Heinz Barth, 86; SS Officer Convicted in Civilian Massacre

Heinz Barth was imprisoned in the slaughter of French villagers. (AP)

Heinz Barth, 86, a former SS officer convicted of involvement in the massacre of an entire village in Nazi-occupied France, has died, a priest in the German town where he lived said Aug. 14.

Mr. Barth died of cancer, said the Rev. Heinz-Dieter Schmidtke, the parish priest in Gransee, north of Berlin. He could not provide the exact date of Mr. Barth's death and did not say where he died.

In 1983, a court in East Berlin convicted Mr. Barth and sentenced him to life in prison for his role in the slaughter of villagers in Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944, widely considered the worst atrocity in Nazi-occupied France.

On June 10, 1944, as they headed toward Normandy to combat Allied invasion forces that had landed four days earlier, German troops of the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" slaughtered 642 men, women and children in the village.

The Germans rounded up the village men, forced them into barns and machine-gunned them. The 241 women and 209 children were herded into the church, which was set alight with grenades and then raked with machine gun fire.

In addition to involvement in the massacre, East German judges also found that Mr. Barth volunteered to participate in an execution of 92 Czech civilians in 1942. Mr. Barth, the SS equivalent of a lieutenant, was also sentenced to death in absentia in France in 1953.

Mr. Barth lived under a false name in communist East Germany, working as a decorator in Gransee and running a grocery store, until his identity was discovered in 1981 and he was imprisoned.

In 1997, a state court freed him on health grounds, commuting his sentence to probation. Mr. Barth, who lost a leg in the war, suffered from diabetes, high blood pressure and other ailments.

"I feel guilty about the terrible crimes in Oradour," Mr. Barth was quoted as telling the Berlin tabloid B.Z. at the time of his release. "But I have paid long enough."

Schmidtke said Mr. Barth had lived a secluded life in Gransee.