Ghost estates - Monuments we can really learn from

FIFTEEN miles northwest of the French town of Limoges stands one of Europe’s most articulate and challenging war memorials.

On June 10, 1944 a German SS unit invaded the quiet Limousin village of Oradour-sur-Glane. They ordered the women and children into the church and brought the village’s men together. They then shot or burned 642 people and destroyed the village.

It stands today more or less as it was left by the SS Das Reiche division when they had finished their slaughter. Razed but better known and more symbolic than ever. Silent but roaring. The shells of houses and schools symbolising the lives that were quenched and maybe too the lives that never came to be in Oradour-sur-Glane. Even its sterility speaks to the bestiality of the murderers. It nearly always leaves a life-long impression on visitors. The French ghost village is one of the world’s great indictments of the senselessness of war and hatred.