Renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations. Repair the broken walls, restore the streets and houses.

Oradour-sur-Glane, a name seared into French consciousness. It was here that an act of extreme wickedness was carried out. One of the worst atrocities of World War Two. This whole town was frozen in time on June 10th 1944 when life was suddenly and so violently interrupted.

At 2pm on that summer’s day, terror visited these streets. In four horrific hours every building was torched and most of the town’s population were mercilessly  executed. 450 men and women and 193 children lost their lives.

The tram tracks are still in the road and the derelict remains of shops, medical facilities and workshops can still be identified in this ghostly place. Near the children’s playground a doctor’s car sits abandoned close to where the men of the town were led into 6 barns where machine guns were already in position.

Further down the road stand the ruins of Saint Martin’s Church where Oradour’s women and children were taken before the building was set on fire with incendiaries. Those who tried to escape the flames were ruthlessly gunned down. 

Churches mean different things to different people. For some they are places of personalprayer and spiritual encounter. For others they’re reminders of childhood indoctrination they’d rather forget. But not many of us associate churches with horrific acts of violence.

Acts of cruelty were carried out right across Europe during those dark days of World War Two. Thousands of men and women rose up in the Nazi occupied lands to carry out coordinated acts of sabotage against the occupying forces.

Roads were blocked, bridges were destroyed and communication lines were severed hindering the German advance north to the Normandy beaches where 150,000 British, American and Canadian forces landed on D-Day just four days before the massacre here at Oradour.

It has never been fully understood why this sleepy insignificant French town was chosen. Some accounts from the time suggest the soldiers took a wrong turn and this was not the planned destination at all. It almost adds to the tragedy.

Whatever the truth is, the massacre of Oradour served as a chilling reminder to resistance fighters and their families as to what would happen if anyone was  found to be fighting on the wrong side.

The officer who ordered for this despicable crime is buried in the German War Cemetery in Normandy along with over 21,000 conscripted men who fought and died in the ranks of Hitler’s armies. I’ve been there many times. Most of them had no interest in war. Not so the 200 troops who were handpicked for this particular mission.

They were a detachment of the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division ‘Das Reich’ formed from ruthless killers loyal to the Nazi ideology. Many had been radicalised through the Hitler Youth programme and battle-hardened from the fighting on the Eastern Front.

In an age when the horrors of war are sanitised, censored and even airbrushed out of the historical record, this place removes any convenient amnesia of what humanity is capable of when it rejects any moral absolute and descends into the pit of hatred.

The silent ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane tell a story of unspeakable sorrow. But if you listen carefully maybe you’ll hear a whisper of a better way. A way of peace, hope and reconciliation. I think I heard it as I prayed and walked these desolate streets and inside what’s left of Saint Martin’s Church.

As a Christian it’s impossible to be here without reflecting on the accounts of Jesus in the Bible. Those times when he stood alongside the innocent victims of cruelty, wickedness and hatred. And his brutal death on the cross for the sum total of human depravity.

The words I recounted at the very start of this story are taken from the Book of Isaiah in the Bible. They are a heartcry for an end to brokenness, devastation and desolation not merely of bricks and mortar but of people’s lives.

On the orders of General Charles de Gaulle, Oradour was never rebuilt and today it stands as a memorial to a community that was wiped out in an afternoon of terror. A community whose ancestors had lived here for a thousand years. I don’t think I will ever forget my visit here, I hope not. Never forget