The daily monitor leader. [volume] (Mount Clemens, Mich.) 1942-19??, 1945-01-26


: American newspaperman to visit
the martyred city.
T BY TOM WOLF
! NEA Staff Correspondent
: ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE- !
is probable that the German
commander meant his butcher
J to go to Oradour-sur-Vayres
There was a maquis near there
J 1t is probable that the column
simply got lost and mistooi
Oradour-sur-Glane for Oradour
sur-Vayres only 20 miles away.
Such is the tragic irony of the
story of German savagery which
outranks even Lidice for pas
sionless, bestial murder. II
Lidice the women and children
at least, were taken away anC
spared. Here there was no such
sentiment. Women and child.
rem burned with their men and
their homes and their shops and
their barns and their church.
with everything animate and in
animate which makes city.
COMMUNAL GRAVES
Today there are three new
graves in the small village ceme-
terry. They are communal graves,
for only SO of the $50 charred
pieces of bodies left after the
fires that could be identified.
Save for these three new
graves, Oradour-sur- Glane to-
day remains exactly as the hui
man butchers left it six months
ago. 1t will remain this way
for the French plan to put a
wall around the city and leave il
forever a monument to German
bestiality.
To visit this ravaged village is
all the more shocking because of
its contrast to the rich, fertile,
rolling Limousin countryside
which surrounds it. Not a house,
not shop, not a barn, not a
building in the entire village es-
capped. There are no roofs. All
that is left is red and gray shad-
ings of brick and granite walls
and half-walls in varying tones
of age and decay.
have seen many cities leveled
by war. But none like this.
Bombs and shells touch a city
with an ironist's hand: half a
floor is blown away. but the
rest remains with a piano mirac-
ulously balancing on the brink
a dinner remains on a table cen
tering a wall-less room; a pic
ture stays hanging on a scrap of
wall, an island of civilization in
a sea of destruction.
There is none of this here.
Oradour-sur-Glane was touched
with the hand Of a butcher. The
bones that are left of stores and
houses were picked clean by the
intense heat of incendiary gre
nades and PHOSPHORUS bombs.
All that remains Of civilization
are two signs: "Hotel Milford
and Cafe du Chene". They are
on the main street, Rue Emile
Desourteaux 1842-1906 - named
for the father of the villages
mayor-doctor. He persisted, too,
with his sons and his family.
These two signs alone remain.
These signs and, in the base
ments, a handful of such iron
skeletons as withstood the with
ering heat of the Nazi pyro-
maniacs' phosphorus firebrands.
In one house there is a stove. In
another, three bicycles. In a
third a bedstead and a sewing
machine. In the church there
are some frar IS of what were
once baby carriages.
That is all, except silence-the
powerful, ear-splitting silence of
reverence which muffles the
footsteps of pilgrims to Oradour.
So it has been since 4 o'clock of
that June Saturday afternoon.
heard the story from Clement
.Broussaudier, one Of five men
and one woman who escaped
| from the holocaust.
The column of Germans, 200
strong, entered the city at 2
o'clock in the afternoon. They
forced every one present. native
or visitor. into the town square
ito check identity papers. Then
they herded the women and chill
dren into the church for PRO
lection.
They set the men to work
in groups of 80 or 40 cleaning
out the barns. Without warning,
while the men were thus work.
ing, the Germans moved them
down with machine guns. Then
they covered the bodies with
the barns contents and set all
Attire. Clement Broussaudier
played dead and managed to slip
away.
Meanwhile, in the church the
Germans brought heaters"
They gave off some sort of lethal
gas. Two children were found
suffocated in the confessional