France, Courant Alternatif CA #231 - Oradour: The woes of memory (fr)

The sacred union memorial misrepresents history on behalf of state interests, a village 
whose martyrdom is used to rewrite the darkest hours of the war, when things are not 
simply good or bad place where people are not enemies or resistant, simplifying the story 
makes its nationalist use for posterity. ---- On 14 September 2012, the Court of Appeal 
sentenced Robert H?bras Colmar, one of two survivors of the massacre of Oradour still 
alive, one euro in damages and ten thousand euro fee payable to the Association of 
escapees and forcibly incorporated (ADEIF) of Upper and Lower Rhine. He is alleged to have 
issued a doubt on the very sensitive issue of "Despite us" Alsatian present at Oradour, in 
the uniform of the SS, on 10 June 1944, the day of the massacre.

That day, Robert H?bras, like all of the men in the village, was shot in a barn and has 
been spared only because the blow has not been reached. His mother and sister died in the 
church fire and strafed by the SS Das Reich division. The Court of Appeal of Colmar has 
denied H?bras quality control for not having the time "distinguished Nazi German Alsatians 
wearing the same uniform" and "doubting incorporating strength erected historical truth 
and justice "(1).

Along with this litigation, H?bras received threats of a raven told him he does not 
deserve his identity card while Alsatians gave their flesh become French (2). Sixty-nine 
years after the event, the question always seems so sensible, as in Alsace in Limousin 
where a committee to support Robert H?bras collected many signatures of support. And fills 
the paradox, while the Alsatian justice condemns H?bras, Germany decorates under its 
action for the reconciliation between France and Germany, especially among young people. 
"That's a long time since I have transcended hate and revenge that drove me after the 
massacre, he said during his medal presentation to the prefecture of Limoges. I got to 
admit that the German people were not responsible, and even less, and certainly not the 
generations of today (...) "(3).

At the same time, the German court reopened the case file on the basis of new documents 
discovered in the archives of the Stasi (4). SS six survivors were identified and searches 
were carried out. Similarly police and German prosecutors went last January in Oradour to 
examine the crime scene and hear any witnesses. In Germany, a crime like that of Oradour 
is imprescriptible. Convicted in Alsace, decorated in Germany. What has happened, then, 
that such wounds resurface regularly regarding a definite event, the massacre of the 
entire population of a village in the Haute Vienne, in June 1944?

A large operation against guerrilla-

Quick facts: In early 1944, the SS Das Reich Division was reconstituted in the South West 
of France after suffering heavy losses in Russia. It incorporates in its ranks very young 
and inexperienced soldiers, including a number of Alsatians conscripted. In June, a part 
of the division is stationed in Montauban and ordered to deploy between Tulle and Limoges 
are reducing bush. His progress towards the Limousin is punctuated by numerous atrocities 
against civilians in the Lot and Dordogne. She takes Tulle which had been taken by the FTP 
maquis (5) and proceeds to 99 hangings in the streets of the city. The next day, June 10, 
killing one of his regiments entire population present in Oradour sur Glane, a small town 
20 km northwest of Limoges. The village was looted and burned. In earlier days, there were 
many clashes between the SS and the maquis.

Two German officers had been removed. One will be executed on 10 June in retaliation for 
Oradour, when he was considered to be a bargaining chip against the prisoners from the 
prison of Limoges. The other managed to escape and join the German garrison of Limoges. 
The German operations are done under the guidance of the intelligence services, with the 
active collaboration of the Militia of Limoges. It is a vast operation against guerrilla-, 
accompanied by propaganda against-direction populations, designated by the state as a 
major operation "discrimination", "actions aiming to turn people against the terrorists." 
The Oradour massacre was perpetrated in this context, the village is located between two 
quarters of the division.

Maybe the village he was chosen to be the seat of a GTE (Group of foreign workers) 
gathering in the early 1940s the Spanish Republicans and Jews (6): the very image of 
"jud?obolch?visme" that wanted eradicate Nazis. There would also be the size of the 
initiation ritual in relation to young recruits, including Alsatians to reconnect with the 
identity of the Division and all the atrocities she had committed on the Russian front and 
the Balkans before it routed and reconstruction. An Alsatian reports the words of one 
officer held before the massacre: "Today, you will see blood flowing." St Junien and 
leaving to go to Oradour, the same officer had said: "It will heat; we'll see what the 
Alsatians are able." We can also infer that there has been premeditation, contrary to tell 
the revisionist theories, abundantly present on the Internet and blame the massacre on the 
bush. The number of victims was set at 642 by a judgment of the Civil Court of 
Rochechouart, in January 1947. But that number has fluctuated several times and sometimes 
exceeded the estimate thousand. Most of the victims have not been identified, the 
municipal archives were destroyed. There were people hiding, refractory to STO (7), Jews, 
making it difficult to estimate. In addition to bright little evidence was collected. The 
area was declared a state of war and very difficult to move.

Innocent victims

Faced with the horror felt and transmitted by word of mouth, quickly began a process of 
commemoration of the massacre. By July, the authorities (those of Vichy) to commit around 
two axes: on the one hand, the reconstruction of a new town away from the burned village 
and secondly the conservation of the ruins of destroyed village. The same project is taken 
by the authorities of the provisional government that name in September a volunteer 
curator for the ruins and in November confirmed the exceptional status of Oradour. The 
project transcends the political conflicts of the period. Liberated France recognizes the 
"innocent victims". "The Oradour site, writes Jean-Jacques Fouch?, is located in an 
exceptional situation that has its origin in a representation of the French nation based 
on the report of the land and the dead" - that of Maurice Barres (8 ). The village of the 
martyr village is considered a cemetery - the innocent victims killed by Nazi forces 
despite their commitment (9). So around the innocence of the victims, that is to say the 
fact that they were killed there were no clashes, that will build the symbol meant to be 
universal all of France innocent and tortured by the Germans. "Any commemoration writes 
American historian Sarah Farmer, reveals much about the relationship of a company to its 
past insofar as it establishes a mediation between the individual and the collective 
memory testimony, between different and often conflicting perspectives stakeholder groups 
(...) between the past, present and future, between the experiences and the work of 
historians, between forgetting and remembering. "(10).

In the construction of a memory, we have the groups that organize the maintenance and 
communication of a collective memory and public authorities to erect monuments and 
celebrate birthdays. These groups seek to gather around their conception of events and 
thus to influence the collective memory. However, these efforts are usually commemoration 
highlights strife that consensus. But in construction, there is a challenge for the state, 
as Immanuel Wallerstein points out: "The nations are myths in the sense that they are all 
social creations and states play a key role in their construction. The program of nation 
building requires defining (invent) a story, a long sequence and a common set of 
characteristics presumed (though in fact, significant fractions of the group concerned do 
not share these characteristics) "( 11). And then, at the end of 1944, the position of the 
state is fragile. We are in a transition. But what France wants to commemorate that time, 
asks Sarah Farmer. The defeat of 1940? The occupation? Vichy? Civil war? The war had cut 
France to the geographical and ideological boundaries. Most losses during the French were 
civilians killed by their countrymen, she adds.

Restore the greatness of the nation

For the record, Night and Fog, Alain Resnais's film was censored in 1956 because we saw 
the cap of a French gendarme camp Pithiviers and German authorities requested its 
withdrawal from the Cannes Film Festival on behalf of reconciliation. This is how it has 
been "out of competition" to make sure he did not win the prize. But Alain Resnais also 
invited the audience to think about what was happening in Algeria, that year. Yet after 
Oradour, France could present itself as a victim and martyr, which never failed to ennoble 
the humiliating experience of defeat and hide passivity during the occupation. "The symbol 
of Oradour cast a veil over the policy of the Vichy government. In 1944, it was decided to 
keep the ruins in ruins - almost impossible task and highlighted at the time by 
conservation professionals.

In April 1945, the government expropriates land and the ruins of the old town. The site 
becomes a national shrine. "The martyrdom of innocent Oradour serve" national lesson, 
"wrote Sarah Farmer. The pilgrimage to this site reinforce the desire to restore the 
greatness of the nation. Just as Christian pilgrims to refresh their faith and holy relics 
of the martyrs, the French citizens would regenerate their patriotic zeal. ". This refers 
to the notion of pilgrimage religious revival in the III Republic in response to the 
military defeat of 1870 and the Paris Commune (with the construction of the Sacred heart). 
S. Farmer compares two events somewhat similar: the massacre of Oradour in 1944 and that 
of Lidice in Czechoslovakia in 1942 (there are even SS who participated in both). The 
village of Lidice, 20 km from Prague was destroyed in retaliation for the execution of 
Heydrich. Subsequently, the Czech communist government wanted to give a universal message 
(and not nationalist) in commemoration of the massacre. The ruins were destroyed. The 
space is empty. Some foundations have been identified (church, school). The visitor is 
left to the imagination. A museum has been built over the ruins.

A place of oblivion colonial massacres

Conservation of ruins that refer to the structure and representation of a village takes on 
another meaning as Sarah Farmer recalls: "The village or town as a place of essential 
Frenchness has a wide history and strong political polarities - presented as the 
birthplace of the secular republic or as the heart of an eternal France to conservative 
moral values. ". Similarly, the presence of many foreigners who have been through life 
Oradour during this period and some of which were also murdered by the SS, not really into 
the memorial process. They were not considered members of the national community. In the 
small village of the legendary French nation rebuilding, he lived as indigenous. The 
locals caught up in their grief showed little interest in the fate of a group of people 
passing through, but the administration responsible for the creation of the memorial, it 
was a real can of worms. Oradour was no longer the innocent village living peacefully away 
from the turmoil of the world but a concrete space shaken by the upheavals of war and 
occupation which was also highlighted that the Vichy treatment was reserved for foreigners 
and Jews with the introduction of GTE and internment camps. And Jean-Jacques Fouch? 
estimate Oradour was in the years after the massacre, a place of oblivion colonial 
massacres (12).

On 10 June 1945 Alain Texier, MP SFIO (13) Bellac and member of the government, chaired 
the first commemoration while, just before he was approved, with the whole of government, 
the bloody events r?preon Setif in Algeria. But all this construction is going to be upset 
by another event: the case of Bordeaux in 1953, supposed to judge the SS involved in the 
massacre. On the dock, no SS officer. Some died on the Normandy front but most reside in 
Germany in the American and British sectors. The Cold War is well underway and we need all 
the energy to fight the red menace. By cons among the 14 accused Alsatians, 13 Despite us. 
Alsace and its elected rally. The question is about the forced recruitment which is 
considered a war crime. The trial was highly publicized, it triggers the passions of both 
sides and the memorial stirs conflict between two regions that the accident of geography 
was placed in two very different situations. Despite the us are condemned but pardoned 
soon after by the National Assembly, in the name of national unity found. Sarah Farmer 
notes that the process of Bordeaux has changed the memory of the event and its 
commemoration: "Oradour, symbol of Nazi barbarity and French innocence becomes the cause 
of a bitter war between two French regions that had experiences and very different 
memories of wartime. "The trial of Bordeaux also revealed that the judicial system could 
handle the painful legacy of the occupation.

"Obey orders"

For Sarah Farmer, the case should have been tried under the law. The court had to decide 
on individual cases and not provide the verdict of history. The choice was made between 
recognition enrollees Alsatian strength and desire for revenge Limousin. The meeting took 
place in the judicial process by granting pardons to Alsace in the national interest. 
Following this trial, the Oradour community is isolated in his affliction. She refused to 
use the memorial built by the state to install the remains of victims found. These are in 
a monument in the cemetery. The town has made decorations that the State had granted the 
village. She has written the name of MPs who voted for amnesty at the entrance of the 
ruins and has received no official figures for decades. And this story is still not closed 
as evidenced by the conviction of Robert H?bras by the Court of Appeal of Colmar. But 
Jean-Jacques Fouch? another question in relation to spite us, "Embedded power may have" 
obeyed orders "but they do not take either their actions.

They still participated, at least by their mere presence. Could they stand free of the 
transgressive experience? "(14). They found themselves exploited in electoral disputes 
between political parties: "The exploitation suffered by the French forcibly incorporated 
them she does not prohibit express guilt at trial? After he was ordered to remain silent 
and to "forget." But could they forget what they have experienced? Were they able to 
overcome the trauma, rebuild self-esteem? "(JJ Fouche). In 1999 was opened a memorial 
center, designed by Jean-Jacques Fouch?, and is supposed, beyond the emotional charge of 
the ruins, to provide a broader understanding of what happened context. The same thinking 
is being launched on the future of the ruins. But again the debate could be alive. Oradour 
has not finished working our memories and representations of our history and our society.

But another phenomenon already begun for some time and strengthened with the opening of 
the Centre of Memory and scenography for a wide audience, could radically transform the 
memory of places. This is one of the tourism industry and its ability to turn into a 
product that it incorporates in its production cycle. Oradour already long been the most 
visited website in the Limousin region.

Christophe