“The news of this drama began to spread through Limoges on the 11th of June.
“In the evening, the general commanding the Verbindungsstab refused to grant the pass, which was personally requested by the Regional Prefect, for him and the Deputy Prefect to move about in the area. Only the Subprefect of Rochechouart was able to go to Oradour and report to his chief on the following day that the village, which comprised 85 houses, was only a mass of ruins and that the greater part of the population, women and children included, had perished.
“On Tuesday, 13 June, the Regional Prefect finally obtained authorization to go there and was able to proceed to the town, accompanied by the Deputy Prefect and the Bishop of Limoges. In the church, which was partly in ruins, there were still the calcinated remains of children. Bones were mixed with the ashes of the woodwork. The ground was strewn with shells with ‘STKAM’ marked upon them, and on the walls there were numerous traces of bullets at a man’s height.
“Outside the church the soil was freshly dug; children’s garments were piled up, half burned. Where the barns had stood, completely calcinated human skeletons, heaped one on the other, partially covered with various material made a horrible charnel-house.
“. . . although it is impossible to give the exact number of these victims, it can be estimated that there were 800 to 1,000 dead, among them many children who had been evacuated from regions threatened by bombardment. There do not seem to have been more than ten survivors among the persons who were present in the village of Oradour at the beginning of the afternoon of 10 June.”
Such are the facts.