Oradour-Sur-Glane

During my trip to the Poitiers and Limoges area of France in August, one of the sites I intend to visit is the village of Oradour-sur-Glane. 

From https://www.oradour.info/images/or698097.htm

The landmark television series, 'The World at War', used Oradour-sur-Glane as a symbol of the horror that was the conflict of W.W.II. and both the first and the last episodes contained the following narration spoken by Laurence Olivier (Lord Olivier) ...

"Down this road, on a summer day in 1944 . . . The soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, the community which had lived for a thousand years . . . was dead.

This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road . . . and they were driven . . . into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then . . . they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle.

They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousands upon thousands of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, in China, in a World at War . . ."

The village sadly became famous due to the atrocity carried out there by the 'Der Fuehrer' Regiment of the 2nd SS Panzer Division 'Das Reich' on 10th June 1944.

Later citing spurious allegations to justify the atrocity; namely the villagers' alleged (but untrue) complicity in aiding the French Resistance, notably in the kidnap and assassination of  SS-Sturmbannfuehrer (Major) Helmut Kampe; the Panzer Regiment 'Der Fuehrer' surrounded the village and gathered all of the villagers together in the town square, even rounding up villagers working in the fields. 

The 197 men were segregated from the women and children. An officer announced that he knew that the villagers were hiding weapons and ammunition for the resistance and that those hiding them must step forward immediately. No-one did, as no-one was hiding materiel for the resistance. 

The men were divided into groups and forced into six locations, barns and garages, throughout the village, where they were summarily executed by machine gun fire. 

The women (240) and children (205) were forced into the church where they were locked inside. The SS troops threw hand grenades into the church which injured some people whilst others were suffocated by smoke. The SS men then set the church alight, and anyone attempting to escape was shot dead. The SS then searched the village looking for anyone in hiding - presumably so as not to leave any witnesses - and murdered anyone they found. 

However 7 people did in fact survive the massacre. Five men lay under the bodies of the men killed around them and played dead. One child had managed to escape before the SS began rounding up the villagers. One lady, Madame Marguerite Rouffanche, escaped through a window of the church and was shot five times whilst trying to escape, presumably being left for dead before crawling away into a garden where she hid until she was rescued the following day. Madame Rouffanche survived and gave evidence at trial in Bordeaux in 1953.

In 1946 President de Gaulle announced that Oradour would be preserved as a national memorial. Today Oradour may be visited and entered, but only through the Visitors' Centre and Museum.