In War and Peace

War and Peace

War – June 10, 1944 Oradour-Sur-Glane invasion

So while waiting for our Rick Steves Europe book to arrive at Henry and Jennifers we decided to take a day trip to Oradour-Sur-Glane Martyr Village. We paid to go into the museum where they explained what it was all about and had a short film – basically on June 10 1944 A Waffen SS unit of the “Das Reich” division encircles the village of Oradour-Sur-Glane. 642 men, women and children would be murdered by weapons and fire and gases, all died but one woman and 5 men. To preserve the memory of this drama, the martyr village of Oradour-sur-Glane has been preserved in the same state since 1944, it felt very spooky even just being at the entrance to it.

There is a plaque that reads “ Those who cannot recall the past condemn themselves to relive it” hmmmm! This struck a cord with me, on one hand i know what they are saying but on the other for me i didn’t know about this before and knowing about it know just made me really angry and further more as i tried to go into the village i couldn’t, I guess the energy that resides there is still too strong , it brought me to tears and i felt sick to my stomach i wanted to throw up, its not like me - Trevor had wanted to go in initially but after seeing me he decided against it too, its all too sad, so needless to say neither of us went into the village, we just couldn’t. So yes I think we need to remember what happened so to make sure it dosnt happen again but for me i don’t need to visit any more of these sites, it makes me angry that there are such bullies in the world that managed to frighten people enough to get them to follow them and so create wars.

Peace – Lourdes, one of the worlds most important pilgrimage sites since 1858.

On the other end of the war and peace scale there is Lourdes, we left Toulousse and went for an overnight here, Lourdes is in a very pretty valley in the middle of nowhere really, we enjoyed a beautiful sunny ride all the way here, as we rode thru the smallish town, to our surprise, it was very tacky with all sorts of holy shops selling god stuff, a little too commercialised for our liking.

Over six million visitors come here each year in hope of miracles, quite sad to see. However, as we hiked down to the Grotto de Massabielle and the Cathedral we were happily surprised by the total beauty of it all, the Cathedral is massive and very impressive, the Grotto where it is said that the Virgin Mary appeared to a 14 year old Bernadette as much as 18 times, is under the church and people were lined up there waiting to walk thru it and to drink from the holy water.

What was even more moving and beautiful though was at 9pm every day there is a procession where everyone holds a lit candle and there is a choir singing and different people say the rosary in loads of languages, the streets were lined solid with hundreds of people all carrying candles, some walking, some in wheelchairs, looking at all these faces and knowing why they are all here, to be healed, was pretty moving, what with the music bellowing out from the very large Cathedral organ and being broadcast throughout the streets in front of the Cathedral, it was quite something.

Ave Maria was sung and on the chorus line everyone raised their candles up, pretty cool, this must have lasted for at least 2 hours. Having been brought up Catholic and hearing about Lourdes from mom and dad it was very cool and moving to actually be standing on this holy ground.