Ghosts of Oradour-Sur-Glane

On 10 June 1944, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Haute-Vienne in then Nazi-occupied France was destroyed, inhabitants were massacred by the Nazi 2nd SS Panzer Division With cool attention to detail, the Nazis methodically rounded up the entire population of 642 townspeople. The women and children were herded into the town church, where they were tear-gassed and machine-gunned. Plaques mark the place where the town's men were grouped and executed. The town was then set on fire, its victims left under a blanket of ashes. Gutted and charred buildings along lonely streetcar tracks are a silent reminder of the horrors that can occur during war. After the war, General Charles de Gaulle decided the village should never be rebuilt, but would remain a memorial to the cruelty of the Nazi occupation. Nowadays the streets are visited by tourists from all over the world. When you take some distance of it all you can imagine the tourists as the ghost of the passed. People who lived in the wrong town or passed at the wrong time. And even though there are several places in the world of these martyrs villages, some people continue to spread hatred.