8. Oradour-sur-Glane, France
Located in the Limousin region in west-central France, Oradour-sur-Glane
is a little village that was a site of grisly massacre by a German Waffen-SS
company in the WWII. In June 1944, after the D-Day invasion of Nor-
mandy, Oradour-sur-Glane was sealed off by a German battalion, after ru-
mors had circulated that an SS officer was being held prisoner in the area.
As collective punishment, residents of the village were ordered to assemble
in the village square, ostensibly to have their identity papers examined, but
instead, hundreds of them including women and children were then massa-
cred in a horrific machine gun attack. Former French president Charles de
Gaulle later decreed that the village would never be rebuilt, and that it
should serve as a museum and permanent memorial to the atrocities that
occurred during the German occupation of France.
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