Four days after D-Day---June 10, 1944---the German army was still firmly in control of
most of France, and it was then that one of the most notorious atrocities of the war took
place in the quiet French village of Oradour-Sur-Glane.
Oradour-Sur-Glane was a modern village with butcher shops, bakeries, cafes, schools, a
church, and even an electric streetcar that connected it to nearby cities.
On the morning of June 10, a group of SS soldiers entered the village.
They then herded the women and children in the church and the men into nearby barns.
When the people were all safely locked in the barns and church, the SS began to kill
them all.
A large gas bomb was placed in the church intending to asphyxiate the occupants but
it did not work properly and so the SS used machine guns and hand grenades to disable
and kill the women and children.
The soldiers piled wood on the bodies and set the church on fireůeven as many of the
women and children were still alive.
At the same time the bomb exploded in the church, the SS fired their machine guns into
the men crowded into the barns.
They deliberately fired low, so that many of the men were badly wounded but not killed
and thus could not escape.
The soldiers then piled wood and straw on the bodies and set them on fire, burning many
of the men alive.
But the Germans did not stop there.
They were ordered to disfigure the faces of the dead so that they could not be identified
and to burn the bodies.
After they looted the houses and stores, they burned every one of the villageĺs 328 buildings.
A group of 6 bicyclists calmly cycling through the countryside happened to bike past Oradour
while the SS soldiers were there.
They were stopped by the soldiers, brought into the village and killed.
One old invalid man was burned to death in his bed, others were killed .. their bodies
thrown down a wellů..and a baby was baked to death in the local bakery oven.
One woman, Madam Rouffanche managed to escape from the church by jumping out of a rear window
of the church some 20 feet off the ground.
She ran as the soldiers shot at her but managed to escape into a nearby field and covered
herself with dirt and leaves.
She had been shot 5 times but laid in the field until the next dayů.surviving.
A handful of other villagers escaped when they saw the soldiers entering the village.
The German SS officer in charge was Adolf Diekmann.
A few days after leaving Oradour he was killed in action in Normandy, still claiming the
act was just retaliation for partisan activity.
Regimental Commander Sylvester Stadlerů.
General Heinz Lammerdingů who had given the orders for such measures to be carried out
against the Resistance.
SS Obersturmfuhrer Heinz Barth who was in charge of 45 soldiers who he ordered to shoot
20 men in a garage.
Most of the rest of the soldiers involved in the massacre were killed shortly thereafter
at Normandy.
The question however, has always arisenůůwhy did the SS do this?
Why Oradour-sur-Glane?
Helmut Kampfe and close friend of Adolf Diekmann had been captured by the Resistance in another
town and sentenced to death.
It is thought that this may have a motivation for this atrocity.
In all 642 men, women, and children were massacred ranging in age from a 1week old infant to
a 90 year old woman.
Of the 642 men, women, and children massacred, only 26 were ever positively identified.