Oradour-sur-Glane

Oradour-sur-Glane was a commune in the Haute-Vienne department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in west-central France, as well as the name of the main village within the commune.The original village was destroyed on 10 June 1944, four days after D-Day, when 643 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a company of troops belonging to the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, a Waffen-SS unit of the military forces of Nazi Germany in World War II. A new village was built after the war on a nearby site, but on the orders of president Charles de Gaulle, the original has been maintained as a permanent memorial. The Centre de la mémoire d'Oradour museum is located beside the historic site.