Continuing on with Reynouard's alleged errors...
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Oradour-s ... ouard.htmlHe points out that Madame Rouffanche testified that there was no explosion inside the church the whole time she was there, although other witnesses stated that they heard several loud explosions. Reynouard accuses Madame Rouffanche of giving false testimony at the military tribunal held in Bordeaux in 1953. Reynouard doesn't believe that Madame Rouffanche was even in the church. He claims that she gave conflicting statements over the years about a crate or box that was brought into the church by two SS soldiers. This was the "smoke bomb" that was allegedly set off by means of lighting a fuse.
Who are the witnesses?
Reynouard claims that, with the help of an attorney, he studied the trial testimony which was taken down in shorthand by the court reporter during the war crimes trial held in Bordeaux in 1953. From these shorthand notes, he learned that Mrs. Renaud testified that "there was a large explosion in the church." Mr. Petit testified during the trial that he had entered the church briefly after the tragedy and "it was a terrible picture. There was no intact body. Some had been torn into two pieces." Some of the Waffen-SS soldiers had also testified during the trial about an explosion in the church, according to the notes taken by the court reporter.
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As proof that there was an explosion in the church, Reynouard points out in his article that the roof was blown off, but there does not seem to be much damage caused by a fire inside the church. The wooden confessional did not burn, for example. A brass ball on the roof of the tower did not melt, according to Reynouard, indicating that the roof was blown off, rather than burned. An engraved inscription on the melted bronze bells can still be seen. This proves that the fire in the tower did not burn very long, according to Reynouard. The implication is that a flash fire caused by an explosion partially melted the bells. A Waffen-SS soldier was killed by a stone falling from the church, which is further proof of an explosion in Reynouard's opinion.
So if Reynouard can point to testimony from Madame Rouffanche that there was no explosion in the church (the whole time she was there), and yet he produces evidence that indicates there was an explosion, is that why he thinks she may not have been in the church after all? So is she making something up about jumping to safety, then once landing, taking a baby from a mother also escaping out the same window and all three of them getting shot by Germans? If Madame Rouffanche says there was no explosion in the church, then what is she talking about back here?
At about 4 p.m. some soldiers, about 20 years old placed a sort of bulky box in the nave, near the choir, from which strings were lit and the flames passed to the apparatus which suddenly produced a strong explosion with dense, black, suffocating smoke billowing out.
Perhaps she is making a difference between an explosion and a simple smoke bomb because she DOES know the difference. Here are a couple more interesting quotes:
Reynouard wrote that he became interested in the Oradour tragedy in 1989. In August 1990, he met Mr. Renaud, one of the survivors of the village and the husband of the woman who testified in court about an explosion in the church. Mr. Renaud told him that he had witnessed an explosion in the church tower and felt the shock waves. Reynouard also claims that he spoke with Maurice Beaubreuil, a survivor who hid with his aunt in a house near the church; Beaubreuil told him about hearing a strong explosion. Today these two men deny that they ever spoke with Reynouard. Reynouard claims that he took notes in a small red notebook in 1990, but it was confiscated and he could not prove in court that he had spoken with Renaud and Beaubreuil.
I'm sure they do deny it. Can't have their names tarnished by associating with a revisionist now can they?
Reynouard points out that in Oradour-sur-Glane, there were refugees who were Spanish soldiers that had fought against Franco in the Civil War in Spain. He claims that these soldiers would have recruited the villagers to fight along with them in the French Résistance. He points out that the Spanish refugees are never mentioned in the official story. On the contrary, the 26 Spaniards who had been living in Oradour-sur-Glane since 1939, when the Spanish Civil War ended, were most certainly mentioned in the official stories that I read.
Another mistake by Reynouard?
The official transcripts from the trial in Bordeaux have been sealed until 2053. Without having any proof, Reynouard has concocted a scenario in which he theorizes that some of the partisans in Oradour-sur-Glane hid inside the church when they saw the SS men enter the village. When the women and children were taken to the church, the SS soldiers discovered the partisans hiding there, and possibly there was an exchange of gunfire which caused the ammunition hidden in the church to explode.
Reynouard speculates that not all the women and children died in the church as a consequence of the disaster, since parts of the church were not destroyed. He thinks that the women and children who were in the proximity of the wooden confessional and the silk flowers must have survived the drama and that Mrs. Rouffanche was not the only survivor of the church.
In support of his theory, Reynouard mentions the story told by a German soldier, Eberhard Matthes, who visited the ruined village in 1963 and spoke with two women who claimed to have survived the destruction in the church. Why didn't these two women testify during the trial in Bordeaux in 1953? Maybe they did, but we won't know until 2053 when the court records will be open to the public. Until then, Reynouard has no proof of his revisionist claims.
What are they afraid of? Jumping back a bit to scrapbookpages...
The wooden confessional did not burn, for example. A brass ball on the roof of the tower did not melt, according to Reynouard, indicating that the roof was blown off, rather than burned. An engraved inscription on the melted bronze bells can still be seen. This proves that the fire in the tower did not burn very long, according to Reynouard. The implication is that a flash fire caused by an explosion partially melted the bells.
At
this link, there is an affidavit from a German man who went to France in the 1960's. If truthful, even some French people doubted the anti German slant of the Oradour story.
http://www.oradour.info/appendix/rikmen01.htm Tulle and Oradour, the German view (presented by Marc Rikmenspoel)
The document shown below has been prepared by Marc Rikmenspoel from the sources quoted at its end and has been placed on this website as he wrote it, without any comment or corrections. The text has been written so as to present one of the alternative points of view about these tragic cases.
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It is worth mentioning that 3./DF was a normal panzergrenadier truck-borne infantry company. It did not possess specialized weapons for demolition work, and, in light of its expected mission, was not assigned any from regimental units. The Limousin Society for the Study of History and Architecture made a survey of the church in 1924. It recorded the solid, stone construction of the building. (3, 4)
The bronze bell of the church melted. Fire is not sufficient for this. Wood burns at 200-400 degrees centigrade, while bronze will not melt at less than 1250 degrees. There was obviously something else at work. Also, the destruction in the church is principally within a circular area under the bell tower. There is damage elsewhere, but the obvious conclusion is that explosives under the bell turned it into a massive hollow charge. After this, fire spread to some other flammable items in the church. Naturally, stone doesn’t burn, and this supports the idea that the destruction must have come from an explosion. (3, 7-11)
The Germans could not have simply set the church on fire, as was later claimed. As mentioned previously, the 3./DF had no specialized weapons available. So why did the explosion occur? Some answers seem to come in the affidavit sworn by retired Bundeswehr Oberstleutnant Eberhard Matthes on November 16, 1980.
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Upon my first visit in December 1963, in German Bundeswehr uniform and in a Bundeswehr jeep with a driver, my experiences were as follows:
1) The part of the village that had been destroyed in 1944 had been turned into a kind of open-air museum with a kiosk selling drinks, cigarettes, etc. as well as brochures telling of the happenings in Oradour in June 1944, the latter at an astonishingly low price.
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7) Upon my second - private - visit to Oradour in the summer of 1964 I found further confirmation of what I had been told in that the owner of the kiosk or attendant (also an elderly man), from whom we bought something to drink, answered as follows to my remarks about the brochures: There were a number of witnesses who knew exactly how everything had actually happened in 1944. They had either not been heard at all during the trial, however, or they had to limit themselves to irrelevant details. The accused Germans had also received prison sentences and been released soon afterwards, instead of being sentenced to death, because otherwise some of the witnesses would no doubt have ‘spilled the beans’ and told what really had happened" (1, 38-41)
The explosion in the church was actually set off by a civilian. This individual is even believed to have shot a civilian while escaping from the church via the vestry, after setting a fuse. (3, 10) Speculation is that a member of the Maquis, perhaps not even a Frenchman, committed the deed in so that the Germans would be blamed. This would presumably cause even more civilians to join the resistance. Instead, the deaths at Tulle and Oradour ended Maquis activity in the Dordogne through the German withdrawal in August. (1, 32 & 47)
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Many works dealing with Tulle and Oradour were consulted in preparing this piece. Three sources were noted in the text, they appear below in the order in which they were referred:
1) Tulle and Oradour: A Franco-German Tragedy, by Otto Weidinger, translated by Colin B. Newberry. Privately published, 1985.
2) Oradour-sur-Glane: A "Clear-cut" Atrocity?, by Richard Landwehr, in Siegrunen Magazine, vol. IV, #3 (21 overall), September 1980.
3) Stonecry, The Scream of the Stones: Research in the ruins of the church in Oradour-sur-Glane to verify a war crime, by Pierre Moreau, translated from the French. Privately published, no date.
So some civilian who is not French may have sparked this tragedy for political gain? Interesting. Let's jump back a bit for a possible clue.
Reynouard points out that in Oradour-sur-Glane, there were refugees who were Spanish soldiers that had fought against Franco in the Civil War in Spain. He claims that these soldiers would have recruited the villagers to fight along with them in the French Résistance. He points out that the Spanish refugees are never mentioned in the official story. On the contrary, the 26 Spaniards who had been living in Oradour-sur-Glane since 1939, when the Spanish Civil War ended, were most certainly mentioned in the official stories that I read.
Reynouard only claims Spaniards were not mentioned in official stories, but he affirms their existence and presence. Could it be one of those non Frenchmen who could have set off an explosion in the church?
