Oradour-sur-Glane: REMEMBER
IT WAS SIXTYSIX YEARS AGO TODAY… 10 June 1944, just 4 days after the allied forces landed on the beaches in Normandy; an atrocity was perpetrated by Hitler’s S.S. on the 1,000 year old village of Oradour-sur-Glane. In all, 642 persons that included; 193 schoolchildren perished in the massacre that Saturday afternoon. Actual specifics and firsthand accounts detailing the horrific brutality can be easily found on the internet… The 190 men were herded into 9 different barns and buildings where they were then shot in the legs and burnt alive, all the women and schoolchildren were lead into the church to meet a similarly unspeakable end.
That afternoon, two hundred with Hitler's Waffen SS arrived traveling up this road to commit unspeakable crimes
Waffen SS assembled the entire village here around the doctor's car for an ID check and then down these roads in shops & barns - the killing began
And here in the heart of their church... All the women and innocent children massacred
Martine and I knew little about the magnitude or scope of this war crime but we felt compelled last week to travel just north of Limoges to see and learn more about what was only occasionally whispered about by our neighbors many of whom were themselves members, or children, of the Maquis (French Résistance) during WWII.
We were not prepared for what we saw and what we learned… I was not prepared for the actual size of this village which has been left EXACTLY as it was on that infamous day. In total; 325 homes, shops, hotels, cafés, schools, and the church, were plundered and burnt – and left frozen in time, so all who visit will remember horror that occurred in Oradour-sur-Glane, not really, so long ago.
Souviens-Toi et à bientôt, Jack
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