Heinz Barth, Former SS Officer, Dies

FRANKFURT, Germany — Heinz Barth, a former SS officer convicted of involvement in the massacre of an entire village in Nazi-occupied France, has died, a priest in the town where he lived said yesterday. He was 86.

Barth died of cancer in the past few days, said Heinz-Dieter Schmidtke, the parish priest in Gransee, north of Berlin.

In 1983, a court in East Berlin convicted Barth and sentenced him to life in prison for his role in the slaughter of villagers in Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944.

In 1997, a state court freed Barth on health grounds, commuting his sentence to probation.