On 10 June 1944, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Haute-Vienne in Nazi-occupied France was destroyed when 642 civilians, including non-combatant women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company.
The battalion sealed off Oradour-sur-Glane and ordered everyone within to assemble in the village square to have their identity papers examined. This included six non-residents who happened to be bicycling through the village when the SS unit arrived. The women and children were locked in the church, and the village was looted. The men were led to six barns and sheds, where machine guns were already in place.

According to a survivor's account, the SS men then began shooting, aiming for their legs. When victims were unable to move, the SS men covered them with fuel and set the barns on fire. Only six men managed to escape. One of them was later seen walking down a road and was shot dead. In all, 190 Frenchmen died.

The SS men next proceeded to the church and placed an incendiary device beside it. When it was ignited, women and children tried to escape through the doors and windows, only to be met with machine-gun fire. 247 women and 205 children died in the attack. The only survivor was 47-year-old Marguerite Rouffanche. She escaped through a rear sacristy window, followed by a young woman and child. All three were shot, two of them fatally. Rouffanche crawled to some pea bushes and remained hidden overnight until she was found and rescued the next morning. About twenty villagers had fled Oradour-sur-Glane as soon as the SS unit had appeared. That night, the village was partially razed.

Several days later, the survivors were allowed to bury the 642 dead inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane who had been killed in just a few hours. Adolf Diekmann said the atrocity was in retaliation for the partisan activity in nearby Tulle and the kidnapping and murder of SS commander Helmut Kämpfe, who was burned alive in a field ambulance with other German soldiers (Wikipedia)

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Le massacre d’Oradour-sur-Glane est la destruction, le 10 juin 1944, de ce village français de la
Haute-Vienne, situé à environ vingt kilomètres au nord-ouest de Limoges, et l'assassinat de ses habitants (643 victimes), par un détachement du 1er bataillon du 4e régiment de Panzergrenadier « Der Führer » appartenant à la division blindée SS « Das Reich ». Il s'agit du plus grand massacre de civils commis en France par les armées allemandes, semblable à ceux de Marzabotto en Italie, ou de Distomo en Grèce (ce dernier perpétré lui aussi le 10 juin 1944), qui transposent sur le front de l'Ouest des pratiques très courantes sur le front de l'Est.

Ces événements marquèrent profondément les consciences ; leurs conséquences judiciaires suscitèrent une vive polémique, notamment à la suite de l'amnistie accordée aux Alsaciens « Malgré-nous » qui avaient participé à ce crime. Depuis 1999, le souvenir des victimes est commémoré par le Centre de la mémoire d'Oradour-sur-Glane, situé non loin des ruines du village de l'époque, à peu près conservées en l'état. (Wikipedia)