Jeremy Isaacs: The World at War 5

SCRIPT. “Down this road on a summer day in 1944 the soldiers came / Nobody lives here now / They stayed only a few hours / When they had gone, a community which had lived for a thousand years was dead / This is Oradour-sur-Glâne, in France / The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together / The men were taken to garages and barns. The women and children were led down this road / And they were driven into this church / Here they heard the firing as their men were shot / Then they were killed, too / A few weeks later many of those who had  done the killing were themselves dead – in battle / They never rebuilt Oradour / Its ruins are a memorial / Its martyrdom stands for thousand upon thousand of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, in China – in a World at War…” (Neal Ascherson: Script for narrator, the very first words in the series)

Litt.: Jeremy Isaacs: Look Me In The Eye, 2006.