The story of this place
On 10 June 1944, four days after D-Day, an SS Panzer Division company entered the quiet village of Oradour-sur-Glane and, in a reprisal action, murdered virtually its entire population. The men were herded into barns and machine-gunned; 452 women and children were locked in the church, which the SS then set ablaze, shooting those who tried to flee. In all 643 people died. After the war, Charles de Gaulle ordered that the burned-out village be preserved exactly as it was left—rusting cars, empty shells of homes, a scorched church—as a permanent memorial. A new town was built alongside; the ruins remain France's most eloquent testament to Nazi atrocity.