“On Saturday, 10 June, a detachment of SS belonging very likely to the ‘Das Reich’ division which was present in the area, burst into the village, after having surrounded it entirely, and ordered the population to gather in the central square. It was then announced that it had been reported that explosives had been hidden in the village and that a search and the checking of identity were about to take place. The men were asked to make four or five groups, each of which was locked into a barn. The women and children were taken to the church and locked in. It was about 1400 hours. A little later machine-gunning began and the whole village was set on fire, as well as the surrounding farms. The houses were set on fire one by one. The operation lasted undoubtedly several hours, in view of the extent of the locality.
“In the meantime the women and the children were in anguish as they heard the sound of the fires and of the shootings. At 1700 hours, German soldiers entered the church and placed upon the communion table an asphyxiating apparatus which comprised a sort of box from which lighted fuses emerged. Shortly after the atmosphere became unbreathable. However someone was able to break open the vestry door which enabled the women and children to regain consciousness. The German soldiers then started to shoot through the windows of the church, and they came inside to finish off the last survivors with machine guns. Then they spread upon the soil some inflammable material. One woman alone was able to escape, having climbed on the window to run away. The cries of a mother who tried to give her child to her, drew the attention of one of the guards who fired on the would-be fugitive and wounded her seriously. She saved her life by simulating death and she was later cared for in a hospital at Limoges.
“At about 1800 hours the German soldiers stopped the local train which was passing in the vicinity. They told passengers going to Oradour to get off, and, having machine-gunned them, threw their bodies into the flames. At the end of the evening, as well as the following day, a Sunday morning, the inhabitants of the surrounding hamlets, alarmed by the fire or made anxious because of the absence of their children who had been going to school at Oradour, attempted to approach, but they were either machine-gunned or driven away by force by German sentinels who were guarding the exits of the village. However, on the afternoon of Sunday some were able to get into the ruins, and they stated that the church was filled with the corpses of women and children, all shrivelled up and calcinated.
“An absolutely reliable witness was able to see the body of a mother holding her child in her arms at the entrance of the church, and in front of the altar the body of a little child kneeling, and near the confessional the bodies of two children in each other’s arms.
“During the night from Sunday to Monday the German troops returned and attempted to remove traces by proceeding with the summary burial of the women and children outside the church.