Village of Death: Oradour-sur-Glane 1944

Narrated by Jeff Daniels.

Robert Hébras stepped carefully through the crumbled ruins of the village where he once lived. “There’s the school bell still hanging up there, reminding me how I was always late,” said the former mechanic.

Almost 80 years after this idyllic rural village near Limoges burnt down, there are still traces of life. Not far from Hébras’s old house, the mayor’s Peugeot 202 carcass is still parked. “When I come here, I see faces, people, not ghosts,” he said. But for the French state, this is Europe’s most crucial ghost village, and there are fears that its ghosts are threatened.

Oradour-sur-Glane is unique in Europe: a fully preserved, ruined village that was the site of the worst Nazi massacre of civilians on French soil. Six hundred and 43 people, including 247 children, were shot or burnt alive on 10 June 1944 in an unexplained act of barbarity.