Village History

Today’s blog is much more sombre than usual.  Yesterday’s walk took me past the memorial on the edge of the village. This is not a common memorial – it commemorates seven people killed on the same day in 1944. 

 

On 10 June 1944 the occupying German army was responsible for the slaughter of approximately 600 men, women and children in Oradour-sur-Glane, a village close to Limoges.  The men were herded into five garages and barns and shot and then burned.  About 400 women and children were confined in the local church and then killed.   

News of the Oradour outrage spread through the Dordogne so, on 28 June, when it became known  that two German columns were advancing on Cherveix Cubas, there was great panic.  Many people tried to hide in the surrounding countryside.  A neighbour told us that he was taken to the woods by his mother.  He was a tiny baby at the time and his mother was so distressed that her milk dried up and he had to be fed on donkey milk. 

The two German columns came to Cherveix from both Genis and St Agnan.  The soldiers were armed and shot their weapons randomly, claiming to be looking for “Terrorists” – the Maquis.  It seems that the then Mayor, Paul Queyroi, spoke to the commanders and managed to calm the situation.  There were also fluent German speakers in the village, refugees from Alsace who were able to translate. 

The Germans stayed in the village overnight, shooting weapons and creating noise, though ostensibly not killing.  However, after their departure on 29 June, seven dead bodies were found in Anlhiac a nearby hamlet.  There were three Maquis, including a woman, two men from Lanouaille who had happened to be passing on a motorbike and two Anlhiac villages, one a 77 year old man who was deaf and disabled and the other a 33 year old man who had been working in the field.  Some of the bodies showed signs of torture and a large bloodied tin bath was found.

They have been commemorated by the village and the memorial is not far from the bridge.              

 

The remains of the brutalised village, Oradour-sur-Glane, can be visited, remaining as a museum and a memorial to those murdered.