Oradour-sur-Glane: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Oradour-sur-Glane was a village in the Limousin region of Vichy France that came under direct German control in 1942. As an Allied attack on Europe loomed, the local French Resistance increased its activities in order to occupy the German forces and hinder communications. Nazi responses intensified following the D-Day invasion of the Normandy beachhead on June 6, 1944. To quell resistance, the SS decided to make an example of a village in the heart of the troublesome area.

On June 10 the Fourth Panzer Grenadier Regiment (Der Führer) circled the town of Oradour-sur-Glane and ordered all the inhabitants to congregate in a public fairground near the village center, ostensibly to examine everyone's papers. All the women and children were taken to the church, while the village was looted. Meanwhile the men were taken to six barns, where machine gun nests were already in place. According to the account of a survivor, the soldiers began shooting at them, aiming for their legs so that they would die more slowly. Once the victims were no longer able to move, the Nazis covered their bodies with kindling and set the barns on fire. Only five men escaped; 197 died there.

Having finished with the men, the soldiers then entered the church and put an explosive device in place. After it was detonated, the surviving women and children tried to flee from the doors and windows, but were met with machine gun fire. Only one woman survived; another 240 women and 205 children died in the mayhem. Another small group of about twenty villagers had fled Oradour as soon as the Nazis appeared. That night the remainder of the village was razed. A few days later the survivors were allowed to bury the dead.

Oradour was not the single such atrocity committed by German troops — other well-documented examples include the Soviet village of Kortelisy (now Ukraine), the Czechoslovakian village of Lidice (now Czech Republic) and the Italian village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema.

On January 12, 1953 a trial began against the surviving 65 of the about 200 killers before a military tribunal in Bordeaux. Only 21 of them were present (many living in Germany would not be extradited). Among them were 7 Germans, the 14 others were Alsatians, i.e. French nationals who had been regarded as members of the "Reich" by the Nazis. All but one of them claimed to have been drafted to the Waffen-SS against their will (the so-called malgré-nous).

This caused huge protest in Alsace, forcing the French authorities to split the process in two separate ones according to the nationality of the defendants. On February 11 20 defendants were found guilty. Continuing uproar (including calls for autonomy) in Alsace pressed the French parliament to pass an amnesty law for all malgré-nous on February 19, and the convicted Alsatians were released shortly afterwards. This in turn caused bitter protest in the Limousin region.

By 1958, all of the Germans were free, too. Karl-Heinz Lammerding, the General of the SS division Das Reich who had given the orders for the measures against the "terrorists" (the Resistance), died peacefully after a successful entrepreneuring career in 1971, never having been indicted nor extradited.

After the war, General Charles de Gaulle decided that the village would never be rebuilt. Instead, it would remain as a memorial to the suffering of France under Nazi occupation. In 1999, President Jacques Chirac dedicated a visitors' center in Oradour-sur-Glane and named the site a Village Martyr.

Geography and Location

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