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| Oradour-sur-Glane, France |
The charges relate to Oradour-sur-Glane in central France, where 642 people were murdered by SS troops in 1944.
Many were herded into a local church into which hand grenades were thrown before it was set on fire.
Prosecutors in Dortmund said the man had been charged over the murder of 25 people and with aiding and abetting the murder of several hundred.
The ruins of the village have been preserved just as they were after the massacre, as a permanent memorial.
French leader General Charles de Gaulle said it should be a reminder of the cruelty of the Nazi occupation.
Some 60 soldiers were brought to trial in the 1950s. Twenty of them were convicted but all were later released.
German investigators said last year they had opened a new inquiry into the massacre.
On Wednesday, the regional court in Cologne said: "The prosecutor's office in Dortmund has charged an 88-year-old from Cologne over the murder of 25 people committed by a group, and with aiding and abetting the murder of several hundred people."
The man was named in documents as Werner C, a former member of an SS armoured division who was 19 at the time.
His lawyer, Rainer Pohlen, told the Associated Press news agency his client was at the village but had nothing to do with the massacre.
Dortmund state prosecutor Andreas Brendel said the accused was among six men still facing possible prosecution.
On 10 June 1944, a detachment of SS troops had surrounded the tiny hamlet in the Limousin region.
It is believed by some that they were seeking retribution for the kidnap of a German officer but some say that resistance members were based in a different, nearby village.
Most of the victims were women and children.
The men had been locked in a barn. Machine-gunners shot at their legs, then doused them in petrol and set them alight.
The landmark 1970s documentary series, The World at War, both begins and ends with references to Oradour-sur-Glane.
Last September German President Joachim Gauck travelled to the village and joined hands with one of the survivors and with French President Francois Hollande, as a sign of reconciliation.
Source: BBC News, January 8, 2014
German charged over infamous French WWII massacre
An 88-year-old German former soldier was charged Wednesday for his part in the infamous 1944 Oradour-sur-Glane massacre - one of the worst Nazi atrocities to take place on French soil during the Second World War.
The former member of a Nazi armored division was charged with 25 counts of murder for his role in the slaughter, in which 642 men, women and children were killed in reprisal for the French Resistance's kidnapping of a German soldier.
Cologne’s state court said that Werner C, whose last name was not given in accordance with German privacy laws, was also charged with hundreds of counts of accessory to murder in connection with the massacre.
The suspect is believed to have belonged to a unit that attacked the tiny village in western France, around 25 kilometres (15 miles) northwest of Limoges, on June 10, 1944.
"The prosecutor's office in Dortmund has charged an 88-year-old pensioner from Cologne in connection with the murder of 25 people committed by a group, and with aiding and abetting the murder of several hundred people," a court statement said.
The Oradour massacre, as it is known, left a deep scar in France that lasted long after the war had finished.
Virtually the entire population of the village was wiped out in the atrocity, which began when close to 200 German soldiers of the SS “Das Reich” division encircled the town and rounded up its population in what residents thought was a routine identity check.
Church and barn set ablaze
First the men were separated and moved to barns, while the women and children were forced inside the town’s church.
German soldiers then set the church ablaze and used machine guns to mow down anyone that tried to escape.
At the same time, the SS fired their machine guns at the men crowded in the barns, deliberately firing at their legs so that they were wounded but not dead. The soldiers then doused the barns with petrol and set them on fire.
Of the 642 people killed, 246 were women and 207 children. Only six survived.
The village has been a ghost town ever since the atrocity, deliberately preserved in that state as a memorial to those who died on one of the darkest days for France during World War II.
The presidents of Germany and France travelled to the village last September and joined hands with a survivor in a moment of reconciliation.
Source:
FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP, January 9, 2014
