On the afternoon of 10 June 1944, the little town of Oradour-sur-Glane, 21km northwest of Limoges, witnessed one of the worst Nazi war crimes committed on French soil. German lorries belonging to the SS 'Das Reich' Division surrounded the town and ordered the population on to the market square. The men were divided into groups and forced into granges (barns), where they were machine-gunned before the structures were set alight. Several hundred women and children were herded into the church, and the building was set on fire, along with the rest of the town. Only one woman and five men survived the massacre; 642 people, including 193 children, were killed. The same SS Division committed a similarly brutal act in Tulle two days earlier, in which 99 Resistance sympathisers were strung up from the town's balconies as a warning to others.
Since these events, the entire village has been left untouched, complete with pre-war tram tracks and electricity lines, the blackened shells of buildings and the rusting hulks of 1930s automobiles – an evocative memorial to a village caught up in the brutal tide of war. At the centre of the village is an underground memorial inscribed with the victims' names and displaying their recovered belongings, including watches, wallets, hymnals from the burnt church and children's bikes. Victims were buried in the nearby cemetery.
Entry is via the modern Centre de la Mémoire, which does an excellent job contextualizing the massacre using historical exhibitions, videos and survivors' testimonies. Various theories have been put forward to try to explain the event – perhaps a reaction to the Allied landings four days earlier, or reprisal for sabotage raids committed by the Resistance, or the Resistance's hostage-taking of an SS officer. Those who were ultimately accused of the crime were tried at a 1953 military tribunal in Bordeaux, with outcomes ultimately ranging from a death sentence to amnesty (much to the chagrin of Oradour survivors).
After the war a new Oradour was rebuilt a few hundred metres west of the ruins. Bus 12 travels from the Limoges bus station once or twice a day.
