During the days before the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy Adolph Diekmann commanding the battalion of the 4th Waffen-SS ("Der Führer") Panzer-Grenadier Regiment sealed off the town of Oradour-sur-Glane in central France on June 10 1944. He ordered all the townspeople to assemble in the village square, ostensibly to have their identity papers examined. In addition to the residents of the village, the SS also apprehended six people who did not live there but had the misfortune...
more »During the days before the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy Adolph Diekmann commanding the battalion of the 4th Waffen-SS ("Der Führer") Panzer-Grenadier Regiment sealed off the town of Oradour-sur-Glane in central France on June 10 1944. He ordered all the townspeople to assemble in the village square, ostensibly to have their identity papers examined. In addition to the residents of the village, the SS also apprehended six people who did not live there but had the misfortune of riding their bikes through town when the Germans arrived. The women and children were then locked in the church while the village itself was looted. However, the men were led to six barns and sheds where machine-gun nests were already in place. According to the account of a survivor, the soldiers began shooting at them, aiming for their legs so that they would die more slowly. Once the victims were no longer able to move, the soldiers covered their bodies with kindling and set the barns on fire. 190 men died and just five escaped. The Nazi soldiers then set fire to the church and as the women and children tried to flee from the doors and windows of the church they were met with machine-gun fire. Two hundred forty-seven women and two hundred five children died in the carnage. Only 47-year-old Marguerite Rouffanche survived having managed to slide out of a small window at the back of the church and hid in the bushes overnight until the Germans had left. Another small group of about twenty villagers had fled Oradour-sur-Glane as soon as the soldiers had appeared. That night, the remainder of the village was razed. A few days later, survivors were allowed to bury the dead. It was found that 642 inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane had been brutally murdered in a matter of hours.
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