Last year we were travelling France, and did a croissant making course and during this our hosts suggested we visit the town of Orodour-Sur-Glane, which was completely demolished by SS soldiers near the end of WW2. Orodour-Sur-Glase is (or was) a small town located about 45 minutes from Bordeaux and makes a great day trip if you are interested in war history.
This story of Oradour-sur-Glane is very sad and is a story of murder in the worst degree. SS soldiers approached in 1944 and initially sai they were there to check the identity of the locals. However, they had much more grim plans and started separating the men and women - women into the churches and men into barns. This was just a cover, and the plan was to murder everyone in Oradour-sur-Glase.
After being killed by machine guns and other weapons, the SS soldiers wanted to destroy any evidence, and so lit the bodies on fire and also destroyed as much of the town as they could and left. There are differing opinions as to why Oradour-sur-Glase was attacked with such viciousness and brutality with some suggesting it was a retaliation to an earlier attack on a German SS officer.
It is suspected that 642 people were murdered that day, and only one person survived.Some locals heard or saw the SS soldiers approaching and tried to escaped or warn the town but it was to late and they were all captured and suffered the same fate.
It is incredible to see that Oradour-sur-Glane is basically as it would have been when the SS soldiers left - appliances still lay in place and it one can easily imagine the layout of houses here. There are many cars that have been burnt out and left to rust away.
There is a museum nearby which gives context and information about the massacre, and is a great place to start as it highlights the atrocities that occurred here.
Although it is a sad place to visit, it is a reminder of the atrocities of WW2 and how war destroys people, families, communities and whole countries.
Although the majority of the information shared here is from memory from the museum nearby, fact checking was also done online and the sources are shared below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oradour-sur-Glane_massacre
All photos taken by me!
View this post on TravelFeed for the best experience.
Congratulations, Your Post Has Been Added To The Steemit Worldmap!
Author link: http://steemitworldmap.com?author=conradt
Post link: http://steemitworldmap.com?post=orodour-sur-glane-french-town-massacred-in-ww2
Want to have your post on the map too?
Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 10 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.
I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 3 SBD worth and should receive 161 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
TrufflePigCongratulations! Your high-quality travel content was selected by @travelfeed curator @for91days and earned you a partial upvote. We love your hard work and hope to encourage you to continue to publish strong travel-related content.
Thank you for being part of the TravelFeed community!
Thanks for posting through TravelFeed.io! You have received a larger upvote from us. We hope to see you soon on TravelFeed.io!
Posting through TravelFeed.io also makes your post eligible to participate in the travel writing contest by @invisusmundi where you can earn up to 100 STEEM! Read the contest announcement for more information on how to participate.
We are continuously working on improving TravelFeed, recently we presented at SteemFest⁴, published our Android app and launched our Steem witness.
Please consider voting for us as a witness. If you're not sure how to do that, it's easy: Head over to our Support Us page and hit the witness voting button to vote with Steem Keychain, or Steemconnect if you are not a Keychain user. Alternatively, use this Steemconnect link or head over to the Steemit Wallet and enter travelfeed in the box.
Learn more about TravelFeed by clicking on the banner above and join our community on Discord.
Nice article for a sad part of our History.
Greetings from France ;)