Remembering The Martyred Village Of France

Pology Magazine - Adventures in Travel and World Culture.

Remembering The Martyred Village Of France
By Lee Runchey

In the morning of June 10, 1944, the 649 villagers of Oradour-sur-Glane began their day. Children walked to school. The postmistress sorted mail. At the local boulangerie fresh baguettes were in the oven. Cafes opened their doors. But by that evening, a Nazi SS unit would massacre all but six of them, then set fire to what would eventually become known as The Martyred Village.

And now, 61 years later, I would bear witness. Because the ruins of the town have been preserved like a frozen moment in time exactly as the SS left them on that day. The French want us to know what happened. They want to remember. They want us to remember too.

I stand behind a thick blanket of fog that shrouds the village in a ghostly stillness. A tiny intersection sits in an unnerving quiet. Not a car, not a person, not even a bird. On one side of the road, the new city of Oradour-sur-Glane is still sleeping. But on the other side, the original town rests peacefully.

The gravel at the side of the two-lane road crunches under my weight, and the dew of an October morning moistens the leather of my shoes as I make my way to the entrance. It is disconcertingly quiet. An occasional passing car is the only assurance that life still exists around here.

A meter-and-a-half tall wall surrounds the village. It helps preserve history. The tallest points of a few ruined homes peak over the top. When the gates of the village open, the curtain of the fog lifts nearly on cue to reveal the remains. Today I am the first visitor and step back into June 10, 1944.

As I walk down the middle of the road into the village, I instinctually gravitate towards the sidewalk. I catch myself, remembering that cars haven't seen these roads in years.

There is an exception, however, the remains of one rusted 1930s model that has been parked in the same spot for decades. It’s commonly speculated that the car belonged to the mayor’s son, a doctor, who returned from making a house call while the SS was rounding up the villagers—although in her 2000 book Martyred Village, chronicling the area's commemoration of the massacre, historian Sarah Farmer asserts it actually belonged to a town wine merchant.

The air is heavy as I walk amongst the ruins. There is a sign on each of the homes and buildings that reveals the name and profession of the family who once lived within the walls. The structures are roofless, and some buildings have been burnt almost beyond recognition.

There are occasional hints of what once was. In a brassierie, a few tiles painted in cheerful hues of blue and yellow still cover the floor. In one house, there is a rusted sewing machine, in others a fireplace mantle, the iron grates of a heater or the steel frame of a bed. There is a graveyard of rusted cars next to the mechanic’s garage. The telephone poles still hold the pre-war cables.

But there is little else other than memory. Anything that could have been burned, including most of the bodies, was burned.

Waist-high picket fences cover most of the doorways to prevent visitors from entering the buildings. My imagination takes over and fuses the details in an attempt to reconstruct the lives that were once housed inside. Footsteps pierce the silence. It is another couple exploring the ruins. It is so quiet that their subdued voices echo from the other end of the street.

I pause to reflect on the story of June 10.

The SS unit arrived at about 2 pm. It was an identity check, they claimed, as they gathered everyone to the fairground in the center of the village. They separated the men from the women and children.

The children were encouraged to sing as they were led with the women into the town church. The SS initially attempted to asphyxiate them with a gas bomb, but the device achieved only limited success. Ultimately hails of bullets and fire finished the job.

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