Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre

On Saturday, 10 June, 1944 at approximately 2:00pm, soldiers of the Der Furher Regiment of the 2nd Waffen SS Panzer Division entered a small French town named Oradour-sur-Glane and began to round up all 649 citizens. The men, women and children were led to the town center where they were separated, men in one group, women and children in the other, and told that the town was going to be searched for weapons.

No one was threatened and no one seemed scared as they knew there were no weapons in their town. The Nazi’s would conduct their search and be on their way by days end. That was not to be.

Accounts conflict as to the real reason why the German troops selected this town. Some say there was a high ranking German officer that was taken captive by the Resistance and the soldiers were on a rescue mission. Other accounts say that this was to be in retaliation for Resistance firing on the troops as they moved across the Dordogne river. No one knows. What is known is that out of 649 civilians, 642 died that day.

Now, there certainly are no shortage of stories about massacres, man has been capable of senseless killing since the beginning of time. For example, in the United States:

1704, Apalachee Indian Massacre 1,000 Apalachee Indian men, women, children killed

1712, Fox Indian Massacre, 1,000 Fox Indian men, women, children

1890, Wounded Knee Massacre, 130-250 Sioux men, women and children

WW2:

1943, Operation Achse, German troops kill / execute 5,155 Italian soldiers (Italy had surrendered to the Allies)

1943, Viannos Massacre, German Wehrmacht troops kill 500+ men, women and children

1944, Pyrgoi Massacre, German troops kill and burn alive 368 men, women and children

1944, Huta Pieniacka Massacre, (Ukraine), Waffen SS kill 500-1,200 men, women and children

Obviously not a complete list but the point is made, man is more than capable of committing mass murder without so much as a thought of the end result. Complete families removed from the Earth. No heirs, no next generation.

Oradour-sur-Glane was just another small town in the French countryside. Farming was the staple, but this town had a robust infrastructure; cafe’s, professional offices (doctors, dentists, shoe makers, hotels, etc). But most importantly, it was just a small town trying to sit out the War.

What happened was this. The men were taken to 6 garages, while the women and children were taken to the church. At almost the same time by some pre-arranged signal, the soldiers began firing into the men. Some were killed, most were wounded. After the shooting, the soldiers placed wood and straw on top of the men and set it ablaze. Those that were not dead already died from the fire.

At approximately the same time as the shooting of the men, a box of canisters meant to asphyxiate the women and children was ignited and thrown into the church. This didn’t work so the soldiers began firing machine guns in the windows and throwing grenades inside. Then the bodies were then set on fire. Everyone, except one woman, was killed. Marguerite Rouffanche escaped through the rear sacristy window and hid in a pea patch until the next morning. 6 men also escaped, one was found walking on the road and was shot, the other 5, Robert Hébras, Marcel Darthout, Yvon Roby, Clément Broussaudier and Mathieu Borie survived.

The Waffen SS stood guard over the village that night and began to raze the town. Early the next day, relatives arrived at Oradour-sur-Glane to find the massacre and the homes of their loved ones destroyed. A small contingent of Waffen SS return on 12 June to try to coverup the massacre by burying the dead in a mass grave.

With nothing but charred bones buried in a pit, identification was impossible. Today the cemetery displays two containers of remains dedicated to the 642 men, women and children lost. Families lost.

Surprisingly massacres like Oradour-sur-Glane are missing from the history lessons we learned years ago. Names like Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka are certainly worth remembering, but so are the towns and villages where the innocent gave their lives simply because they were there.

Today Oradour-sur-Glane remains as it was on 10 June 1944, no repairs, no rebuilding. It is known as the, “City of Martyrs”.