Oradour sur Glane
The notice at the entrance to Oradour tells the whole story:
Saturday 10th June 1944
Tobacco ration day. All is calm.
2.00pm.: a detachment of the SS Das Reich division encircles the town.
3.00: all the inhabitants are assembled in the market place.
3.30: nearly 500 women and children are shut in the church, the men in the
barns.
4.00: an explosion. The massacre begins.
7.00: 641 dead including 205 children. 318 buildings destroyed.
Here time has stood still so that you
may remember..
A few details, however, can be
added: First, this was not a reprisal. Oradour was chosen for massacre
because
it was not a centre of resistance. The SS, departing for Normandy,
wanted no uprisings behind its back.
Second, most of the SS who destroyed Oradour had been recruited in Alsace
since 1940, and were French by birth.
Third, because this was tobacco ration day and the schools worked Saturdays,
the town was full of people from the
surrounding countryside; thus the number of victims at Oradour was a third
higher than the population.
Fourth, the average age of the SS men was 17.
In the crypt of the memorial at Oradour, some of the unbumt possessions of
the dead offer mute witness to the horror
of the day. When the schools burned, for example, only the inkwells
survived. The guide in the church shows the bell,
melted by the heat of the fire; he points out that the push-chair by the
altar is only one of fifty. If you want harrowing
details, he is the man to give them. For me, though, it is the family
memorials in the cemetery, personal and direct,
which most immediately touch the heart.
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