About

How do we memorialise the past? On 10th June 1944, four days after the Allies landed in Normandy, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in rural France was destroyed by an armoured SS Panzer division. 643 men, women and children were murdered in France's worst ever Nazi wartime atrocity. Today, Oradour is remembered as a 'martyred village', its ruins preserved for posterity by the order of Charles de Gaulle and visited by thousands every year – but the real stories of its inhabitants are buried under the rubble. Drawing on brand new interviews with survivors and using images and footage seen for the first time, leading historian Robert Pike, author of the critically acclaimed Defying Vichy: Blood, Fear and French Resistance, offers a powerful insight into the everyday lives, loves and rivalry of a typical village in Vichy France. He tells the story before and after the tragedy, explores the mystery of why this peaceful village was chosen and takes events right up to the present day looking at how the massacre has been memorialised and exploring the challenges the village's descendants face in both remembering the past and looking to the future.

This event is part of Gloucester History Festival's Spring Weekend

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