Haunted Village, Victim of War

Oradour-sur-Glane

When I think of spooky places, places haunted by history and events, I often, naively, forget the remnants of war.  In the United States, it’s easier to slip over the uncomfortable history of loss because so many of our battles have been fought on foreign soil.  We forget, sometimes, what it’s like to live amid the shadows of the past.

Oradour-sur-Glane, a little village in France, is frozen forever in its haunted state, a deliberate attempt to keep tragedy in our minds, hopefully to teach us something.

In 1944, the Nazi’s descended on the town, bringing with them unspeakable cruelty.   No one was spared, not the children or the elderly, the only survivors, people who were missed or hid, and precious few of them.  The little town was not part of the fight, but removed from the war.  Most had never even seen a German until the soldiers came.  And in one stoke, 642 people were killed, the buildings burned, remains of inhabitants with them until few bodies were left to be buried.  The aftermath of the massacre was inexplicable.  No one knew the reason for the brutality of the attack, and it was total.  The village was gone, never to be rebuilt.

And so Oradour-sur-Glane remained.  The French Government decided that they wanted the village as it was, a testament to the war, its destruction complete.  Rubble frames what once was homes, naked facades with no buildings supporting them, gates keeping no one out or in.  It is a dead land.   People now visit to pay respect and to honor the innocent that were lost. 

The walls are slowly eroding, crumbling into dust.  The buildings, frozen in destruction, cannot withstand the passage of time and now the government is being forced to make a decision.  Do they push more money into the time forgot town to save it, or allow the earth to swallow it?   

My thanks to: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/03/oradour-sur-glane-nazi-massacre-village

Another strange place: Varosha by the sea

A salty breeze slithers between the buildings, creeping through cracks and whistling empty echos of sound.  The sounds of laughter, of footfalls and chatter, are gone.  Windows lie in broken shards, winking like diamonds, littering the sidewalks and dusty floors.  The city is empty.  The stores still boast frozen people in fashions of years before, their plastic hands outstretched.  But trees have stabbed up through the roof and plants thrust the concrete up into buckled gaps.  Their churches are empty but for spirits.

The city is the abandoned resort of Varosha, a victim of a battle between the Greek people of Cyprus and the Turks. It was once a brilliant, glittering tourist attraction, tucked in the sandy beaches.  It now stands, fenced off from the rest of the world, abandoned and left to gradually decay.

The story is fascinating and sad, definitely worth reading.  But my writer's mind wonders beyond the fence.  What must it be like?  What would it feel like to walk the abandoned streets? To peer through the windshields of cars parked permanently for decades?  The city is heavily guarded now, but what if it wasn't?  The looted city has been left for so long, but what could live there?  What might live there hidden in the dark, creeping in the abandoned rooms, feeding off the overgrown gardens?

Here is another place where even a visit would give you shivers.  A haunted past, a violent past, and an unknown future.