On June 10, 1944, German soldiers entered the village of Oradour and rounded up all of the inhabitants, 642 men, women, and children. Without explanation, they separated the women and children from the men and put the women and children in the church.
They tried to gas them by putting a bomb in the church, but it didn't work well and SS decided to shoot the women and children.
This is a list of the men from the village who died in World War I. Notice the bullet holes:
The men were separated into several groups and put in different barns under armed guard. Oradour had never been suspicious of being involved in the Resistance, nor of any other violence toward the Germans. But on this day, for no apparent reason, the SS killed all of the men, women and children and burned the town. Some of the people were only wounded, but burned to death as a result of the fires.
This is a field of wildflowers that has grown around the ruins.
We drove on to Sarlat to a 2 bedroom house that Mark rented. The couple who owns it lives in the downstairs apartment. It is very nice and clean and cheaper than two hotel rooms would be. We’ve actually rented it for the week but are only using it 4 nights and it still is less! It is quite adorable:
3 comments:
Hi Wanda. Just wanted to thank you for your wonderful blog. I just finished reading it and was totally captivated. Your pictures are fantastic and I love your writing. Ever consider publishing? Seriously. Thanks for entertaining me.
Ruthann
What a terrible illustration of the evil of war. Even allowing for the possibility of exaggeration by local historians (hard to believe there wasn't something that prompted the massacre), it was horrendous. Did they also make a list of names of the women and children who were killed?
It was interesting to read the Wikipedia article. What an atrocity! I don’t understand how anyone could order such indiscriminate murdering. It is a shame that the person who apparently gave the orders was killed not long afterwards. He should have been shot by a firing squad after thinking about it for awhile. Also, the others involved should have spent more time in prison. It sounds like the politicians just didn’t have the guts to make hard decisions.
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