During a summertime trip to France a couple of years ago, I was able to visit the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, 15 miles outside of Limoges. It was here, on the warm sunny afternoon of Saturday, June 10th in 1944, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, 75 years ago today, that the Nazis murdered 642 villagers. Only seven people were lucky enough to survive.
The villagers were brought together in the main square, believing that this was yet another routine identity check. Instead, the men were separated out and taken to six barns. Here, they were machine gunned and the bodies, many still alive, set alight.
Meanwhile, 246 women and 207 children were taken to the church and locked in while grenades were thrown in through the windows and it was set alight.
The Nazis then proceeded to loot the village and burn it to the ground.
No-one knows exactly why Oradour was singled out for such an atrocity, perhaps as retribution for the kidnapping of a German soldier by the French Resistance, but the town has been frozen in time ever since, a shrine to those who lost their lives. Cars, sewing machines, bicycles; all left in the spot where they burned. In the cemetery the names of each person who died is etched on a wall and nearby, in an underground, bunker-like building, is a museum containing the dozens of personal items found: glasses, toys, cutlery, pocket watches.
I wandered the streets of Oradour for several hours, reluctant to take photos at first; it just didn’t feel right, somehow. I eventually did, although when I found myself inside the church I put the camera away. To stand on hallowed ground where you know 453 women and children died an unspeakably cruel death, rather squeezes your heart and takes your breath away.
Oradour is not an easy place to visit, echoing, as it does, with the ghosts of the slaughtered and I left feeling exhausted and nursing a headache, but it is certainly worth a visit should you ever get the chance.
In the few days running up to my visit I just happened to be reading The Alice Network, which touches upon Oradour and Limoges and has a fictionalised version of the woman who managed to escape out of the church window and survive.
It is, of course, just one of many novels set during WWII which do their part in making sure that we never forget the despicable things that occurred and hopefully serve as a reminder to not let such things happen again. It doesn’t matter how many different ones you read, the horrors of wartime never diminish.
Below are a few more.
~The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir Jennifer Ryan I can’t one hundred percent endorse this book but I wanted to include it because reviews on Amazon and Goodreads are overwhelmingly positive.
The blurb on the jacket describes it thus: ” through letters and journals, the Chilbury ladies’ choir unfolds the struggles, affairs, deceptions and triumphs of a village choir during World War II.”
It’s a charming enough read but it never quite manages to rise above a one dimensional level. It gets far too bogged down in expository writing which then gets layered in a heavy dose of the warm and fuzzies. It didn’t help that it is written in letter and journal form although nobody in their right mind would ever write a letter or journal entry in such a descriptive way complete with dialogue. I can only assume it was used to be able to write in the first person yet still allowing the writer to hop back and forth between characters.
It’s a nice use of the ladies choir (given that all the men are off fighting) to convey the course of events and I did see the book through to the end, although admittedly, often wondering why.
~We Were The Lucky Ones Georgia Hunter Now, this is a superb WWII novel that once you pick up you can hardly bear to put down. It’s based on a true story about the Kurc family, Jews living in Poland. By virtue of the title you know that this book has something of a happy ending, if any ending about the holocaust could be described as such. But it is truly remarkable that this family of two parents, five children and their spouses and a couple of children, having been flung to various parts of the globe in an attempt to outrun history are actually able to meet up again considering that 90% of Poland’s three million Jews were annihilated.
It is a remarkable, breathtaking story which takes you to France, Brazil, Serbia and the Polish ghettos. Each family member, due to where they were when war broke out or to circumstances that took place within a few months of Poland being invaded, has their own unique story. Each one is filled with hope, fear and endless amounts of courage and determination. It is astonishing that after having read so many books on this subject matter that it is still possible to be horrified about how the holocaust played out.
~Everyone Brave Is Forgiven Chris Cleave “This is how a kind heart broke, after all: inward, making no shrapnel.” I just love this author’s writing. It’s quiet yet so powerful. And what I love about this particular WWII book is that it plays out so subtly against the screaming backdrop of war and focuses on small battles on the home front which ultimately have big impact.
Mary is at a Swiss boarding school when war is declared. She heads straight to London to sign up before her mother can stop her and finds herself assigned as a teacher as most children are being evacuated, ultimately finding herself left with a class of children who aren’t, apparently, worthy of evacuation: the disabled, black and mentally impaired, forcing her to confront plenty of prejudice from a variety of people, finally declaring to her mother, “we are a nation of glorious cowards, ready to battle any evil but our own.”
Through teaching, Mary meets Tom with whom she starts a relationship despite their class differences and through Tom meets Alistair, creating a bit of a love triangle. Alistair spends most of his time in Malta where he becomes involved in an incident which lands him in jail.
This may be a typical WWII story of love, loss and courage, but Cleave takes unusual issues for wartime, misfit evacuees, drug addiction, racism, and weaves them into a story that shows to full effect the impact of war and how it changes the lives of everyone it touches. Cleave’s beautiful writing is always a joy to read.
~All The Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr I mention this book here as the book that kept getting away. I finally conquered it and am happy to report that it is every bit as good as people said it was.
Blind Marie-Laure LeBlanc lives with her father, a master lock maker for the Paris Museum of Natural History. When the Germans invade they are forced to flee and so head to St-Malo on the Brittany coast to stay with a reclusive uncle, taking with them a stunning blue diamond known as the Sea of Flames, one of four: three fake and one real.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the equation of war, Werner Pfennig lives in a German orphanage until he is given the (dubious) honour of going to an elite Nazi training school because of his genius with electricity and radios.
Their stories do a slow dance towards each other, the blind girl and the German orphan, caught up in a world at war, enduring and surviving its horrors. It’s a quiet story, elegant and beautifully written, winner of the Pulitzer. But for all of that I think this is a completely approachable book. It does jump back and forth in time which might annoy some but the chapters are very short which propel you along and prevent you from feeling bogged down.
~Beneath A Scarlet Sky Mark Sullivan I abandoned my initial reading of this book for some long forgotten reason, but recently finished it. It’s based on the true life events of Pino Lella, an Italian teenager who becomes a member of the Italian resistance, first taking Jews through the mountains to safety in Switzerland and then as a driver for Hans Leyer where he reports any information he can glean to the resistance. Upon finishing it I discovered that the book has over 20,000 reviews on Amazon with an overwhelming majority giving 5 stars. I must say I was a little shocked. Why? Because I found the writing to be a touch simplistic and, dare I say it, slightly juvenile, with decidedly underwhelming dialogue.
Having said that, it’s written well enough to make it a reasonably compelling read. It’s got enough tension to keep you turning the pages, although at 500+ pages I think I may have enjoyed it a bit more if a good 100 pages had been lopped off.
What I enjoyed most about it was the Italian perspective of war and occupation which we don’t hear too much about. I have no idea how much of it really is true, but if Pino Lella only did a fraction of the things encompassed in this novel, that would make him a pretty remarkable person.
Read my review on The Alice Network here.
Also worth a look:
~The Lost Wife a heartbreaking look at time in the concentration camps and the pain endured after survival.
~The Paris Architect a dislikable Parisian architect builds elaborate hiding places for Jews and is changed by his experience.
~In Farleigh Field a German spy in British uniform parachutes to his death and ignites secrets and lies in a small English village.
~The Baker’s Daughter a story built around the Lebensborn Programme, a Nazi initiative to create a master race.
~Charlotte Gray a young Scottish woman joins the French Resistance while trying to find a missing RAF pilot with whom she has had a brief but intense affair.
~The Nightingale has become something of a cult classic for WWII fiction.
~Trapeze for something with a bit more bite.
~The Zookeeper’s Wife non-fiction account of how the keepers of the Warsaw zoo saved hundreds of people from the Nazis.
~Night by Elie Wiesel. Most definitely not fiction and truly heartbreaking.
