Our visit to Oradour-sur-Glane was also our most southern point of this trip. I had read about this place in an Ian Rankin novel, where the author explained how his story was inspired by this place.
I had to see it for myself!

The village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Haute-Vienne, in Nazi occupied France, was destroyed on 10 June 1944, when 642 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company. A new village was built after the war on a nearby site, but on the orders of the then French president, Charles de Gaulle, the original has been maintained as a permanent memorial and museum.

On 10 June, Diekmann's battalion sealed off Oradour-sur-Glane and ordered all the townspeople – and anyone who happened to be in or near the town – to assemble in the village square, ostensibly to have their identity papers
examined. In addition to the residents of the village, the SS also apprehended 6 people who did not live there
but had the misfortune to be riding their bikes through the village when the Germans arrived. All the women
and children were locked in the church while the village was looted. Meanwhile, the men were led to 6 barns and
sheds where machine guns were already in place. According to the account of a survivor, the soldiers began
shooting at them, aiming for their legs so that they would die slowly. Once the victims were no longer able to
move, the soldiers covered their bodies with fuel and set the barns on fire. Only 6 men escaped; one of them
was later seen walking down a road heading for the cemetery and was shot dead.
In all, 190 men perished.

The German soldiers proceeded, after they had killed the men, to the church and placed an incendiary device there. After it was ignited, women and children tried to escape through the doors and windows of the church, but they
were met with machine-gun fire. A total of 247 women and 205 children died in the carnage.

Only 47-year-old Marguerite Rouffanche survived. She slid out by a rear sacristy window, followed by a
young woman and child. All three were shot; Marguerite was wounded and her companions were killed.
She crawled to some pea bushes behind the church, where she remained hidden overnight until she was rescued
the following morning. Another group of about 20 villagers had fled Oradour-sur-Glane as soon as the
soldiers had appeared. That night, the village was partially razed.

Numerous other instances of Nazi use of collective punishment and massacre
of civilians are documented across occupied Europe.
The above information was learned form Wikipedia.

I had difficulty grasping the tragedy here upon my visit. Due to numerous classes of
schoolkids visiting this monument, being loud and unruly, I had skipped most of the
briefing at the entrance of this monument. I knew of people massaced here and the
houses set on fire, but there is little information among the ruins, except the above.

LINKS of the various pages reporting on this trip
FRANCE 2015
HONFLEUR
RENNES
LOIRE CHATEAUX
ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE