It was April of 2009 and after two weeks in Paris, Sylvain and his family brought me on vacation with them to a rural, southern part of France where his grandparents live. After a four hour drive through French country-side, complete with
Everything painted was peeling. Everything white was beige. Everything I could see was older than I, save Sylvain’s triplet cousins who were taking turns on the swing. There is a kind of inexplicable comfort in being surrounded by things that have tempted time and survived. That is how being in France feels. Especially Paris.
We went inside and Sylvain’s grandfather, Leo, received me warmly. Speaking the broken English he learned as a boy he insisted on showing me a tiny town named Oradour-sur-Glane. Eager to see more adorable French homes I agreed. I was not prepared for what I would see next.
Leo, Sylvain, and I drove out of the charming village and approached a town that looked at though it had been abandoned. We parked, walked past the memorial museum we would visit later, and followed a cobbled path into town. The first thing I noticed was the sound of the place. It was void of the normal outdoor noises. I did not hear birdsong. The buildings were crumbled, roofless, forgotten like Mayan ruins. All around were fences, houses, and trees scorched and stained with ash. The entire town was deserted- streets littered with cars made of rust and broken sewing machines of the same fate. This was unlike anything I had ever seen and a shocking disparity to the beautiful house I had just beheld. There is something inexplicably disturbing about such a setting. It was clear that something terrible had happened in Oradour, France.
Leo explained (with the help of his grandson whose English is much better) that the town was attacked by two German platoons on June 10th, 1944. The Nazis were on their way to the beaches of Normandy to provide aid when they came across Oradour-sur-Glane and decided to “make an example” of it. The village-men were rounded up and gunned down while the women and children were herded into a church which was set on fire. The town was looted, destroyed with gunfire, and set ablaze. In total, 642 people were slaughtered. Five men and one woman survived.
The town, which has become known as Martyr’s Village, was left in its ravaged state as a reminder of the destruction caused by war as well as a memorial to those murdered there. Seeing it all- feeling the weight of the tragedy- awoke a profoundly deep sadness in me that I did not recognize until later that day. We walked down the empty streets in silence. I kicked a rock.
We walked to the far end of the village to the victim’s cemetery. Behind the rows of tombstones is a ten panel wall engraved with the names and ages of all who died. Leo walked the cemetery with the grace of someone who had been there many times. Sylvain and I hung back and gave him some space as he read the names on the wall, lingering occasionally. He stared at one name longer than the rest. I watched his cataracted eyes grow misty |
We returned the the museum and entered the Centre of Remembrance for Oradour. This Centre is a museum with two wings of expositions. One wing holds the permanent Martyr’s Village exhibit which thoroughly explains its historical context and pays tribute to those who perished. The second wing is used for temporary exhibitions. We went through the permanent one and then came to the second wing. There on the exposition banner was the famous french gift to America- the Statue of Liberty... and behind it was the fallen, twisted scaffolding of the Twin Towers.
It was an exposition focused on the events of September 11th, 2001. The exhibit was borrowed from the New York State Museum for the year, an exhibit I'd seen several times in Albany. I was shocked, honored, and moved to tears. I walked through the exhibit as Leo and Sylvain lagged behind giving me some privacy. There were pieces of the towers, piles of keys rescued from the wreckage, newspaper articles, testimonies, and pictures. I lingered at a newsreel and reach out to touch it, feeling the smooth glass and static on the screen. “I remembering seeing this on television”, I said in English as Sylvain translated so Leo could understand.“She was seven,” he repeated in French. Leo nodded.
The parallels of the experience chill me still. Earlier that day I walked through the ruins of a terrorized village and thought to myself- “This was wrong. This should not have happened. This deserves to be grieved and remembered and avoided at all costs.” The sinking feeling I experienced there was the conglomeration of these thoughts, the same thoughts I have when reflecting on 9/11- the same thoughts I know Leo and Sylvain have as well towards that dark American morning. For the first time in my life I realized that national tragedy is world tragedy. September 11th was not just an American loss. Oradour-sur-Glane was not just a French loss. Tragedies such as these are global afflictions.
A week before this experience in Oradour-sur-Glane I visited three of the beaches at Normandy that the Allied Powers stormed on June 6th of 1944. The day I swa them they were beautiful, but knowing the history of the place made its beauty unbearable. It's baffling that at one point those beaches had no more significance than any other place. Baffling that they were once littered with bodies. Dumbing to knowthat what happened on those beaches put a stop to even more horrifying events that were taking place not only in Oradour, but all over Europe and the world. All of this came to me at once and I saw the beaches as not one, but three. Due to the nature of time, Place exists in layers. This is why we must never forget.
And why we must also never forget- human lives matter. This is a fundamental. Dignity, Truth, Justice- all those big concepts authors like John Steinbeck got you to question as a teen- they reveal sacred Truths. We feel these things not just nationally, but as One People. When New York City was attacked and humiliated- the world mourned for us, they groaned with us, the cried for us from across oceans and skyways. And they cried for themselves too. Because as much as we try to deny it we are in this together. We live together, die together on beaches and in villages and in towers. It can feel odd to mourn those we’ve never met, to feel compelled to help people who may not speak our language or share our culture. But strangers alter our worlds in unimaginable ways every day through ordinary expressions of courage and sacrifice. This Memorial Day I choose to honor and remember not only those who have given their lives for my freedom, but those who have sacrificed for the freedom of any human being so that even one less innocent life is lost.
When Leo, Sylvain, and I got home from the museum Leo took out an old shoe box of items pertaining to our lost village; black and white photographs of the town before the massacre, a small photo of Leo and his ten year old friend, tiny bits of glass from broken windows that melted in the heat of fires that killed hundreds that night- the green, blue, and white shards now resembling tiny tear drops. He took one especially twisted piece and placed it in my hand. “A gift,” he said smiling through sad eyes, and without my translator I understood, “to remember”.