I hadn’t planned on posting again until tomorrow evening,
but I had an experience during my journey to the Loire Valley today that I want
to share while it is still fresh in my memory. I had a long drive ahead of me
this morning, nearly five hours total from the Dordogne to the Loire, and it
just so happened that I had read about and also had recommended to me a great
sightseeing opportunity along the way, so I decided to use that opportunity to
break up the long drive. That opportunity was at Oradour-sur-Glane, a village
near Limoges in west-central France. Oradour is well-known in France for being
the site of a terrible massacre of more than 600 civilians by Nazi troops
during World War II. The village was left exactly as it was after the massacre
and has been preserved in exactly the same condition ever since, providing
visitors the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the reality of that tragic
event. It is similar to the concentration camps in Germany which I have visited
and written about on this blog before in that at Oradour, the French people invite
the world to come see what happened there, so that they will never forget. It
is an incredibly powerful and moving site to behold, and I recommend anyone
visiting either the Loire or the Dordogne, especially if going between the two,
to stop by and see it for themselves.
The site is appropriately spartan, taking care not to
distract visitors from the sobering display they are there to witness. When you
first arrive you do not see the village at all, but rather just the tastefully
composed entrance to the site’s museum. The museum sets the stage for you,
telling the story both in words and images of how Adolf Hitler and the Nazi
party came to power in Germany, how they invaded France and occupied the
northern half while allowing a sympathetic government (known as the Vichy
government or Vichy France) to administer the southern half, and how events
progressed leading up to the massacre at Oradour. By 1944, when the massacre
took place, Germany had become stretched thin and was losing control of the
vast territory, from France to Russia, that it had conquered using its
blitzkrieg strategy early in the war. As Nazi repression subsequently weakened
in Vichy France, resistance elements arose and grew increasingly vocal, and the
Vichy government tolerated them. The Nazis took notice, however, and as control
began to slip away they sought to reaffirm it. The Nazis wanted to make an
example, and they chose Oradour as the place to do it. Internal communication
which is documented at the museum shows that the Nazis planned a brutal
crackdown, and that they even made the Vichy government aware of their plans.
While it is not clear how much the Vichy government knew of what the Nazis
planned, it is clear that they stood by and did nothing to prevent it. On June
10, 1944, a detachment of the Nazi Waffen SS (composed in part of forced French
conscripts) surrounded Oradour and then moved their way into the village,
forcing anyone they encountered to gather in the center of the village. They
then confined all of the women and children to the village church and separated
the men into several groups, which they took away to different parts of the
village. On a pre-arranged signal the Nazis opened fire on the groups of men,
killing them. They then set fire to the church, killing the women and children
too. Finally the Nazis set fire to the village, completely destroying it. All
told, 642 villagers were murdered, while just a handful of fortunate escapees
survived.
After exiting the museum, visitors are directed toward the
village itself. You emerge from the museum and find a set of stairs rising
before you with a gate at the top and a stone plaque that says simply “Remember”.
Upon reaching the top of the stairs you find yourself at the edge of the ruined
village. It looks very much like any other French village, except every single
building is a ruin. The streets look like regular French streets, the power
line poles are still standing, and there are even the remains of reclining
patient’s chairs in the village dentist’s office and the rusted shell of a car on
the street. But all of the buildings are open to the sky, every bit of wood
they ever possessed consumed by Nazi fire. There are plaques on many of the
buildings indicating what they were; the post office, the school, the barber
shop, the café, etc. Here and there you see plaques that tell you where each of
the groups of men was murdered. Visitors are free to walk anywhere, including
the very spots where the victims were killed. At the far end of the village
from where visitors enter is the church, where the most heinous act – the murder
of the women and children – was committed. There, too, visitors can walk inside
and see what remains of the last thing on earth the victims ever saw. Finally,
the village cemetery lies just outside of the ruined village, where the victims
who could be identified are buried. There is also a plaque with the names of
the children who were murdered there. There is a sign at the entrance to the
village that says “Silence,” but for the most part it probably isn’t necessary;
words escape you when you walk through the village and see what remains,
imagining what was there before the massacre and what it looked like in the
midst. I saw probably 20-30 other visitors in the village, and heard not a
world spoken among them.
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| Oradour-sur-Glane |
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