On Saturday 10th June 1944 a company of troops from the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich a Waffen-SS unit drove into Oradour and killed everyone that they could find, a total of 642 men, women and children. They then destroyed the village. After the war General Charles de Gaulle decided the village should never be rebuilt but remain as a memorial to the cruelty of the Nazi occupation. A new village was built on a nearby site.