I'm not going to post a lot of pictures of this town as it was quite disturbing. This is a town about half way from our Gite to the Dordogne Valley where we planned to stay the night. It was completely wiped out by a Nazi SS unit about 6 days after D-Day as this group had been tasked with eliminating the resistance in the area and hadn't had much success in finding the few (less than 10) men and women in the resistance before they were ordered north to help fight against the allies at Normandy. They pulled into the town and surrounded it one quiet morning and then rounded up all the citizens (over 640) and separated the men, women and children and then shot them and then burned the village down to remove all the evidence. One astonishing thing was that many of the SS troops were actually from Alsace/Lorraine and were French citizens. There were severe repercussions around forgiveness and reparations after the war. They had a good little museum that showed how the Nazi's came to power, invaded France and were supported by the Vichy government (and much of the population). They also dealt with the other atrocities of the war including the holocaust and Stalin's purges.
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| This church was where the hundreds of women and children were killed and then burnt. Only one woman managed to escape (and two men from separate enclosures although one of them was wounded so badly he died shortly thereafter). |
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| The badly burned wreckage of a baby stroller on the floor of the church |
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| They left the village exactly as they found it. The new village is across the river. |
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