Then and Now: 10 June 1944...Oradour-sur-Glane/My Visit .

[BPA-Paul]

Whilst in Montpellier last week I visited a Resistance Museum and noticed a couple of Oradour images, taken not long after the massacre. My copies are not too good, but give a feel for how it was at the time. Clive.

Great pics Clive !!, i have never seen those before.

Thank you for posting !

[MG-Freak]

Great Pics Paul!!!
I have just decided that I am going to visit Oradour this summer. (I have to tell it my girlfriend tonight :S)
On your photo's I looks like you where the only one there.......Do you know if it's always that quiet?

[Bobwirtz]

Looks like the trains just came through town, or was it some sort of regional train. I see the picture of the electric train with a boxcar and a flatcar(?). I thought that maybe the town had a street car system but it doesn't look that big. Usually only large cities have these, as well as underground trains. This town only had some 500 residents in 1944 if I recall, so not enough to warrant a street car. Odd though that the train came right down the city streets with the overhead electrical power lines supported by the concrete poles.

Thanks for the Now and Then styled look. All of you folks visiting Oradour in the future might want to find and tour Thule as well. That is the other town that was visited by units of the Das Reich Division. The Marquis butchered a detachment of Army security men posted there to keep the line of communications open. A company from the Der Fuhrer Regiment showed up the next day and hung 98 people suspected in the massacre. The town and the rest of the citizens were spared. Should also be interesting to visit.

Bob

[BPA-Paul]

Great Pics Paul!!!
I have just decided that I am going to visit Oradour this summer. (I have to tell it my girlfriend tonight :S)
On your photo's I looks like you where the only one there.......Do you know if it's always that quiet?

Hello MG-Freak,

If you arrive first thing in the morning around 8.30-8.45am and during the week not weekend ,you will have the opportunity to just about have the whole place to yourself for the first hour or so, IMO maybe longer depends what day you pick during the week. Just make it nice and early in the morning.

[tubist73]

Thanks

Thank you for posting fine pictures of such a memorable place. The 'feel' is definitely more appropriate without other people or tourists visible.

tubist73

[JPhilip]

Looks like the trains just came through town, or was it some sort of regional train. I see the picture of the electric train with a boxcar and a flatcar(?). I thought that maybe the town had a street car system but it doesn't look that big. Usually only large cities have these, as well as underground trains. This town only had some 500 residents in 1944 if I recall, so not enough to warrant a street car. Odd though that the train came right down the city streets with the overhead electrical power lines supported by the concrete poles.

Thanks for the Now and Then styled look. All of you folks visiting Oradour in the future might want to find and tour Thule as well. That is the other town that was visited by units of the Das Reich Division. The Marquis butchered a detachment of Army security men posted there to keep the line of communications open. A company from the Der Fuhrer Regiment showed up the next day and hung 98 people suspected in the massacre. The town and the rest of the citizens were spared. Should also be interesting to visit.

Bob

Hello;
I'm sorry Bob, but i have to correct a few things from your post. Just to re-establish the thruth.
There were 642 people killed in the massacre at Ouradour sur Glane, only a few survived...and the town was erased from the map. So there were more than 500 inhabitants at the time....
The name of the other town you mention is Tulle, not Thule
The french maquis didn't butcher anyone in Tulle. The partisans attacked the german garrison and the "Gestapo" (generic term) HQ. The germans fought, they lost and died. 60 germans were killed and 44 bodies were still in place when the WSS troops entered the town. 16 bodies of german soldiers had been rolled over by a truck (the soldiers have not been killed this way, they died while in combat).
The two men responsible for the hangings in Tulle were a SS officer named Kowatch and a Gestapo Obersturmfürer named Schmald. They arrested 500 people where they could find them, in the streets, at the cinema..etc...and they did choose 120 people to be hanged in the streets.
But the priest of the town, l'abbé Espinasse, negociated with the hangmen for the last two groups of ten and saved 20 people. A young WSS soldier asked for another person to be saved, so there were 21 people saved, while the 99 others were hanged to concrete or wooden poles in the streets, to balconies and trees. And what about the other 380 people arrested in the first place...311 were sent to the SD in Limoges for enquiry and 162 ended at DACHAU.

Walter Schmald was captured in Brive (mid-August), they make him dig his own tomb and he ended his life in a normal way for the b@st@rd he was...two bullets in the head...and a few spadeful of earth.

[JPhilip]

Hello Bob,
I have made some research concerning the tracks visible on the pics. There was a Tramway in Ouradour sur Glane, coming from Limoges, appro. 20 kilometers at the south-east of the destroyed town. That's why the tracks go through the town.
In June 1944, there were at least 1000 inhabitants in the town and around (within a 3 kilometers perimeter)

[BPA-Paul]

Hi guys,

My friend returned from his europe trip...after mentioning this place Oradour-sur-Glane and seeing some footage and pic's from my trip, he could not resist to visit this area... he was also blown away . A book he had purchased with some interesting photo's !, some pics were a little to gruesome to show but here are a few softer image's ..........i have placed some more inset pic's from my trip to give you a now and then feel.


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[BPA-Paul]

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[BPA-Paul]

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[BPA-Paul]

thanks guys ! ....

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[MG-Freak]

Bizar

[TerryG]

Bizar

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[Marco]

Impressive reportage...thanks for sharing with us.

[PEVO]

Wow!.... reading a full accounting of the awful events surrounding this town & it's people, I could see...using CG tech that this could make a heart wrenching documentry type of full length movie. Nothing candy coated, all the horriors shown in full to bring to light this tragic heart-wrenching story of Death & survival to the masses of the world.