Talk:Oradour-sur-Glane massacre

An event mentioned in this article is a June 10 selected anniversary

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I deleted the following paragraph: While Oradour-sur-Glane was an insolated incident on the West front, such barbarities were much more common in the East, where the Soviet Union heroically battled the Nazis. In 186 Belarus villages the Nazis burned every villager alive, including women and children; 9,200 Belarus villages and 209 cities were destroyed, the 186 burned villages were never re-established after war. The Khatyn Memorial commemorates the tragic fate of the burned villages. Terms such as "heroically" are highly POV, and this paragraph reads as if it's an attempt to downgrade the incident. Let each "massacre" stand on its own merits. RickK 20:40, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

I am putting the paragraph back. If you want to edit it, feel free, but removing it completely is wrong, in my opinion. The context is very relevant here. And yes, the paragraph is an attempt to downgrade the incident, because that would be the proper context for the event the article describes. As it was, the article was POV, because it implied that the events at Oradour-sur-Glane were special by omitting the facts about Belarus. The word "heroically", on the other hand, is not POV, it's a fact (though I understand what you meant). Information about the context is not provided anywhere else in the article, so that paragraph is needed. And your last sentence is in bad taste, by the way. Paranoid 23:28, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. There have been thousands of "massacres" through the years, and the events in Belarus, while tragic, were no more tragic than any other massacre. Why are you singling out what happened in one place in one time, instead of listing all the other massacres that happened throughout history? I will revert. RickK 23:33, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

Well, the events in Belarus are directly related - they happened during the WW2, they were done by Nazi/SS and they involved wholesale murders of villagers and destruction of villages. It's not me who is singling out something, it's you - you imply that Oradour-sur-Glane was special, but I am saying that it was "no more tragic than any other massacre". This is like writing about a particular Jew being killed by Nazis as something extraordinary, concealing the fact that it was a part of the Holocaust. I am not denying OSG was important, I am just saying that proper context is important too. Paranoid 10:04, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've listed the article on Wikipedia:Requests for comment. RickK 23:33, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

(saw this on RFC) I agree with Rick that we don't need to be comparing various massacres merits. I also though, enjoy having context. How about something like While Oradour-sur-Glane was an insolated incident on the West front, such barbarities were much more common in the East, where the Soviet Union battled the Nazis. Examples include.....

Put it at the end of the entry, as almost a "further reading" type of thing? Lyellin 09:47, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

Who in the SS decided about the mass executions? Lammerding? The SS was a huge organization. Andries 00:32, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The context would be nice, but the disputed addition was overly freighted with POV and could use some sources to back up its claims. It's not POV for the article to imply that Oradour-sur-Glane is special; the implication is just that it's special enough to warrant an encyclopedia article. The article doesn't denigrate massacres in Belarus or elsewhere on the eastern front. I would suggest that if the context is so important to include in Wikipedia, start by writing articles about the massacres in the East that are as well-researched as this one. --Michael Snow 21:54, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree with RickK and Michael Snow. These events might be important, too, but they just don't belong into this article. regards, High on a tree 00:06, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Or see Sant'Anna di Stazzema. If Paranoid insists on linking to another SS village massacre to prove that Oradour was not unique, we should rather take this example, because there is an existing article about it. But I still think we shouldn't link to a particular incident.

By the way and for what it's worth, it should perhaps be noted that the Khatyn memorial is somewhat controversial because of the Katyn massacre - to cite an article from the CIA website (The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field): Meanwhile, the Soviets obliterated references to Katyn on maps and in official reference works. Then, in 1969, Moscow did something strange that many believe was further calculated to confuse the issue further: it chose a small village named Khatyn as the cite for Belorussia's national war memorial. There was no apparent reason for the selection. Khatyn was one of 9,200 Belorussian villages the Germans had destroyed and one of more than a hundred where they had killed civilians in retaliation for partisan attacks. In Latin transliteration, however, Katyn and Khatyn look and sound alike, though they are spelled and pronounced quite differently in Russian and Belorussian.

regards, High on a tree 04:38, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

German POV on Oradour

I would like to explain something about this diff (which I recently added):

To an extent it was difficult to "come out of the closet" with even this limited account of what I know about these issues. That's because my grand-uncle may have been a Waffen-SS officer, BUT he also was the old man who kindly gave us these cherries from his orchard. My grandfather may for a time have worked in der Fuehrer's headquarters as a Wehrmacht officer, BUT he also was my role model granddaddy who (despite having lost his right arm in the war) taught me how to swim and drove us around in his Mercedes car. My great-grandmother may have been a fervent and early Nazi supporter and Nazi party member, BUT she also was this loving old lady who would welcome, look after and nurture an otherwise troubled kid (myself).

And then there's the aspect that it's quite problematic to add the German perspective, in that it undoubtedly will be perceived by some as an attempt to "justify" these war crimes. Some will take massive exception to even suggesting that there was a German perspective and that the Germans who committed these war crimes were anything but pure, personified evil. And what's worse, I really can't blame very much anyone arguing thus — these horrific acts were (and still are) just too appalling. People will feel that what I have to say besmirches the memory of the victims and tries to cast blame on the French Resistance — when I really don't want to do anything of the sort. It's not easy to tell the whole story. But maybe it needs to be told?

As regards to my said edit to the article, I have no doubt that it will be edited away at by angry and indignant contributors and that it possibly will ultimately get deleted. It appears that this is already starting. A cleanup notice has already been posted to the article.

Leaving the German POV in there will probably take more than a few people having the article on their watchlist. I can't do that alone and I actually don't DARE to defend the edit in question very much. — That's because it's a very controversial matter and I am not free from (German collective) guilt so I probably would prefer to tread lightly (my urge to apologize on behalf of my family is much greater than any urge to lunge into an edit war over this).

Ropers 18:25, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)