Introduction
In
the afternoon of 10th June 1944 a detachment
of SS troops arrived in Oradour-sur-Glane, a
peaceful
town
near the
city of Limoges in central France. The troops sealed
off the entrances to the town and rounded up the
inhabitants,
including those they had collected from nearby
farms on their way in.
The assembled residents were initially told that
this was to be an identity check. However the women
and children
were then separated from the men folk and the (200
or so) men were split up into smaller groups and
taken
to various
barns
or warehouses around the town centre where SS troops
set up machine guns facing them. The women and
children (approx 450 of them) were taken
to the church
and locked in.
On a pre-determined signal the machine gunners opened
fire on all the men, slaughtering them in cold blood.
Once the firing had ceased the troops covered the
dead and dying with wood and straw and set fire to
them. At
the church, soldiers brought in a box containing
some sort of explosive device and detonated it amidst
the
terrified women and children. It is believed that
this was supposed to produce an asphyxiating gas
rather
than being purely explosive, however its effect was
to set the women and children into a screaming panic.
The SS then started firing their machine guns into
the
church through the doors and windows and also threw
in hand grenades to murder the women and children.
As
with the barns where the men were held, the SS then
piled in wood and straw and set light to the church.
They then
proceeded to loot the town and burn down all the
buildings.
Only one woman managed to escape from the church,
through one of the windows. Several of the men escaped
the slaughter at the various barns and managed to hide
or flee the town.
At the end of the day, the SS had murdered a total
of 642 men women and children.
Following the war the French government decided to
preserve the town in its ruined state as a memorial
to the murdered inhabitants. It is today still possible
to visit the town and get and idea of the terrible atrocity
carried out there. I personally made a visit to Oradour
in June 2005 and the following pages are presented
in the interests of those who are unable to visit the
town themselves.
For those people wishing to find out more of the
massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane I recommend that you
visit Michael
Williams' excellent web site at www.oradour.info
