On June 10, 1944, just four days after D-Day, the Nazis exterminated the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, killing 642 people, of which 246 were women, 207 were children, and 6 were infants. They then torched the village.
They assembled the people in the square and separated men from women. The men, they put in groups in the barn, shot off their legs until they fell, then arranged hay on top of the piles of bodies before setting fire to them. The women and children, they herded into the church, shot them, tear-gassed them, then set fire to the building.
Two woman and a child escaped from the burning church and all were shot as they escaped. Only one survived by crawling under bushes and hiding there until she was found the next day.
Five men escaped from the barn. In the museum store, I read part of the account of one survivor, who I think was Robert Hérbas. He was mostly protected from the shooting but could hear the groans of his fellow villagers on top of him – the father of one of his friends who said, “They shot off my other leg.” He could feel their blood as it covered him.
Hébras made the decision, as soon as the fire got too hot, to pull out of the pile of bodies even if it meant getting shot. The officers were no longer in the barn. He and the four others went away from the flames, but were still trapped in the building. One of them was a mason and found a weak point in the stones where they could pull enough away to escape.
I understood from one account that there were six men who escaped the shooting, but only five men who escaped completely from the barn. The survivors went out two first, then another two, then Robert Hébras (the only survivor who remains alive today) went alone, encouraged by his friend, who thought himself too badly hurt to escape. The survivors were not immediately spotted as they ran across the road and hid among the fields, and I’m not sure which of the six didn’t make it, but I don’t think it was the last one to leave.
Why did the Nazis exterminate this village? I’ve read or heard views in both English and French. It seems they received orders from above to quell the resistance at all cost, not excluding any civilians. The troops made their way North once they heard about the invasion – D-Day had occurred only four days before this mass killing – and the Nazis’ goal was to terrorise the civilians to prevent them from joining the resistance – and also to boost the moral of the German troops and indoctrinate the youngest recruits.
Oradour-sur-Glane was a peaceful, prosperous village with many commerce, and train tracks running right through the town centre. There was no known affiliation to the resistance (this is what the French sites say, though I’ve heard differently from English sites). It’s just 20 km from Limoges and was the perfect place to make a statement and quell any resistance.
After the war, General Charles de Gaulle ordered the village to remain as it was in remembrance of the barbaric act. You can find pictures from before with more personal effects and mounds of human ashes in the church. Today, only the most hardy things remain.
Burnt houses and remnants of stone, with some tile remaining on the floor, what would have been a welcome entrance to someone’s home. Sewing machines, bicycles, beds.
You find stores and offices, each one labeled with the name and occupation of its victim.
Cars.
But what you’re left with is this overall sense that this must never happen again.
In the wake of the mass killings of Christians in Sri Lanka with hundreds dead, the New Zealand mosque shooting with 50 dead, and the California synagogue with just one, it seems that we still need this reminder.
You can read a very thorough account here. You can see a video here showing early footage, and you can listen to the remaining survivor visit the site here. (The videos in French). #remember
What a profound read, Jennie. I am always struck by the evil that ensued and I appreciate learning about this important time in history that we can never ever forget.
Yes – in a way that wrenches our hearts – we still need the reminder. I did not know about this village, though the atrocities committed by the Nazis are well documented, or should be. Tragically, as you pointed out, atrocities are still being committed. It is heartbreaking to watch news reports of fresh horrors.
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