Sunday 10.17.2010

Oradour-sur-Glane

It is sunny and cold this morning, but the sunny won't last long. We are lazy and it is almost 10:00 when we get to breakfast. They are willing to serve until 11:00 so when we don't have to get moving, we tend not to. There is the usual supply of cereals, pastry, fruit, meats and cheeses and Chris cooks eggs to order. He also has an Israeli juicing machine that he dumps whole oranges into and it whirls and grinds like it should have a monkey attached to it. Eventually fresh juice comes out. We have seen sleek versions of the same thing but this seems to be the first one ever made.

There is a chatty couple from Winnipeg across the room who we bond to in our frozen tundra way. They are carting around their Rick Steves book and doing the real thing by train. The French strikers are getting surlier by the day and these folks have already had several itinerary changes in dealing with the rail strikes. They are off to Arles and Nice from here and checking schedules hourly to see what may be in store.

Mary wants to spend an hour or two in the shops in town and John doesn't so they agree to meet at noon to get on with the rest of the day. John supervises Chris's wife Amanda and Irish helper Sandy as they tidy the room in six minutes flat. Very impressive.


We're in the car by 12:10 (also very impressive) heading north to Limoges and then west a bit to Oradur-sur-Glane. On the way we pass through at least a dozen small villages with every house made of stone, sprinkled with a mixture of castles and chateaus all dating back many hundreds of years. We occasionally see something new, but it would be designed exactly as everything else. There are no split-levels, ramblers, or cubist-modern architectural statements. Each little village has its patisserie, couturie, brasserie, pharmacie, and perhaps a dentist, doctor or veterinarian. Between the villages are the farms and orchards we have become accustomed to seeing. Walnuts seem to be the most prevalent crop and we see a few folks with various devices picking them up off the ground. We think we should bring the golf driving-range picking machine over and get the entire orchard picked up in about a half hour.

It's a bit after two when we arrive at Oradour. This is a village just like the ones we have been passing through for the last two hours except there is no one here. On June 10th, 1944, four days after the D-Day landing, 200 German SS troops marched into the village in the morning, rounded up all the inhabitants, separated the men from the women and children, and then executed all of them. Six-hundred and forty-two folks got up that morning, got on with their day, kids in school, adults working, Moms home with babies, all laughing, arguing, playing and in the evening they were all gone.

The village has been preserved just as it was left on that day more than 66 years ago. Every building (after being looted by the German soldiers) was burned with the dead still inside and now there are only stone walls, burned wrecks of cars and the bullet pocked walls and altar of the church. Over there is the patisserie, there are two couturies, a boulangerie, a woman dentist worked here, there is the gargage with the metal oil signs still in place, a sewing machine in that building, and there's the market next to the church. Maybe 8 blocks this way and 5 blocks that way it could have been any of the villages that we drove through this afternoon. Six-hundred and forty-two people is a tiny drop of blood in the bucket of the atrocities of the war, but it is an “in-your-face” very personal reminder of our lowest instincts. The loss of life was appalling, but the mental degradation that had to take place allowing those soldiers to machine-gun small children and babies seems somehow worse.


There is an informative museum that follows both the inhabitants of the village as well as the route of the soldiers leading up to this day and the results of the war crime trials and aftermath. The whole thing is moving, but walking around the burned, deserted village on a gloomy Sunday afternoon in dead silence is haunting.


It’s approaching 4:30 when we get back on the road and GPS chick Monique gets us back to Sarlat just after 6:00. Amanda and Chris separately come up with the same recommendation for dinner tonight so after some looking around and hemming and hawing we follow their advice and go to Petit Manoir, a few blocks away. Mary was not seated next to the toilette, but her shrimp and risotto did not stack up against last night’s. John had a nice chunk of salmon with all the trimmings. We both were brought a creamy potato-like soup that wasn’t part of the deal but was a nice starter.


We strolled around the old city for a while after dinner with no one else on the streets. A half moon was peaking through some scattered clouds over the ancient church steeple and there is a fountain splashing somewhere within earshot. We still like Sarlat.

We read for about 4 minutes before falling asleep.

Today’s weather: Early sun turning to clouds and cool all day. Low 40, high 46