August 22, 2020 - 4:14 AM
PARIS - Vandals have scrawled graffiti denying the Holocaust on a wall in the village that was the site of the France's biggest massacre of civilians by the Nazis during World War II.
France’s justice minister vowed on Saturday that those responsible would be brought to justice.
Officials in Oradour-Sur-Glane, near Limoges in central France, threw up a tarp to cover the graffiti discovered Friday on the wall at the entrance to the Center for Remembrance. The word “Lie” was scrawled on the wall, along with other graffiti, according to the regional paper Le Populaire du Centre. The inscription “Martyr Village” was crossed out.
“Shame on those who did this,” Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti tweeted. “All will be done to find and judge those who committed these sacrilegious acts.”
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin denounced the “abject filth” in a Friday night tweet. Prime Minister Jean Castex said the graffiti “dirties the memory of our martyrs.”
Troops from the fanatical SS “Das Reich’’ division were responsible for killing 642 villagers on June 10, 1944, herding them into barns and a church and setting the town on fire. While a new village has been built, the ruins of the old town have been left untouched as a testimony to Nazi horrors.
The massacre occurred four days after the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy. The killings were believed to have been ordered in retaliation for the kidnapping of a German soldier by the French Resistance.
News from © The Associated Press, 2020