Oradour-Sur-Glane Defaced

 From Military.com/Agence France Presse:

“Outrage in France After Nazi Massacre Memorial Defaced”

French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday vowed that everything would be done to find out who defaced a memorial for one of the worst single massacres in France by the Nazis during World War II. Politicians from across the spectrum denounced the desecration of the main entrance sign for the memorial at Oradour-sur-Glane in central France, where 642 people were slaughtered on June 10, 1944 by a German SS division. The word "martyr" was crossed out in the sign with white paint. A blue cover was placed over the sign on Saturday, but images on social media accounts indicated the word in French for "liar" had been added next to it along with other slogans claiming to deny the massacre had taken place. The inscriptions were discovered on Friday morning when the memorial center opened, its president Fabrice Escure told AFP. "It is a complete outrage," he said, adding that a legal complaint had already been filed and security cameras may be able to provide evidence. On June 10, 1944, Nazi forces sealed off the village after reports a senior SS commander had been captured by the French resistance. They grouped together all the men of the village in barns and shot them and then forced the women and children into a church which was set on fire. After the war, resistance leader and later president Charles de Gaulle ordered that the village not be rebuilt but left in ruins as a reminder. A new village was built nearby. The memorial center, now visited by 300,000 every year, was later constructed to assist visitors. "Everything will be done to ensure that the authors of this are brought to justice," Macron said in a statement released by the Elysee Palace, adding that he condemned in the most vehement terms this "unspeakable" act. "To violate this place of reflection is also to violate the memory of our martyrs," added Prime Minister Jean Castex. The incident comes amid growing concern in France over remembering World War II, after repeated vandalization attacks on Jewish cemeteries. "What shocks me is that we do not realize that children and women lost their lives in excruciating pain," Robert Hebras, 95, the last man still alive among half a dozen men from the village who survived the massacre.  "What I fear is that everyone will now talk about Oradour for 48 hours and then that we stop and then we will forget," he told AFP.

^ This is a disgrace. France has long tended to forget (conveniently) the men and women (French as well as American, British, Canadian, Polish, Belgian, Czech, etc.) that fought long and hard to liberate their country from both the German Nazis as well as their own French Vichy Collaborators. That arrogance throughout the decades since 1945 has allowed the French to forget the innocent French men, women and children (Jewish and non-Jewish) who died at the hands of the Germans and the Vichy French. It is the 75^th Anniversary of the end of World War 2 this year and sadly, these kinds of acts of vandalism continue to plague France. I hope they find out who defaced this memorial and give them a severe punishment to show that France won’t forget the horrible crimes committed on their soil or those that risked everything and sometimes dead so that the French today could whine and cry about not enough wine and cheese. ^

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/08/23/outrage-france-after-nazi-massacre-memorial-defaced.html