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Que nos caravanes s’avancent Vers ce lieu marqué par le sang Une plaie au coeur de la France Y rappelle à l’indifférence Le massacre des innocents From ‘Chanson de la Caravane d’Oradour’, by Louis Aragon (12 June 1949)   I The atrocity of war committed by German forces at the French town of Oradour on the afternoon of 10 June 1944 is well documented It is not my aim here to echo such accounts by presenting a detailed investigation of the traumatic events, or to seek a way through the veritable labyrinth of national tragedy rhetoric that threatened to over-symbolise Oradour as a victim of war’s brutality, or to indulge in the prolonged mental exhaustion of attempting to ascertain the existential implications of its bitterly lingering aftermath My aim is rather to simply present my thoughts and observations on an indecently sunny afternoon when I visited the memorial ruins of Oradour some sixty-five years later But in doing so I shall be obliged to recount to some extent the terrible reality of that day   After the war President Charles de Gaulle paid a visit to Oradour and declared the ruins a permanent national monument to the suffering of civilians in war He declared that the site would be sealed off never to be rebuilt and thus remain a reminder to the excesses of totalitarian bestiality Oradour was to be frozen in time, preserved in the exact state that it was found after the perpetrators had left Nothing was to be touched or removed and the entire site, virtually unique in the western sphere of the war’s destruction, would be preserved as a nightmarish exhibit for future visitors to pass through and ponder the capacity of mankind to impose murderous destruction on complete strangers with impunity   Entering Oradour and obeying bold signs to the memorial ruins, I was surprised to find myself in a vast car park, a limitless expanse of tarmac, more suited one would think to a sports complex or shopping mall There on the sleek