Oradour

We spent two days to drive down to Toulouse from Paris with Michele's Dad, Andre. It is a bit easier to be in a country where we speak the language again, even though for Terry it is still not English. We visited a village, Oradour, where in 1944 the German SS surrounded and brutally killed almost everyone in the whole village, 642 people, with only a few who managed to escape alive. All the women and children of the village were put into the church which then was machine gunned and burned. Every house was systematically looted and burned leaving only the stone walls standing. Oradour was left as it was that day as a national historic site, and memory. It was very moving walking down the streets; also for us because it was exactly like the more recent ruins in Bosnia and Croatia that we had just seen.

Après Chartres, nous nous sommes arretés a Oradour avant de continuer sur Toulouse. Ce village a été saccagé en 1944 par les SS qui l'ont entouré, et cruellement tué les 642 habitants. Les hommes ont été brulés dans diverses granges, et les femmes et enfants dans l'église. 15 seulement ont pu s'échapper. Chaque maison a ete videe et brulee. A la première visite de De Gaulles quelques jours plus tard, il a demandé de laisser Oradour comme tel pour rappeler la cruaute humaine aux visiteurs a venir. C'est maintenant un lieu historique, qui ironiquement nous rapellait le paysage Croate et Bosnien que nous avons vu il y a quelques semaines.