Last survivor of SS massacre in famous French village Oradour-sur-Glane dies | Abroad

The French village in the Haute-Vienne department, about 20 kilometers northwest of the city of Limoges, was the scene of one of the most notorious massacres by the German SS during World War II. On June 10, 1944, a few days after the invasion of the Allies, soldiers of a Waffen-SS armored regiment wiped out the entire village within hours.

The German troops first drove the inhabitants of Oradour together on the market square. Women and children were locked up in the church, the men were crowded into stables and barns. The soldiers of the Waffen-SS then burned down all the buildings in the village. Some of the victims were shot, most were burned alive. In total, no fewer than 642 people died, including many women and children.

Only six people escaped. Also the then 18-year-old Robert Hébras. He managed to escape, albeit wounded, from a shed where he and some 60 others had been imprisoned by the SS. After an hour of anxious waiting, the Germans first shot at the barn with automatic rifles. The building was then set on fire. The six survivors of the drama were all in this shed, hidden under the corpses.

Robert himself had been shot in the chest and also in the leg and arm, but managed to crawl out of the barn in time for the conflagration and reach a nearby hamlet. His mother and two of his sisters, Georgette and Denise, died in the village church. His father and a third sister happened to be not in the village that day. Robert Hébras has devoted his entire life to commemorating the violence of war.

The Oradour-sur-Glane massacre was one of the most notorious German war crimes committed in France during World War II. The village remains as it was left by the Nazis in June 1944.