11 April 2005

Oradour-sur-Glane a reminder of war’s horrors

As we ventured near Limoges, France, a beautiful city located in the heart of France’s Vichy region, we kept hearing about Oradour-sur-Glane.

War, for most Americans, has largely been abstract, fought on some distant soil by others. Well, during World War I and World War II, that distant soil was more often than not right here in the beautiful countryside of France — and reminders of those terrible days are everywhere.

Perhaps the most striking (and disturbing) reminder of all is the city of Oradour-sur-Glane. It is a place where one of the darkest periods in modern history stands frozen in time.

As we left the visitor’s center in Oradour, and headed toward the monument, we were overcome by the sight as we crested a small hill — an entire town sitting in ruin. There were two horses grazing by the town’s stone wall, as if they had just been put out to pasture. It was suddenly 1944. The place is disturbing. I half expected to see smoke trailing up from the burned buildings.

The stone walls that housed the butcher, the baker, the auto repair, the tailor and the homes of everyday people still sit quietly as a charred reminder of what becomes of war. Baby carriages, a sewing machine, a child’s burned bicycle lay strewn about a weeded yard. Rusting pots hang over long cold fireplaces, the overhead electric lines sway uselessly in the breeze. It is just as it was on that terrible day more than 60 years ago.

On June 10, 1944, just four days after “D-Day,” the Nazis decided to pay a visit to this small farm town.

As the tanks surrounded the town, the villagers were curious, but not particularly worried. The town hadn’t seen any soldiers in more than two years, and the people of the region were generally sympathetic to the Nazi regime.

The soldiers rounded everybody up, telling them they needed to inspect their papers. They sent all of the men to the big barn. The women and children were ordered to go to the Catholic Church in the heart of the small business district.

These small-town people weren’t powerful or politicians. They were just families going about the business of raising their kids and trying to get through life the best they could. They were confused, but complied without protest.

Then the Nazis’ opened fire on the barn, killing all but six young men.
These boys survived only because the bodies of their friends and neighbors covered them and shielded them from the relentless bullets. Then the soldiers set fire to the church, crowded to capacity with women and children. Two women — one carrying her infant child — escaped by breaking a window above the altar and leaping about 15 feet to the ground below. The soldiers shot the first woman and her baby.

The second woman hid in the brush, living to tell the story of how soldiers burned the entire town to the ground — killing 642 of the 649 people who had called the village home.

Because this horrible event occurred just after D-Day, it was generally lost to the rest of the world — drowned out by stories of advancing troops and Allied victories. But after visiting the site, Gen. Charles De Gaulle, a French war hero who later became president, decreed that the town would not be rebuilt. It would stand forever as a testament to the true face of war.

As I walked around looking at this time-frozen site, I found myself thinking of my own country and the fact that war is not just a story on the NBC Nightly News. War is very real in Europe. War is impossible to forget here. As an American, I could not understand this until I lived in Senlis and visited Oradour. Maybe I still don’t understand. Maybe I don’t want to.

As I walked around the burned buildings and crossed the hill to the cemetery that held the remains of the families that once lived in this precious place, it struck me that each generation seems to forget the true price of war — despite all of the reminders.

Annie Warmke has returned to her home in Philo, but continues to write about her travels. You can visit her at www.bluerockstation.com.

Originally published April 11, 2005