We as a nation have celebrated the end of WWII – War in the Pacific. 15 August 1945. Atrocities and war go together. This is the story of Oradout-sur-Glane.
The French village town of Oradour-sur-Glane, in central France, features in the first and final 26 part DVD series “World at War”. The Nazis arrived on June 10, 1944, they shot all the men, and herded 361 people, mostly women and children, into the church, (the rest of Oradour-sur-Glane's population), and set it on fire.
All but one perished. A total of 642 men, women, boys, girls and babies. The French put a fence up around the whole village and left it untouched, so as to record the atrocity to this day. There is a nearby memorial wall recording alphabetically the names of all those who died.
Some years later French president, Charles De Gaulle ordered the original village be maintained as a permanent memorial while another Oradour-sur-Glane was constructed nearby.
4th SS Panzer Regiment
In February 1944 a SS Panzer Divison was stationed in the nearby town of Valence-d'Agen waiting to be resupplied with new equipment and freshly trained troops and after D Day was ordered to make its way across the country to stop the Allied advance. One of the division's units was the 4th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment ("Der Führer").
Early on the morning of 10 June 1944, the senior officer was informed that he had been approached by two members of the French secret police who were collaborators claiming a Waffen SS officer was being held by the Resistance in Oradour-sur-Vayres, a nearby village.
On 10 June, Diekmann's battalion sealed off the town of Oradour-sur-Glane, having confused it with nearby Oradour-sur-Vayres, a nearby village. The rest is history.
A memory, a memorial and a message
Memory: Oradour-sur-Glane is a memory by those who survived, that is the one survivor of the atrocity and the Wafen SS personnel who committed it. 65 of the approximately 200 German soldiers survived the war and 21 of them faced a 1953 tribunal.
The others were living in East Germany and not permitted to travel to France. 14 of them were from Alsace (French territory, ethnically German). The outcry from Alsace was heard all the way to Paris these young lads were forced drafted into the Waffen SS. The others were released in 1957. A platoon leader was found, charged and found guilty in 1983 and released in 1997.
Memorial: Oradour-sur-Glane is a memorial to the Nazi horror. The first of the World at War DVD series narrated by Sir Lawrence Olivier whose voice says: “They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousands upon thousands of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, in China, in a World at War... ”
Message: Oradour-sur-Glane is a message of the devastation and atrocity of war. Jesus Himself says there will be wars and rumors of wars and so it remains. In our own era the final vestiges of the generation that fought WWII are in their distant twilight years, the Vietnam conflict was 40 years ago, Australia has been engaged in numerous peace keeping roles in our region and elsewhere and more recently, Afghanistan and Iraq.
ISIS
The atrocities of ISIS recorded for history by their own public release videos and propaganda of their ISIS fighters beheading and burning all those they disagree – from Christians to Palestinians to other Muslims is without the words of horror to describe it all.
Many thought the Arab Spring would become a beacon of light in the middle east, all it brought was a model of hard line Islamic theocracy ideals which the people rose up against such as Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco while Libya remains in its throws. ISIS is the affirmation of that Islamic Arab Spring with a grip on half of Syria and half of Iraq with death and destruction left in its path.
Just War
The theological debate of “Just War” perennially goes on. At what point it is 'just' to defend those under subjugation and how many deaths does it take for the politicians to determine whether military force is justified. At what point do those under such threat rise up themselves and where does the military hardware come from?
These are all dirty words to those against any kind of war, that is, unless they are in the firing line.
Yet in spite of all this wickedness we see around us, there continues to be a light of hope in the human spirit. This light for the followers of Jesus is the message of Salvation in Jesus Christ, this is the sure hope of eternity and worthy of true celebration in spite of the of Oradour-sur-Glane's and ISIS's of this world.
I recall tennis great, evangelist and preacher (Rev Dr) Margaret Court speaking at the Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast in Canberra some years ago now, that young people today do not know where to find this hope. Without hope there is only suicide, drugs, and any other hedonistic and humanistic endeavours all of which have no reference to hope.