The ghost of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane: the tragic story of the martyr city. The new city of Oradour-sur-Glane
In the department of Limousin, the town of Oradour-sur-Glane lives a measured provincial life. This is a calm and beautiful place where you can ride horses, go fishing or canoeing. But this is not what most tourists come here for. The biggest attraction in the area is memorial Complex"Oradour-sur-Glane", whose history keeps the wounds of the carnage that never heal. What happened to the lovely French village and why no one lives in it - the ZagraNitsa portal will tell about the tragic fate of the martyr city
Despite the occupation of France by the troops of Nazi Germany, nothing foreshadowed trouble in the small village of Oradour-sur-Glane, sheltered near the Perigord-Limousin nature reserve, 2.5 hours from Bordeaux. The inhabitants of the village, remote from the first line of clashes, led a peaceful lifestyle, fished on the Glan River, gathered in the evenings in parks and cafes to discuss last news. They did not even suspect that they would soon fall as unwitting victims of the bloody slaughter. Out of 700 people, less than 30 will survive ...
Main street Rue de Emile Desourteaux before the tragedy. Photo: scrapbookpages.com
This is the same street today. Photo: scrapbookpages.com
Late at night on June 10, a few days after the landing of the SS soldiers off the coast of Normandy, a detachment of 150 fighters disturbed the sleepy Oradour-sur-Glane. For reasons that have not yet been clarified, Nazi troops broke into a peaceful town, razed it to the ground and destroyed all the inhabitants. Including women and children.
Photo: sudouest.fr
Photo: roelof-harma.blogspot.com
An elite unit of the Der Fuhrer regiment surrounded the village. Confused and frightened residents were ordered to immediately leave their homes and gather in the main square to check documents. Men and women with children were divided into two separate groups.
Photo: europe1.fr
The soldiers ordered the women and children to occupy the church building, and the men were taken to the outskirts of the village, where they were brutally shot. Then they doused it with a combustible mixture and set it on fire. Of the 202 people, only five survived - they miraculously managed to escape.
Photo: lepoint.fr
Photo: ww2today.com
A powerful incendiary device was detonated in the church. Those who tried to get out of the fiery captivity were shot from machine guns. 240 women and over 200 children were burned alive. Only one resident of Oradour-sur-Glan managed to escape from the harsh reprisals. Another 20 people managed to escape at night, before the troops entered.
Photo: europe-cats-tour-2016.blogspot.com
Following the church, the Nazis destroyed all the buildings in the town. At the end of the war, it was decided not to restore the remains of the houses. A new town of the same name was built near the site of the tragedy. The ruined village has turned into a ghost town, a mute admonition to posterity about how terrible and senseless the victims of war are.
Photo: europe1.fr
Photo: natgeotv.com.au
There are various theories about what happened. One of possible causes- rumors that the kidnapped SS officer Helmut Kampfe was kept in the village, transporting a package of secret documents. According to another version, the soldiers simply confused the French names and initially went to Oradour-sur-Vaires (where another Wehrmacht officer was allegedly captured).
Dead city. The modern ruins of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, preserved in this form since 1944, are easily found on the net. People of my generation, who were not even specifically interested in the topic, have known a certain number of obvious facts since Soviet times: in June 1944, the village (rather a village or town, a tiny town) Oradur was destroyed by the Nazis along with all civilians, the name of the village became a symbol of the Nazi barbarism, along with the Belarusian village of Khatyn and the Czech village of Lidice.
Approximately so it was stated by the Soviet textbooks.
To be honest, when I started reading the details on French sites, every time it seems that a person with historical education nothing can surprise you anymore: you never know in the history of examples of cruelty, repressions and other totalitarian regimes. . But this story turned out to be replete with some kind of creepy ... no, not even in terms of bloody details, namely psychological details - which made their way right to the very liver. I'm sitting here, poking around in various articles and roaring for the third day :(
Start with what historians don't know why this particular village was chosen for the massacre. On the basis of rumors and conflicting evidence, a variety of versions are put forward: that the SS headquarters received information that the partisans had captured some German boss and were holding him by force precisely in Oradour. Oh no, in fact, this boss had already been executed the day before - and this was either known or not known. Oh no, in fact, he was captured not in Oradour (which is sur-Glan), but in another village nearby, Oradour-sur-Vair, and the SS men accidentally made a mistake and ran into the wrong village. They say that the partisans are to blame - they captured and killed the German hospital train the day before, so the Germans decided to take revenge on them (French historians do not confirm this version, but we note in passing that even if the partisans suddenly acted so badly that they attacked the hospital train - war, anything can happen - even in this case, the Germans do not look very nice if, instead of chasing elusive poppies through the forests in revenge, they take out their anger on unarmed farmers and small shopkeepers). And they also say that some partisans stole some gold from the SS men, which they had previously stolen somewhere else, and there was a rumor that this gold was hidden in Oradour - and the Germans, they did not want massacre at all, they just wanted their loot - and only when the residents refused ...
And all these versions, upon closer examination, crumble like a house of cards and the simplest, most terrible and most obvious, like Occam's razor, version emerges: NO WHY. Simply because this village was the first to get in the way and was supposed to serve as an act of intimidation.
In response to the landings in Normandy, the partisans in France stepped up their activity, wanting to help the advance of the Allied forces. In response to the strengthening activities of the Resistance, the Germans began to intensify terror against the local population. More and more troops were transferred to Normandy. At the same time, a decree was issued stating that it is allowed to apply on Western front the same methods against the civilian population that were previously used only on the Eastern Front. The SS division Das Reich, transferred to France from the Eastern Front, managed to take part in punitive operations against the civilian population in the east, before being sent to a new front it was understaffed with fresh recruits. Until now, the German troops here were bound by some conventions, rules of warfare and obviously restrained their instincts. And then the thugs, who managed to taste the blood and want to demonstrate their coolness in front of the recruits, and just at that moment they heard: YOU CAN. A few days before the massacre in Oradour, the same division carried out a massacre in the village of Tulle in the same region - which, unlike the quiet Oradour, was really connected with the partisans: in Tulle, the Germans hanged 99 men at once from 16 to 60 years old and another 149 people arrested and deported to Dachau, where two-thirds died.
Oradur, according to numerous testimonies, was an absolutely quiet and uninvolved place. At the beginning of the war, a certain number of various refugees settled in the town - some of them took root, others eventually left to seek their fortune elsewhere. But other than that, the village was not involved in any military excesses. According to testimonies, for four years the inhabitants did not feel and did not notice the special hardships of war and occupation: the occupation authorities were somewhere in one place, the partisans were somewhere else, and here the most ordinary philistine life continued (well, perhaps a little more hungry than before) - with petty commerce and petty philistine passions. Probably, these details would not have shocked me so much if I had not seen with my own eyes the customs of such a provincial French town: all the doors were wide open, I went into the courtyard, accidentally stroked the cat - a grandfather immediately jumped out of the house to meet me with a joyful cry: yes you Come in, I'll pour you some wine! - one can easily imagine that seventy years ago mores were even more patriarchal. And so, when the village was suddenly surrounded by a couple of hundred armed thugs, accompanied by artillery (!) - people not afraid. They looked at the parade taking place under their windows with typical provincial curiosity rather than fear. Only a few guessed to hide - the absolute majority were so trusting, naive and not frightened that even when the SS men began to break doors and windows, driving the inhabitants to the market square, some asked: "Monsieur officer, I'm here dough in the oven recently put - can I go look at the dough, and immediately return?"
This dough for some reason it killed me the most :(
Then everything was simple: the number of victims turned out to be so large, among other things, because the population did not suspect anything, was absolutely not ready for reprisal, and almost to the very end was not afraid and did not resist. Only a few survived - ten people hid, 5 men and one woman miraculously escaped from the slaughterhouse itself. The men were first shot in the legs, after which the still alive were doused with fuel and set on fire. Women and children were locked in the church and pelted with grenades, after which they were also set on fire. A total of 642 people died in the fire. There is more - what? story, legend that the Germans, having gathered local residents, first called the mayor of the town separately and demanded that 30 hostages be handed over. To which the mayor replied that he was ready to offer himself as a hostage. After thinking, he added - and if I'm not enough for you, then together with my family. To which the SS man laughed in his face with the words: "A lot of honor to you, paddling pool!" - after which they ordered to begin the massacre. This is to the question of plots for films - that's how amazing the plot could come out of such a collision!
And then it's interesting. A few years later, a trial of punishers took place in Bordeaux - moreover, some of the suspects and defendants refused to extradite the authorities of the GDR. And here very unpleasant details surfaced, because along with the Germans, 13 Alsatians were in the dock - remember, those very "forcibly taken to serve in German army"Oops, - I think, - that's how innocent victims of the war! My heart felt that there was some kind of catch!
The Alsatians were convicted - moreover, one who voluntarily enlisted in the SS was sentenced to death, and the rest - allegedly taken by force - to various prison terms.
And here a scandal, a storm and almost a revolution began. The decision of the court in Bordeaux outraged the inhabitants of Alsace. "These are our children!" they shouted in Alsace. "They suffered innocently! Their suffering will forever remain in our hearts! France must stand up for her children!" The government was bombarded with telegrams, requests and complaints, demanding an immediate review of the court's decision. Parliament, the Supreme Court and other higher authorities intervened in the matter. General de Gaulle unexpectedly took the side of the Alsatians - referring to the importance of maintaining national unity in the face of the tragedies experienced.
A week later, the amnesty for the convicts was adopted by a two-thirds vote (with representatives of the left parties mostly voting against). All Alsatians were released, and a few months later the condemned Germans were also released.
But the story did not end there: the amnesty decision caused a storm of protest, now in Limousin and its environs (a region that survived the massacre in Oradour and Tulle). Journalists spoke out bitterly: the authorities preferred to spit on the interests of a poor rural sparsely populated region for the interests of a wealthy densely populated Alsace. People were confused, outraged, disoriented - how did they survive this horror, they lost loved ones, and their tragedy, their pain, their feelings were grossly neglected for the sake of the mythical interests of "preserving national unity"? The rejection in the region turned out to be so great that over the next twenty years, local authorities categorically refused to cooperate with the presidential and other top administration, did not invite officials to mourning ceremonies, refused any state assistance to perpetuate the memory of the dead and did everything on their own, and, finally, on principle, they installed a memorial plaque with the names of all the deputies who voted in favor of the amnesty (among them, by the way, was future president François Mitterrand), on another plate they listed the names of all the "amnestied".
Only time has smoothed out the traces of this inter-regional war - this is the question of how different historical myths and different historical memory can coexist within the framework of even one state.
Photos can be viewed, for example,
70 years ago, in the summer of 1944, one of the units of the SS Troops, which took part in the hostilities on many fronts of World War II, surrounded the village of Oradour-sur-Glan in France and ordered the inhabitants to gather in the center of the town. The SS men shot and burned all the men, women and children, only a few managed to escape.
The village of Oradour-sur-Glan was not restored after the war, and its ruins were left as a warning to posterity. Let's get acquainted with the terrible ghost of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane.
When the SS entered the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, they gathered all the men separately, and herded the women and children into the church.
The men were taken to the sheds, where they were shot from machine guns. After that, they were doused with a combustible mixture and set on fire. Only five managed to escape, 197 people were killed.
Then the church with women and children was set on fire, and those who tried to escape from the fire were shot. Only one woman managed to survive; 240 women and 205 children were killed.
The remains of the machines of that time:
One of the survivors, Robert Hébras, later said that he hid under the corpses of his fellow villagers, pretending to be dead.
This is 86-year-old Robert Hébras, a survivor of that massacre. The ghost town of Oradour-sur-Glane, October 2011:
In order not to leave anyone alive, every house in the village was set on fire. But one group of 20 people still managed to escape.
The village of Oradour-sur-Glan was completely destroyed. After the war, it was not restored, and the ruins were left as a warning to posterity. By the decision of Charles de Gaulle, Oradour-sur-Glane was declared a memorial center. In 1999, President Chirac called Oradour a "martyr city".
German President Joachim Gauck, 88-year-old survivor Robert Hébras and French President Francois Hollande:
Modern Oradour-sur-Glan also exists. It was built at a distance from the village of the same name, destroyed German soldiers during the years of World War II. Its population was 2,188 inhabitants as of 2006.
And we wander around the ghost village of Oradour-sur-Glane:
Plaque in memory of the tragedy of 1944:
Crucifix near the same church:
And what happened to those SS men? After the war, on December 12, 1953, the trial of 65 soldiers out of 200 who participated in this massacre began in Bordeaux. However, only 28 people were put on trial: 7 Germans, 21 Alsatians. The rest were not extradited by the GDR authorities. 20 of them were found guilty and convicted, but after the protests in Alsace, the French parliament granted amnesty to them, which caused protests already in Haute-Vienne. By 1958, all Germans were liberated.
General Karl-Hans Lammerding, who ordered the repression, was not brought to trial and died in 1971. Platoon commander SS Untersturmführer Heinz Barth (1921-2007) was convicted in 1983 in the GDR to life imprisonment and released in 1997 due to illness.
I continue a series of articles about ghost towns and the choice of the French commune of Oradour-sur-Glane at the moment is not accidental.
We all remember that on June 22, 1941, the first strike on the territory Soviet Union inflicted by the German Air Force - the Luftwaffe, which marked the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. In Russia, it is celebrated as the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow, but it is worth noting that not only Russians suffered in World War II ... and the ghost town of Oradour-sur-Glane is a kind of edification to posterity about the cruelty and mercilessness of war.
In early June 1944, the headquarters of the SS division "Reich" received a message that in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane (Oradour-sur-Glane) French partisan detachment hold Sturmbannführer Helmut Kampf. The SS reaction was immediate - on the morning of June 10, the 1st Battalion of the Fuhrer Regiment under the command of Hauptsturmführer Kahn captured Oradur, and its inhabitants were ordered to gather in the center of the commune, after which the SS men took away all the men, and women and children were herded into the church.
The men were taken to the sheds, where they were shot from machine guns. The SS men acted extremely cruelly, shooting NOT to kill in order to prolong the torment of the partisans, for which they tried to beat them in the legs. After that, they were doused with a combustible mixture and set on fire. Only five men managed to escape, 197 people were brutally killed.
After that, a powerful incendiary device was installed in the local Catholic church, where all the women and children were driven. After it worked and the whole church was on fire, the SS began shooting at women and children who were trying to escape from the fire. Only one woman managed to survive: 240 women and 205 children were destroyed.
After a brutal reprisal against local residents Oradour was destroyed ... and turned into. This city was no longer inhabited by people, and the ruins of Oradour were deliberately left untouched in memory of the brutality of the German occupation.
Photos of the ghost town of Oredur