Oradour-sur-Glane

(Warning: contains details of an extremely brutal incident in WW2)

Just to the west of Limoges lie two villages bearing the name Oradour-sur-Glane. The original one was the scene of one of the worst atrocities of World War Two where, on 10 June 1944, members of the SS carried out a massacre of 643 of the village's population. Afterwards they burned the village and dumped the bodies in a mass grave. Following the end of the war, President De Gaulle ordered that the site would be left untouched, as a monument to the dead, while a new village was constructed on adjacent land.

A memorial centre houses a couple of exhibitions that set the scene before you step out into the old village. Here you make your way along the main street and get a feel of how a normal functioning village was reduced to rubble overnight.

Plaques on the walls mark the businesses that lined this once thriving street, while burnt out cars parked in the road give the sense of a place that's been frozen in time.

During the events of 10 June, the men were separated in groups and taken to various points around the village, before being executed. Women and children were rounded up in the church at the end of the town. The German soldiers then set the building on fire, trapping those inside. Only one woman escaped.

Plaques at the cemetery remind us that the victims were not just locals. Many people were displaced during the course of the war, with the village housing refugees from the Alsace, Moselle and even Spain at the time of the tragedy.