Oradour-sur-Glane/Saint-Junien

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 Wednesday 25th January

Another cold and cloudy day so decided to give the lake stop a miss and head for another Camping-Car Park that we'd planned to come to on our way home - at St.-Junien, west of Limoges.  (We may still come again then as we rather like it.)  As we weren't doing a long journey, we decided to deviate a bit and re-visit Oradour-sur-Glane. We first went there in 1981 or 82 (Peter will probably remember which) and were very moved by the sight of a whole village left just as it was following a total massacre by the Nazis on 10 June 1944.  Then, we just parked up by the roadside and wandered through the main street which had been devasted by explosions and burning - visitors in silence in remembrance.  Now, it has a visitor centre and you enter from there and although we were the only visitors this morning except for one other lady, it felt as though the household objects etc. had been put on display in the ruined buildings.  But the story and the feel of the village is still very moving.

 This display in the visitor centre shows as many photos of the victims as they have been able to gather.

 

 I have a photo of me looking very much like this little girl ......

 

Some of the buildings - many now with signs stating name of the owner and the kind of shop or business.




The garage.
The Church where all the women and children were herded into is covered in scaffolding at the moment, but this picture shows the shell that was left after it was set fire to. 


 One of the schools


This simple memorial was built with an underground display of artefacts and 3 walls inscribed with names of all the 643 civilian victims.  This section shows just how many people of one family were lost that day.




This is displayed as you leave the visitor centre....

 Looking towards the new village built after the war was over.

 We needed our lunch of home-made soup after that!  Then continued on to St-Junien and settled in, all on our ownsome at the old municipal campsite, reopened as a Camping-Car Park.   

An afternoon walk took us down to the River Glane and to Site Corot.  We had no idea was that was, but apparently Corot was a painter who lived by the river and a mill, now a riverside walk.



There was a geocache here!!
Loved this brand new picnic table.

If only we could leave our winter coats and hats off .......

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