In the history of ignominy there is a date marked: June 10, 1944. The place is Oradour-sur-Glane, a town of 1,500 inhabitants in the Limousin region, 25 kilometers from Limoges. The victims, 643 men, women and children, who were shot or burned. The executioners: the officers and soldiers of the Das Reich division, integrated into the elite corps of the Waffen-SS.
80 years have passed since the massacre and you can still feel a mixture of horror and shame for that crime by the armed wing of hitler. Europeans can see with their own eyes what happened that day in Oradour because, after World War II, General De Gaulle He decided to leave the town as it was devastated by the Germans.
It had been just four days since the Allies had landed in Normandy. The armies of Eisenhower They were fighting against the Wehrmacht, which was losing ground. On June 7, the Resistance had surprised a military garrison in Tulle, giving death of 39 German soldiers. It was at that moment when the Gestapo and the SS planned revenge for those attacks that would be carried out against the civilian population of a peaceful town of no strategic value: Oradour.
It was a quarter past two in the afternoon of the fateful June 10: a convoy of around twenty trucks, armored vehicles and vehicles entered the town, converted into a refuge for civilians who had lost their homes. They came from Limoges and the expedition included 150 SS soldiers, dressed in camouflage clothing, under the authority of Adolf DiekmannSS commander.
Diekmann ordered the blacksmith and town crier of Oradour to ask the entire population to come to the market square. The order had to be carried out immediately and without any exceptions, including the sick, the elderly and children. The soldiers began to enter the houses, taking out all the inhabitants at gunpoint. The commander demanded that the mayor hand over 30 hostages to be shot for having hidden weapons and ammunition from the Resistance.
The French Government decided to leave the ruins of Oradour as they were when the allies arrived at the site weeks later. A memorial keeps photos of the victims and the history of the massacre
The mayor denied the accusation and offered to save the town. Diekmann disdained his gesture and ordered the operations to begin. executions. The soldiers began to shoot the adult men on the spot in front of their homes. The women and children were taken to the Oradour church after checking that no one was left behind. At five in the afternoon, two soldiers entered the temple to place a bomb on the altar. After the explosion, the SS members opened the door, they started shooting and, to make sure there were no survivors, they poured gasoline to burn the temple. Only a 47-year-old woman survived. The balance: 245 women and 207 children were murdered inside the church. There were 19 Spanish citizens, exiled in France, among the victims of Oradour.
The same thing that is possible today to visit Auschwitzthe French Government decided to leave the ruins of Oradour as they were when the allies arrived at the site weeks later. A memorial keeps photos of the victims and the history of the massacre. Walking through the walls, ruins and empty streets, the traveler can feel the horror that still permeates the place. It gives the impression that an atomic bomb had devastated the town. rusty cars They remain as mute witnesses of those murders and the façade of a garage remains with a Renault license plate. Small signs of great ignominy.
In January 1953, there was a trial in which 21 SS soldiers sat in the dock. Diekmann had died in combat three weeks after the massacre when a shell exploded. He was buried in a German military cemetery in Bayeux. Only two commanders were convicted to death, a sentence that was commuted to life imprisonment. Six years later, they were released. There was never justice for the 643 victims of Oradour, that ghost town that testifies that the evil of some human beings has no limit.
#Horror #memory
