Oradour sur Glane

[Cendrillon]

[quote user="Colonel Mustard"]The British carried out a massacre at Amritsar in the 1920s and the Americans at My Lai in the 1960s.

 Inhumanity can wear any uniform.[/quote]

 

It certainly can, what about the burning of the people in a church in Kenya....................now why did that ring a bell when it became news?

[Weedon]

[quote user="Tresco"][quote user="Weedon"]It is a collection of 4 videos, a couple of which, although 8 mins in length, took far longer due to the stopping and starting (why do some videos do that?)[/quote]

Weedon, I have a lesser version of Broadband. Some, but by no means all Youtube videos do this to me. I believe the technical term is 'buffering'.[;-)]

If a video does this I do something else for a while, let it finish, and then click 'replay' and it always works perfectly 2nd time round.

I wish I could still talk to my dad about his war time experiences...and the photos...no one can identify the people (some of whom died as young men) and places in them now.[:(]
[/quote]

Good tip Tresco, I shall remember that one. 

[tegwini]

The DVDs/Videos 'The world at war' narrated by Laurence Olivier covers Oradour dur Glanes.  They last for about an hour each DVD & were recently available in one of the national newspapers

We also visited it & also noted the silence, and yes, no birds around when we were there,   As a history teacher I do find 20th century history at times sad, almost depressing.    But, 'man's inhumanity towards man'    is   not new, it's been happening since time began.

The Oradour massacre is especially poignant hearing about the woman trying & failing to get her baby out of the window above the high altar as the baby cried & the soldiers heard it.

Tegwini 

 

 

[Wendy]

Northender, your 'vaulting' over the fence brings to mind our own experience of visiting the village. My partner visited there in 1998, pre the price charging museum, and remembers a plaque stating that the village was to be available to the public free of charge to remain as a constant reminder to future generations as to what happened there. When we visited there in 2003 the museum was in place; the village itself is free to visit however  the administration of the museum have cannily worked it so that it is almost impossible to access the village without paying to go through the museum first.

We did the back-entrance 'vault' ourselves on this occasion. I don't believe that money should be made out of this horrific incident in recent history. Don't be ashamed, it was the original intention that this village be accessed for free and by all.

[Hoddy]

"We did the back-entrance 'vault' ourselves on this occasion. I don't believe that money should be made out of this horrific incident in recent history. Don't be ashamed, it was the original intention that this village be accessed for free and by all."

If that was the original intention then it was unrealistic. Some parts of the walls are already unsafe. For my part I'm happy to pay for them to be preserved and for the weeds to be kept down so that future generations can see what I've seen. That doesn't strike me as making money out of it.

Hoddy

[Sunday Driver]

[quote user="Jura"]

Northender, your 'vaulting' over the fence brings to mind our own experience of visiting the village. My partner visited there in 1998, pre the price charging museum, and remembers a plaque stating that the village was to be available to the public free of charge to remain as a constant reminder to future generations as to what happened there. When we visited there in 2003 the museum was in place; the village itself is free to visit however  the administration of the museum have cannily worked it so that it is almost impossible to access the village without paying to go through the museum first.

We did the back-entrance 'vault' ourselves on this occasion. I don't believe that money should be made out of this horrific incident in recent history. Don't be ashamed, it was the original intention that this village be accessed for free and by all.

[/quote]

Northender's improper entry to this solemn place of rememberance came about because it was officially closed at the time.  His admittance of shame is a mark of the respect he has for the place.

In your case, the objective was to get in without paying.  Clearly more important to you than showing respect.....[:@]

 

 

 

[Scooby]

When we went it was during the winter when the main museum was closed.  We just walked into the village - there were no locked gates or paypoints etc as I recall.

[Chassaing]

[quote user="Scooby"]When we went it was during the winter when the main museum was closed.  We just walked into the village - there were no locked gates or paypoints etc as I recall.

[/quote]

Yes that is right, there are gates at the back which are open all year round to allow visitors to pay their respects.

[Northender]

I think Sunday Driver is being a little hard on Jura.

Surely the point Jura was trying to make was that the people who operate the museum at Oradour had intentionally made it difficult for people to access the village without first paying to visit the museum.

Commercialism should not be a consideration and funding for maintenance of the site should come from the public purse , the same as they do for the other war memorials.

I think everyone would agree that the site should be regarded as a war memorial to all those innocent men , women and children who lost their lives and act as a reminder to future generations the horrors that wars create.

To this end it should be free , encouraging people to visit and experience what I and others have experienced.

[Boiling a frog]

Accessing the site is easy,all one does is enter the main building and walk past the museum entrance to access the site ,which is free.

[Tresco]

I can't understand all this jumping over walls or entering through any other building.

People are making it sound as though the village and the museum are somehow 'joined'.

They aren't.

I was there on the 28th of December, and walked straight in through the gate. I never even saw the museum.

[Wendy]

We were there in August 2003 and there was no way you could gain access to the village without first paying and going through the museum. How on earth could you NEVER see the museum unless you ignored it's presence?

I just suspect they have changed the conditions of access, most probably due to complaints, since we were there. We live right near the Rivesaltes camp near Perpignan, where the French willingly co-operated with the Nazi's and detained and transported Jews from France to Poland. We have travelled throughout Europe and even visited Auschwitz...we did not need to view yet more one more museum that day in 2003. We wanted to see the village.

Strangely, at about sunset (6.pm) that day a museum administrator walked about the village telling us 'stragglers' to leave the village as it was 'closing time'. My husband was still taking photographs of the square and was approached by this man and was told to leave. He told us the place was officially closed for the day.

When my husband was previously there in 1998 a plaque that was in place there officially stated that the village was to be made available, free of charge and free of restriction, to all generations forever more in memory of what happened there. Those actually were the words and express wishes of Gen. Charles de Gaulle all those years ago. It was not there when we visited there in 2003. But the museum was.

That is why some people 'hop the fence'.

Sunday Driver: Why does one need to pay money in order to pay one's respects? The village is where it all happened...we all know where the entrance fees go. Into pockets.

 

 

[dwmcn]

When we visited Oradour some years ago I don't remember paying. We didn't even feel that buying a postcard there was proper. One thing I do remember is that there seemed to be a sewing machine in every house. Odd thing to remember....

I might be wrong, but as I recall, the Germans got the wrong Oradour.

[Tresco]

[quote user="Jura"]How on earth could you NEVER see the museum unless you ignored it's presence?

I just suspect they have changed the conditions of access... [/quote] (my bold)

And I suspect you have answered your own question.

[fieldwalker]

Entry to the village is accessible via the cemetery, which also houses the bunker containing artifacts of the massacre. Any cost associated with entry are for the museum, not for visits to the village.

[cowoman]

We went  to Oradour in september 2007 and didnt have to pay.We entered through the museum.Then walked around the eerie streets up to the cemetary.We saw photos on headstones of the familys that had been killed  ..Anyone know what made the Germans do this?

[Bernice]

I was very moved when I visited the village, there were other visitors there but everyone was walking around in silence.  A friend told me that in the new village which has been built nearby many of the surnames of the shopkeepers are the same as the names on the memorial to the people massacred. 

This link has a lot of information  http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Oradour-sur-Glane/Story/index.html

Bernice

[Anna]

This link gives the official opening hours and tariff:

http://www.oradour.org/index.php?rubrique=107

[Scooby]

[quote user="Bernice"]

I was very moved when I visited the village, there were other visitors there but everyone was walking around in silence.  A friend told me that in the new village which has been built nearby many of the surnames of the shopkeepers are the same as the names on the memorial to the people massacred. 

This link has a lot of information  http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Oradour-sur-Glane/Story/index.html

Bernice

[/quote]

We found that one of the most eerie things - walking into the bakery and seeing the name over the door - the same family name of a number of the dead on the memorial.  It must be very strange living so close to a tragedy like that - seeing it every day exactly as it was. 

We didn't get to see the museum the day we went (last Christmas) as it was closed but plan to visit with neighbours from our village this summer.  My neighbour's mum knew some of those who died at Oradour.

[bixy]

Like 'dwmcn', I too noticed the large number of sewing machines. And the more I walked around the odder things seemed. Where, for example, were all the roof tiles from all those collapsed roofs, and where were all the bedsteads that would have been in the bedrooms? Where were all the small metal items that would normally have been in every household - cutlery, scissors,tools? Why were there so many cars and large ones at that? I find it hard to believe that a village that size in the those days would have that many car owners. I think I counted at least a dozen.

I had always believed, probably read, that the village had been left "just as it was after the massacre". This is clearly not the case. I strongly gained the impression that the village martyr had in some senses been recreated with the odd bicycle here, a cooking pot there and yes the many sewing machines. My guess is that the village must have been extensively picked over by neighbours, surviving relatives and anything useful removed. That might explain the absence of roof tiles. Only later was it decided that the village would be left as a memorial and at that time a number of artefacts were added to give an air of authenticity.

None of the foregoing takes away the impact of the place and the horror of it all. Strangely, for me one of the most poignant sights was the old railway, with the rails still set in the ground, the overhead cables and the little station. This is all that remains of a once extensive system of tramways radiating out from Limoges which allowed the country people access to the city. It was all too easy to imagine the people with their baskets and bags standing at the station, chatting and laughing waiting for the little train to take them into town. Oblivious of the horror to come...

Patrick

[Kitty]

Patrick/Bixy: The village was ransacked on the night of the massacre and the buildings razed.  Hence why there would be no tiles etc.

 

One of the ironies was that the SS battalion sealed off the wrong village.  The place where a German officer was bing held hostage by the Resistance (the reason for the Germans' action) was in fact Oradour-sur-Vayres.

 

 

[Valleyboy]

Patrick,

I don't know how old you are, but when I was a kid in the 40s and 50s, almost every house in the UK had a sewing machine, and mothers made and mended clothes and domestic linen with them; seeing the machines in the houses at Oradour took me back to my childhood.

Apart from the horror of what took place there, it is a fascinating piece of social history; you can see how life was in a small French town in the 30s, and also the trades that no longer exist.

[bixy]

I know that the village was razed. The buildings collapsed, the tiles fell off the roofs. Tiles do not burn. What happened to them? My curiosity and my conviction that the village is not as it was left and has been much adjusted since, does not diminish the meaning of the place. I would just like to know what happened in the years immediately after the massacre. I don't suppose I will though.

Patrick

[Kitty]

[quote user="bixy"]I know that the village was razed. The buildings collapsed, the tiles fell off the roofs. Tiles do not burn. What happened to them? My curiosity and my conviction that the village is not as it was left and has been much adjusted since, does not diminish the meaning of the place. I would just like to know what happened in the years immediately after the massacre. I don't suppose I will though.

Patrick
[/quote]

I'm going there in February.  I suppose that in the immediate aftermath, things would have been tidied up?  At what point would the decision to make it into a memorial would have been made?

The tragedy at Oradour is beyond our comprehension.  I can't believe that they had to kill so many.  And the war was coming to an end.  Perhaps it was the confusion of the Normandy landings (on 6th June 1944 when the massacre was 4 days later on 10th June) that precipitated such mindless terrorism.

 

[shawny]

[quote user="Cathy"]

 

One of the ironies was that the SS battalion sealed off the wrong village.  The place where a German officer was bing held hostage by the Resistance (the reason for the Germans' action) was in fact Oradour-sur-Vayres.

 

 

[/quote]

That depends on whose account you read and whose theory on this massacre you wish to believe.