!” someone shouted in the crowd.
Weiss was taught to guard his cash register during any type of commotion in the club, which is what he did now. His uncle, Barney Welansky, was the owner of the Cocoanut Grove and would not take kindly to his nephew loosing the money from the till. At this point, several other bartenders were throwing water from a pitcher and using a seltzer bottle to combat the ever widening flames, but to no effect. By now, the flames were quickly spreading across the low ceiling and the music had stopped. Still the patrons continued as if nothing serious was happening. One of the bar boys managed to rip down the burning palm tree, but this had no effect on the flames in the ceiling which suddenly flashed across the highly flammable decorations. By now, the patrons were well and truly aware of the disaster before them and started to panic and scream in fright. Most headed up the stairs, which was the only obvious exit in the Melody Lounge. A lucky few were herded through a disguised service door which led into the kitchen. It only took a few seconds for the stairway to become a blowtorch, incinerating the panicked patrons as they tried to stumble up the crowded stairs. The smoke and flames raced up the stairway to the main club at street level with terrifying speed. Club goers who were not burned alive in the howling flames, simply dropped dead from smoke inhalation in the superheated air.
At this time, Weiss dropped to his knees and stuffed a water-soaked rag onto his face, covering his nose and mouth as the lights went out in the Melody Lounge. He then lay flat on the floor behind the bar as the screaming faded into moaning and then into an eerie silence. Weiss noticed that even the fire seemed to be gone. Weiss was fearful of dying with the rest of the patrons so he made a decision to escape via the service door. He stood up, bolted over the bar and landed atop a pile of bodies that had fallen in the inferno. Holding his breath, he managed to scramble through the service door exit which was wonderfully cool and smoke free.
Making his way into the kitchen, Weiss discovered as many as 24 people huddled there who had escaped the Melody Lounge just moments before the inferno exploded like a bomb. Weiss then tried to rally the crowd into following him up the service stairs to the main dining room. Weiss got halfway up the stairs and walked into a wall of intense heat. He then heard the screaming of patrons and roar of the fire and quickly realized that the inferno that had blitzed through the downstairs section of the club was now engulfing the upstairs. He quickly retreated down the stairs and back into the kitchen to plot another escape route. Weiss remembered there was a set of service stairs just beyond the boiler room nearby. He convinced the crowd to follow him to these stairs, but as the entered the warm, softly lit boiler room, a woman in the crowd screamed “He’s leading us back into the fire” and they all retreated back to the false safety of the kitchen. Back in the kitchen, Weiss noticed that smoke was starting to make its way into their sanctuary and pleaded with the crowd to follow him through the boiler room and up the stairs to safety, but none would. He promised he would send help and quickly bolted from the kitchen, through the boiler room, up the stairs and out into the cold night air of Shawmut Street, which was by now filled with chaos in the forms of injured patrons, police and fire personal, flashing lights and fire engines.
Weiss screamed that there were still people trapped in the basement and by now members of the Boston Fire Department were starting to enter the building. He walked around Shawmut Street in a daze and suffering from shock. He decided he would try to call his family to let them know he was alive. He headed over to a nearby nightclub, the Rio Casino, which was owned by another uncle. There he found several of the Cocoanut Grove’s entertainers and staff huddled about in the same state as he was in.
That Sunday afternoon after the fire been completely extinguished, Daniel Weiss was escorted back into the charred remains of the Cocoanut Grove to retrieve the cash register full of money. He noticed that the upper walls and ceiling were charred black, but nearer to the floor was unburned, which meant the fire was confined to the upper portions of the walls and ceiling. Later in life, Dr. Daniel Weiss would become a well known and successful psychiatrist and he today he is assumed to be the last person who escaped alive from the fire at the Cocoanut Grove.
The fire at the Cocoanut Grove was one of the worst in American history at the time. 490 people were killed that night or later died of burns and over 166 were injured. The fire caused a complete rewriting of the building codes used at the time. Revolving doors had to be flanked by two outwardly opening doors, exit signs had to be clearly marked, emergency exits had to be kept clear, decorations had to be constructed of non-flammable material and emergency sprinkler systems had to be installed……all things that were not done at the Cocoanut Grove. In September 1945, the burned shell of the Cocoanut Grove was finally torn down. For years, a vacant lot sat at the sight of one of the worst fires in American history. Today, the area of the Cocoanut Grove is dramatically changed. A major hotel now sits atop the site of the doomed nightclub and even the streets themselves have been altered. Running through what would have been the middle of the club is Shawmut Street Extension which connects Piedmont and Shawmut Street. Only a small portion of the original footprint can be seen off of Piedmont Street. A small square-shaped auxiliary parking lot, seldom used, sits behind a black metal fence with a locked gate. This would have been where the Melody Lounge once sat. Today, it sits empty and unused with only a small bronze plaque placed in the sidewalk as a reminder to the tragedy that took place at the site all those years ago.