Hello again.

This letter is a little different from our previous ones. It will be much shorter because it will cover only one place we visited. Several British and French campers had advised us to see a French World War II "monument" that all visitors find very affecting. We had never heard of it at the time. In fact we had driven within a few kilometers of the place on our first trip in 2002 when we drove past Limoge. This time we had it in mind as a must-stop destination-the village named Oradour-sur-Glane in the Dordogne.

Oradour was a town of 642 people (including 193 children) in June 1944. As the Allies came ashore at Normandy, the French Resistance ramped up their efforts against the Nazis. Although Oradour’s residents did not seem to have been active in the Anti-Nazi resistance , the town was targeted by the Waffen SS to serve as an example to all the other towns where there were incidents blamed on the Resistance. A young lady who worked at the Memory Center told us that Oradour had been chosen only because it was small and easily surrounded.

It is a matter of record that on June 10, 1944, six days after D-day, a company of the Waffen SS rounded up everyone in the village. They took the men away, separated them into small groups, putting them in different areas all over town. Then they shot them. The men were lucky because they were shot before their bodies were set afire. The women and children were not so lucky. They were herded into the town church, locked inside and the church was then set ablaze. All of the women and children perished in the fire. Their work not yet done, the military unit then set fire to all the buildings in the rest of the village before they left.

After the war, the French government decided to leave the ruins of the village just as the Nazis had left it. General de Gaulle declared the site an official national monument. The village has changed only as the weather in the ensuing years has affected it. The only addition has been a few signs placed at various locations to identify the people who lived in the buildinge and the sort of business that had been conducted there and to mark the locations where people were murdered.

We were among at least a hundred people who visited that morning. We were a very silent group of people, walking slowly around a ruin in which the only things that remained were of metal or brick. All that was left after the fire were partial brick walls and some metal parts of furnishings or work-related machinery. There were rusted hulks of cars, bike frames, sewing machines and other metal objects in most spaces. Small signs alerted you to the places were bodies were found.

In the modern memorial building, there was an extensive museum display. It highlighted the background (the war, the adversaries, the political climate), some recordings of people who were involved, and a discussion of the post-war trial (held in 1953) of some of the soldiers of that particular Waffen SS unit. We didn’t want to see any of these, so we just walked around the remains of the town. All the pictures related to this letter here and, for RV club members, on our web site, are of these ruins.

Each picture is numbered and has a short descriptive title. The following is a more complete description of each photo.

This is the view of the main street as you walk into the burnt-out town.

The remains of some houses. A rusted sewing machine is in the foreground.

A street with a burnt-out car.

This sign simply tells the names and ages of the three people who lived in this house.

This sign says: Here is a place of torture.  A group of men were killed and their bodies burned by the Nazis. Remember.

The remains of the butcher shop.

The iron statue of Christ that remains outside the Church.

Here’s a rough translation of this sign: Here hundreds of women and children were massacred by the Nazis. You who pass, think about this. You who believe, say a prayer for the victims and their families. The only thing left standing outside in this village in ruins was Christ on the Cross. Inside (the Church of) Notre Dame de Lourdes et Bernadette, "Come to me, you who are suffering," said Christ. "Do what he (Chist) will tell you to do." said the Virgin. Note: We do not quite understand the last part of this quote. We have been told that it has to do with what the Virgin Mary told the service staff at the wedding of Cana, when Christ turned water into wine.

Adelle and Ron Milavsky

Authors of "Take Your RV to Europe, The Low-Cost Route to Long-Term Touring"

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