FRANCE: Thirteen Go Free

The French government, ever a thin reed, bent last week under a gale of resentment blowing out of German-speaking, French-minded Alsace. To cool Alsatians' anger at the verdict in the Oradour massacre trial (TIME, Feb. 23), Premier René Mayer hustled through the Assembly a law decreeing amnesty for all Frenchmen forcibly drafted by the Germans during World War II. It had the immediate effect of granting pardons to 13 Alsatians who, pressed into the Nazis' SS, had participated in the wartime rape of Oradour-sur-Glane.

The morning after Parliament acted, five automobiles slipped up to the gate of a military prison in Bordeaux to carry the 13 Alsatians to freedom. A 14th, who had voluntarily served Hitler, was left to pay the death penalty decreed by the court.

The amnesty satisfied the Alsatians, who raised the tricolors they had lowered to half-staff in protest. But it simply touched off a fresh storm to the south, in the new village of Oradour. The villagers lowered their tricolor, removed from its place of honor the Croix de Guerre awarded by the government to mark Oradour's ordeal, dispatched an irate protest to President Vincent Auriol: "Oradour, which until now recalled Nazi brutality, will in the future be remembered as a symbol of unpunished crime."