FRANCE: Oradour
We were all over France on the way back, including a visit to Oradour sur Glane, the village near Limoges where the SS
massacred almost the entire population on June 10 1944. There is now a vast heritage centre there about German
atrocities, tickets costing 6 euros (~$6.90 at present). It is impossible to visit the ruined village without paying, though to be
fair it needs to be protected from desecration by neo-Nazis.I can't help feeling that they are overdoing it a bit. There is an
official web site, www.oradour.org, but I couldn't get past the first page in any language. A Google search for Oradour will
turn up plenty of alternatives. I mention this because there was correspondence about Oradour before we left".
RH: Is it just a tourist racket, a deliberate attempt to keep the story alive as a warning to Germany, or both? I visited
Auschwitz and Buchenwald during the communist period, and they were meant to foster hatred of the Nazis. When I was in
Germany in 1933 there was much talk about Dachau. After the war it too became a "·tourist attraction". but I have not
heard about it recently.- Do the Germans want to forget their Nazi past?
Ronald Hilton - 7/4/03
George Sassoon has been in partibus infidelibus. We welcome him back to WAISdom. He reports on his trip: "We are
back in Britain after 7 weeks abroad, mostly in Croatia where they are passing innumerable laws and regulations to qualify
for EU entry, after a few years' comparative freedom ...
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