Ordinary Oradour

By the looks of any road map, Oradour-sur-Glane in the French countryside outside Limoges is just another small French town. It doesn’t even have a major road to get to it, just a secondary one.  By any description, it looks like it will be another ordinary French town, and could easily be bypassed, without actually missing anything important.  But Oradour hides a secret that you would never know unless you visited, or unless you are like my husband and I and are very much interested in WWII history.

On June 10, 1944, some say in retaliation for the storming of the D-Day beaches in Normandy, the small village of Oradour sur Glane, in the Haute-Vienne region of France, was the site of a massacre and war crime. The village had been far from any centre of conflict, was not, nor had ever been an active resistance stronghold. Yet on that Saturday, starting at about 2:00 PM, men from the Der Führer Regiment of the 2nd Waffen SS Panzer Division Das Reich, drove into Oradour and killed everyone that they could find, a total of 642 men, women and children. The village was then looted and every building, set on fire. To this day there is no universally agreed explanation as to why they chose Oradour for their attack. All the principal characters on the SS side are now dead and the few French survivors of the village were not given any clues by the troops as to why they were acting as they were.

The 2nd Waffen SS Panzer Division Das Reich sealed off Oradour-sur-Glane and ordered all the inhabitants – and anyone who happened to be in or near the town – to assemble in the village square to have their identity papers examined. The SS also arrested several people who did not even live in the village but merely happened to be riding their bicycles through when the SS unit arrived.

The women and children were locked in the church and the village was looted. The men were led to six barns and sheds, throughout the village, where machine guns were already in place.  According to a survivor's account, the SS men then began shooting, aiming for their legs. When victims were unable to move, the Nazis covered them with fuel and set the barns on fire. Only six men managed to escape. One of them was later seen walking down a road and was shot dead. In all, 190 village men died.

The SS men next proceeded to the church and placed explosive devices beside it. When it was ignited, the women and children tried to escape through the doors and windows, only to be met with machine-gun fire. 247 women and 205 children were murdered. The only survivor was 47-year-old Marguerite Rouffanche. She escaped through a rear sacristy window, followed by a young woman and child.  All three of them were shot, two of them fatally. Marguerite crawled to some bushes and remained hidden overnight until she was found and rescued the next morning. About twenty villagers had fled Oradour-sur-Glane as soon as the SS unit had appeared. That night, the village was partially razed.

The SS unit then spent the rest of the weekend and all day Monday trying to get rid of the evidence.  Bodies were so badly burned that almost none of the 642 victims would be identified, making mourning and closure impossible for their families.  

After the war, General Charles de Gaulle decided the village should never be rebuilt but would remain a memorial to the cruelty of the Nazi occupation. From my understanding, no one was ever really held accountable for the massacre.

The new village of Oradour-sur-Glane has a population of about 2,475 citizens, northwest of the site of the massacre, was built after the war. The ruins of the original village remain as a memorial to the dead and to represent similar sites and events, throughout France and Europe.  Massacres were routine when the SS was in town.

Today I visited the Centre de la mémoire d'Oradour, opened in 1999 by then French president Jacques Chirac, near the entrance to the martyred village. It is the only way into the village and helps to put the events leading up to June 10th, into perspective. The museum includes items recovered from the burned buildings, personal effects, pocket knives, sewing thimbles, children's toys, glass bottles melted from the fires, and watches stopped at the time their owners were burned alive.  Most powerfully someone has spent a great deal of time amassing pictures of the victims of the village and village life from around the time of June 10, 1944.  These pictures show a vibrant village, with weddings, store openings, cafe scenes, school pictures.  The most haunting pages are the blank ones, pages where no photographs of a victim could be found, these empty frames call to mind what was lost here.

I feel today like I have come full circle.  I started this trip on the Normandy beaches, and have mostly finished in a haunting site that exists as a retaliation for the victory so richly purchased in Normandy.  And yet there is the constant question about the lessons we should have learned from these two places and seem to either failed to heed or have completely forgotten. How did so many lose their lives fighting a regime of hate and bigotry without a single lesson learned that showed any staying power? What will it take before we learn to live together regardless of our religion, our political view, our sexual orientation, or colour?  How many more will have to die?

Rachel