Oradour-sur-Glane

After a morning hike to the top of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie one last time, we packed up our camping gear and headed out to the next town. We stopped first at Peche Merle to see where the ancient Neanderthal drawings were, walked around the museum and then traveled to a town almost in the very middle of France called Oradour-sur-Glane. Mr. Finter and I love learning about history and World War II has held a very significant place in our hearts. Therefore, we made the stop earlier in our travels to Poland in order to visit Auschwitz and then decided we had to see this town in France as well. 

Oradour-sur-Glane is a quiet, small town of which only ruins are left after WWII. During the Vichy Regime in France, there had been some resistance to Nazi occupation and the Nazis chose this small town of which none rebelled or resisted to make an example of. They claimed, unfoundedly, that this town posed a great threat to the regime hiding weapons of war within and used propaganda to motivate and cover up the atrocity that happened here on June 10, 1944. On that day, a group of soldiers, the Der Führer regiment of the 2nd SS-Panzer Division Das Reich, surrounded the village, separated the men from the women and children, took the men to six buildings where they were all shot and took the women and children to the church where the soldiers let off a gas bomb that failed to work correctly forcing the soldiers to massacre the women and children with machine guns and grenades. Afterwards, they burned the entire village.

 "Only one person [of 642 men, women and children] managed to escape alive from the church and that was Madame Rouffanche. She saw her younger daughter who was sitting next to her killed by a bullet as they attempted to find shelter in the vestry. Madame Rouffanche then ran to the altar end of the church where she found a stepladder used to light the candles. Placing the ladder behind the altar she climbed up and threw herself through a window and out onto the ground some 10 feet below. As she picked herself up, a woman holding her baby tried to follow, but they were seen by the soldiers and both woman and child were killed. In spite of being shot and wounded five times, Madame Rouffanche escaped round the back of the church and dug herself into the earth between some rows of peas, where she remained hidden until late the next day." - Oradour-sur-Glane

The town of Oradour-sur-Glane is perfectly preserved exactly how it was left after this horrid event. It remains to stand as a reminder of what humanity is capable of and what must never happened again. 

A Singer sewing machine.

A bread bakery.

The church.

Bullet holes in the walls.

"Souviens-Toi. Remember"