BELGIUM
BANDE
(Christmas Eve,1944)
On September 5, 1944, a unit of Belgian marquis
attacked a German unit, killing three soldiers. Two days later the American troops
arrived in the area and the Germans retreated. Three months later, during the
Ardennes offensive, the village of Bande was retaken. On Christmas Eve, a unit
of the German SD (Sicherheitsdienst) set about arresting all men in the village.
They were questioned about the events of Sept.5, then lined up in front of the
local cafe. One by one, they were led to an open door and as they entered a shot
rang out. An SD man, positioned just inside the door, fired point blank into the
victims neck, and with a kick sent the body hurtling into the open cellar. After
twenty had been killed this way, it was the turn of 21 year old Leon Praile who
decided to make a run for it. With bullets flying around him, he escaped into
the woods. Meantime the executions continued until all 34 men had been killed.
On January 10, 1945, the village of Bande was liberated by British troops and
the massacre was discovered. A Belgian War Crimes Court was set up in December
1944. One man, a German speaking Swiss national by the name of Ernst Haldiman,
was identified as being a member of the execution squad. He had joined the SS
in France on November 15, 1942 and in 1944 his unit was integrated with other
SD units, into No 8 SS Commando for Special Duties. Haldiman was picked up in
Switzerland after the war and brought to trial before a Swiss Army Court. On April
28,1948, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. He was released on parole
on June 27, 1960, the only member of the SS Commando that has been brought to
trial.
THE
MALMEDY MASSACRE
(Dec.17, 1944)
During the Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge) the Combat
Group of the 1st SS Panzer Division, led by SS Major Joachim Peiper, was approaching
the cross-roads at Baugnes near the town of Malmedy . There they encountered a
company of US troops (Battery B of the 285th. Field Artillery Observation Battalion)
from the US 7th Armoured Division. Realising that the odds were hopeless, the
company's commander, Lt.Virgil Lary, decided to surrender. After being searched
by the SS, the prisoners were marched into a field by the cross-roads. The SS
troops moved on except for two Mark IV tanks Nos.731 and 732, left behind to guard
the GIs. An order was given to fire and SS Private Georg Fleps of tank 731 drew
his pistol and fired at Lary's driver who fell dead in the snow. The machine guns
of both tanks then opened fire on the prisoners. Many of the GIs took to their
heels and fled to the nearest woods. Incredibly, 43 GIs survived, but 86 of their
comrades lay dead in the field, being slowly covered with a blanket of snow. The
US troops in the area were issued with an order that for the next week no SS prisoners
were to be taken. At the end of the war, Peiper, and 73 other suspects (arrested
for other atrocities committed during the offensive) were brought to trial. When
the trial ended on July 16, 1946, forty three of the defendants were sentenced
to death, twenty two to life imprisonment, two to twenty years, one for fifteen
years and five to ten years. Peiper and Fleps were among those sentenced to death,
but after a series of reviews the sentences were reduced to terms in prison. On
December 22, 1956, SS Sturmbannführer Peiper was released. He settled in the small
village of Traves in northern France in 1972 and four years later, on the eve
of Bastille Day, he was murdered and his house burned down by a French communist
group. His charred body was recovered from the ruins and transferred to the family
grave in Schondorf , near Landsberg in Bavaria. Most of the remains of the murdered
GIs were eventually shipped back to the US for private burial but twenty one still
lie buried in the American Military Cemetery at Henri-Chappelle, about forty kilometres
north of Malmedy.
Today, the American flag flies over the Memorial built
at the Baugnes cross-roads, about 50 metres from where the actual killings took
place.
CHENOGNE
(Jan 1, 1945)
In the village of Chenogne, the US 11th Armoured Division
had captured around sixty German soldiers. Marched to behind a small hill, out
of sight of enemy troops still holding the woods beyond the village, the prisoners
were subjected to a volley of machine-gun fire. On this cold and frosty first
day of 1945, the GIs were showing no mercy for their unfortunate prisoners as
they crumpled to the ground, shot dead in cold blood. With memories of the Malmedy
massacre still fresh in their minds, killing had become impersonal, revenge was
now uppermost in their minds.
HOLLAND
DE
WOESTE HOEVE
(March 6, 1945)
On
the night of March 6, a BMW car, carrying the SS General Hans Albin Rauter, was
ambushed, his driver and orderly being killed. Rauter was seriously wounded .
Some hours later, the damaged car was found by German troops and Rauter was taken
to the St. Joseph-Stichting hospital on the outskirts of Apeldoorn where he recovered
after a series of blood transfusions. Soon after the ambush, the SD arrived and
what followed was one of the most notorious war crimes ever committed in Holland.
In charge of the investigation was SS Brigadefuhrer Dr.Eberhardt Schongarth, who
immediately ordered reprisals. One hundred and sixteen men were rounded up and
transported to the scene of the ambush where they were all shot dead, their bodies
being buried in a mass grave in Heidehof Cemetery in the village of Ugchelen .
In Gestapo prisons all over Holland, prisoners were taken out and shot in reprisal
for the ambush. In all, a total of 263 people had been shot in reprisal. The irony
was, that the Dutch underground fighters had intended to ambush and steal a German
lorry, and had no idea that the car they shot up contained a German General. Rauter
himself survived the war. He was arrested by British Military Police in a hospital
at Eutin and turned over to the Dutch. Before a Special Court of Justice in the
Hague, he was sentenced to death and on March 25, 1949, he was executed by firing
squad in the dunes near Scheveningen Prison. Schongarth was tried by a British
Military Court, found guilty on another war crime charge and sentenced to death.
He was hanged in 1946.
TEXEL
(April 1945)
On
the island of Texel, just off the coast of Holland, 800 Soviet soldiers from Georgia
(drafted into the Red Army and who volunteered to join the German Army after being
taken prisoner during the German advance into the Soviet Union) decided to mutiny
against their German masters. They had been formed into the 822nd Infantry Battalion,
and were led by around 400 German officers and NCOs. One night at the end of April,
the Georgians, led by a Lt. Loladze, stealthily entered the German quarters and
killed 250 Germans as they slept. German battalions were sent from the mainland
to secure the island and hunt down the rebels. Summary justice was then dispensed
to the Georgians, four or five being tied together and grenades placed between
them. Only 235 were left alive out of the original 800 when the Canadians occupied
the island in May. During the hunt, 117 Texelers were also killed.
PUTTEN
(September 30, 1944)
On
the night of September 30, 1944, a group of Dutch resistance fighters ambushed
four German soldiers near the small Dutch village of Putten . The attack went
wrong and three of the soldiers escaped to raise the alarm, the fourth being kept
hostage. The German commander of the area, General Heinz Helmuth von Wuhlisch,
ordered all inhabitants arrested and the village burned down. Thirty nine were
arrested immediately and lined up on the square. Hoping to save the 39 men, the
resistance group released the hostage, Lt.Eggert. It made no difference, all the
other men in the village were rounded up and together with the 39 men on the square,
forced to board a train bound for the Reich. In all, 589 men from the village
were transported to Germany for forced labour. Only 49 were alive at the end of
the war. Luckily, of the 600 or so houses in Putten, 'only' 87 were burned down.
RIDDERKERK
(1945)
The
last atrocity of the war in Europe took place in the small town of Ridderkerk,
near Rotterdam. The Mayor had ordered the local police to arrest some 'Hun girls'
(women collaborators). While standing with three of their prisoners in front of
the house, a German officer and his girl friend passed by in a truck. The police
stopped the truck but at a signal from the German officer, a group of ten drunken
soldiers stormed out of a nearby house and started firing at the police and their
prisoners who had fled to safety back into the house. The soldiers then stormed
the house, dragging women and children outside. Eleven men were found inside the
house and forced outside to stand up against the wall to be shot down. A wounded
man, hiding behind a sofa, gave himself away by his moans. He too was shot dead.
The soldiers departed, leaving behind three survivors.
THE
AMSTERDAM REPRISAL
(October 24, 1944)
When S.D. officer Herbert Oelschagel was murdered by the Dutch resistance on October 23, 1944 in Amsterdam, the Nazi reprisal was swift and severe. Next day, 29 civilians were arrested and pedestrians on the Apolloaan were forced at gunpoint to witness their execution. At the same time, several buildings were deliberately set on fire.
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