ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE, France (AP) — With hugs and hand-holding in a solemn tribute to those killed, the presidents of Germany and France on Wednesday visited a ghost town left behind after the largest massacre in Nazi-occupied France nearly seven decades ago.
The trip by German President Joachim Gauck, accompanied by France's Francois Hollande, to the southwestern French town of Oradour-sur-Glane was the first by a serving German leader. The town is today a phantom village, with burned-out cars and abandoned buildings left as testimony to its history.
On June 10, 1944 — four days after the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy — an SS armored division herded hundreds of civilians into barns and a church, blocked the doors, and set the town on fire. A total of 642 men, women and children died.
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