On Monday, May 16 we began driving from Bordeaux, France to Le Chambon sur Lignon. Our first stop in the middle of the day was at Oradour sur Glane, the French town which four days after D-Day, June 10, 1944, was the vicim of a massacre carried out by the SS. All the men were shot in several squares in town and the women and children were gassed to death whole locked in the church. Then the town was set on fire. What remains are stone walls for buildings. The day after the massacre, the SS burned the bodies to prevent ever identifying the remains.
After the war, the French government made the decision not to rebuild Oradour, but to preserve it as a memorial to the martyrs. In the church, the roof was burned and in the front, by the altar are the twisted remains of a baby stroller. Throughout the town there are remains of sewing machines, automobiles, tram tracks and other examples of human habitation in 1944. In the cemetery, two glass covered small tombs show the ashes and bone fragments that are the only remains of the martyrs. Around the tombs are plaques made by families recalling their relatives.
Altar in church in Oradour with remains of baby stroller to the right.
Oradour is poiganant reminder of why leaders after World War have tried to build a new international legal order. For example, at the vistors center at Oradour there was a temporary exhibit focused on the legacy of Nuremberg. As we saw in our readings before beginning this trip, many of the founders of the post-World War II international legal order were conservative leaders, such as John Foster Dulles from the U.S., Gerhardt Ritter from Germnay and Jacques Maritain from France. One of our needs is to help our society move away from the contemporary popular belief that supporters of international human rights law are some how always liberal. The “Rule of Law” is neither liberal nor conservative. It is civilized; however, as opposed to the unregulated practices advocated by some.
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