Oradour-sur-Glane

[LUCKYSTRIKE]

I've visited Oradour twice and it is a really very moving place, walking through its quiet streets with the tram track still in place always gets to me, seeing the Doctors car in the square where he parked in an attempt to stop what was happening or the names of the families on the burnt out houses and the number of people who died in, or from each house. But for me the most moving is the Village Church seeing all those MG bullets across the walls and the childrens photo's on the graves. But we mustn't forget the other villages near Oradour that also suffered at the hands of Das Reich during this march North, locals being hung from lamp posts etc.
Its sad to say but in the East this sort of thing had become the norm many hundreds of villages and towns were wiped out. The Das Reich were rebuilding in France after recent action in the East and its said the mind set saw this as normal 'no quarter given'. For them before Oradour the French Resistance fighters had attacked them every day to delay them reaching the Normandy front but after Oradour they were not attacked again, accept by Allied aircraft. The reprisal cost was too high a price to pay. This inhumantry and the terror they created by this atrocity created the result they wanted, free passage all the way to Normandy.
Max Hastings book 'Das Reich' covers this march North the ambushes and reprisals and is also worth a read.
They'll never be forgotten.
LUCKYSTRIKE

[Steve T]

God bless them all.

I visited the place more than 25 years ago now, when I was only just getting interested in WW2. A very sobering and moving place to visit. The story of the only survivor from the village getting home to discover what happened still haunts me to this day. The fact that the village has been left as it was found on that fateful day is just totally moving........I'm welling up thinking of the place and it's people even now.

Steve T

[big ned]

God bless them all.

I visited the place more than 25 years ago now, when I was only just getting interested in WW2. A very sobering and moving place to visit. The story of the only survivor from the village getting home to discover what happened still haunts me to this day. The fact that the village has been left as it was found on that fateful day is just totally moving........I'm welling up thinking of the place and it's people even now.

Steve T

There were actually almost 20 survivors of the massacre, although only 1 child of school age survived. His name was Roger Godfrin aged 7, and his family were refugees from Lorraine. His mother told him that if he ever saw Germans coming he should run away. This he did, slipping away out of the back door of the school when the SS arrived, heading for the nearby river he was shot at, but managed to hide in long grass, and so survived.

Another child who was below school age also survived, he was Andre Pinede. He and Roger were the only children who lived through that awful day. Below is a picture of Roger, taken after the atrocity occured.

Regards, Ned.

[Feuerbach]

It appears the village was packed with French resistance, ambushing the Germans on their way to Normandy. Some stories say the church it self was packed with explosives, the resistance were hiding there. The SS batalion responsable for the massacre, Der Fuhrer, was located just south of Carcasonne. I found the place some years ago, but it still military domain, and not open to public.
I made a lot of pictures of the place, also of Oradour, but before the digital era, so to upload them I will have to take pictures of the pictures.

[António Fragoeiro]

some photos i found of oradour sur glane

[cricketchris1944]

Really? I always thought that you weren't allowed to actually go through the old village itself. I need to put that on my bucket list.

I have been there 2 times it is a must see.

Chris

[Paul D]

One of the other great tragedies involved with Oradour was the fact that many of the members of 3 Kompanie DF who commited the atrocity were from the Alsace !!!

[redtears]

It appears the village was packed with French resistance, ambushing the Germans on their way to Normandy. Some stories say the church it self was packed with explosives, the resistance were hiding there.

This was a post war answer from the SS. (of course they won't say they round up only the people of the village excluding the foreign villagers before massacring them - ie, wipe out the village as an example like they were doing on the eastern front / occupied countries )

[Feuerbach]

I don't think they had the time to just wipe out a complete village for no reason, as they were in a hurry to get to the north of France. Ther must be a reason they did wipe it out, and the story is it was packed ith French resisstance, and they were slowing the troops down. That is the reason the rounded up the villagers. They found some weapons and explosives in the village. There are a few books written about the matter.

[sSterbebild]

google :
Occupation troops, on 10 June in search of one of the Resistance kidnapped officer and senior management of the resistance fighters who were on their reports on the outskirts of Oradour-sur-Glane, the bodies one on the eve of the maquisards invaded Wounded transport and in the houses of the village hidden weapons and ammunition. Then they shot most of the men apprehended as partisans and burned down the houses.
Besatzungssoldaten, am 10. Juni auf der Suche nach einem von der Résistance entführtem Offizier und einem Führungsstab der Widerstandskämpfer, fanden nach ihren Berichten am Ortsrand von Oradour-sur-Glane die Leichen eines am Vortag von den Maquisards überfallenen Verwundetentransports und in den Häusern des Dorfes versteckte Waffen und Munition. Daraufhin erschossen sie die meisten aufgegriffenen Männer als Partisanen und brannten die Häuser nieder.

All involved were later released ?