The woman threw herself through the church window as her daughter burned behind her — she would be the only female survivor of Oradour-sur-Glane.

The Massacre at Oradour: When SS Troops Erased a French Village

642 men, women, and children murdered in four hours — a crime France would never forget

SS troops massacred 642 people in Oradour-sur-Glane — possibly because they confused it with another village entirely.

The afternoon sun hung golden over Oradour-sur-Glane on June 10, 1944, but the dying didn't stop until June 19th claimed its final victim in a Limoges hospital. By then, the village had become a graveyard, and the survivors who escaped the initial slaughter were still being hunted.

Four days after D-Day, the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" was crawling north through France, harassed by Resistance fighters, desperate to reach Normandy. On June 10th, a detachment of the Der Führer regiment rolled into Oradour-sur-Glane — not the nearby village of Oradour-sur-Vayres, which had actual Resistance connections, but a quiet farming community where nothing happened.

SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann ordered every inhabitant to the fairground. The men were divided into groups and marched into barns. The women and children — 247 of them — were locked inside the church of Saint-Martin.

At approximately 4 PM, the killing began. Machine guns opened fire on the men's legs first, ensuring they couldn't run. Then came the grenades, then the flames. In the church, SS troops placed an incendiary device near the altar. When it detonated, the screaming started. Soldiers fired through the windows…

💡 The village remains exactly as the SS left it in 1944, with rusted cars and melted household items still visible, making it France's largest physical war memorial.