We were driven to Oradour-sur-Glane, 21 km northwest of Limoges, not too far from where we were staying. Orador, 59 years ago, was a prosperous town of about 700 people, with many shops, businesses, cafes/bars and schools. A peaceful village on the river. The men would travel by tram into work at Limoges each day.

Nothing out of the ordinary, until the afternoon of 10 June 1944 when lorries carrying 200 German SS troops arrived. All the inhabitants were summoned to the village green, the school children were marched out of school in rows, except for 1 boy, a refugee from Lorraine, who had seen the SS before ? he ran off into the woods and hid. The women and children were marched off to the Church and the men were divided into groups and taken to various warehouses, barns and garages.

Then the massacre began ? the men were shot in their groups, the soldiers going through the bodies shooting any wounded. Then they covered the bodies with straw, wood, anything that would burn and after a while returned and lit the fire. From inside the locked church the women heard the machine gun fire but couldn?t see what was happening to their men. A tiny number of men (5) did escape by pretending to be dead and crawled out from the bodies, they later told the story.

Meanwhile in the church the Germans had placed a box with cords coming out from it on the altar and they lit the cords and locked the doors. The box exploded and fumes filled the church, some women and children pushed open the doors only to be fired upon by the waiting soldiers outside.

One woman found a stepladder and threw her baby out the window and then jumped down the 9 feet to the ground. Another woman soon followed but they were shot, the mother and baby died but the other woman crawled into long grass   she was the only survivor from the church. The soldiers then set fire to the church...

In all 642 people were murdered that day ? the reason .. to teach the other villages a lesson. This village has been left exactly as they found it on the 11 June 1944 as a memorial to the people who died there.

The vehicles are still in the street and garages rusting away, the tables and chairs in the cafes, bicycles in the houses, treadle sewing machines ? all as they were left that day.

The soldiers set fire to the whole village so only the stone walls of the buildings are left standing. It was a very moving experience walking around the streets ? I found it particularly so when I walked up the steps of the church, only imagining what must have been going through the minds of those poor women with their children ? they never walked back down those steps again.

There were quite a few tourists there that day but everyone spoke quietly and sort of tiptoeing around ? it is just such a place.

Marcelline.