It is inconceivable that any images of Oradour-sur-Glane – the French village wiped out by the Waffen SS in June 1944 – could be anything other than moving. But those from Wednesday this week were notably significant.

German President Joachim Gauck – the first German leader to visit the scene of the Nazis’ worst atrocity in western Europe – stood hand in hand with French President François Hollande in the roofless village church where 240 women and 205 children were massacred. They listened as Robert Hébras – one of only six people to survive the slaughter, one of two still alive – explained how the womenfolk and young had been variously asphyxiated, machine-gunned and burnt alive. They certainly saw the flattened pushchair, left in place where it had been found before the altar.

Then they took 88-year-old Hébras by the shoulder and hand, turned and walked away, with undertakers’ solemnity. As they made clear beforehand, the present-day families of the victims weren’t looking for apologies – just the recognition and regret that President Gauck brought with him. Afterwards, the other living survivor, Jean-Marcel Darthout, said: “I’ve only got one thing to say – bravo, thank you, and at last.”

Oradour had been waiting for this moment, frozen in time for 69 years. After the war, it was decided neither to demolish nor rebuild the village 15 miles north west of Limoges. It was to be left as it was after a unit of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich roared through, killing and torching. Seven decades on, the jagged ruins still cry the desperation of a little rural spot violated beyond belief. Here, deep in the Limousin countryside of amenable hills, lakes, forests and pastures full of russet cattle, a peaceful community lived, farmed, went fishing, drank in 12 cafés and were as unaffected by the war as a village could be.

Then, at two o’clock on the warm Saturday afternoon of June 10 1944, the war showed up with scarcely believable savagery; 642 villagers were massacred. Since 1999, a stunningly effective Centre de la Mémoire has been trying to explain how things came to this. Set back from the devastated village, it slots into a warp in the landscape, its glass reflecting surrounding bucolic tranquillity, the peace ruptured by slashes of steel plate tearing the air at the entry. Within, brilliantly presented films, testimonials, exhibits and texts interweave Oradour’s story with that of Nazism and the war in general.

The three collided in the immediate aftermath of D-Day. Based in south-west France, the elite Das Reich division was among German forces ordered north to Normandy. En route, they were to clear up Resistance forces who, pumped up by the landings, were growing increasingly audacious. The Das Reich troops had recently arrived in France from the Eastern Front – and had brought Eastern Front methods with them. On June 9, they hanged 99 Resistants from buildings in Tulle (coincidentally, François Hollande’s electoral fief). Similar exactions were perpetrated in nearby towns and villages. Then, on June 10, 200 of them encircled Oradour. No one yet knows why this unassuming settlement was chosen for the ultimate horror. Theories that it was in reprisal for the shooting of a popular SS officer, or that the Nazis were fearful for gold they’d looted in Russia, remain controversial. The most likely explanation is that Das Reich was keen to make an example of a French community – and Oradour was the next one along. In any event, most historians agree that this was a premeditated action, rather than in-the-heat-of-battle fury.

Oradour villagers were rounded up to the Champ de Foire main square, convinced they were going to be subject to a simple ID check. The men were separated from women and children, and taken to six barns. “We were laughing,” says survivor Darthout. “We weren’t afraid. We were thinking of the next day’s soccer match.” Then they were machine-gunned, and the masses of bodies – many still alive – were set alight. Darthout, and four others, survived by covering themselves with the corpses of their neighbours.

Meanwhile, women and children were herded into the church, into which the Germans threw incendiary grenades. Only one woman survived. The attackers then fired the entire village.

Oradour now stands as it did when the Nazi blaze went out. It looks appallingly like a 20th-century Pompeii. Crumbling façades, their windows like sightless eyes, front wrecked shops and homes – rendered unbearably poignant by the rusting detail. In houses there are fire-twisted lamps, sewing machines and pans. Pipes and wires still hang, ruptured, ripped and useless. Tram tracks run everywhere and, now, nowhere. The car from which the village mayor was hauled and shot slumps in the road. The butcher’s shop retains more pans, scales and meathooks.

And in the church there is that pushchair. It is the accumulation of both destruction and survivals of very ordinary existence that smacks the senses. There are streets full of both. Stop, listen and you may hear the echoes of life. Here was a functioning village like thousands of others – with its butchers, cobblers and bakery (see the plaques) – and it was obliterated.

Signs, all the more effective for being Fifties originals, point out spots where killings happened. They also bid, a bit superfluously, “Silence!” and “Remember!” Some people have likened contemporary Oradour to a film set, but it would only look like that if you arrived quite ignorant of the story. The site is intolerably real, and the feelings generated go beyond words.

Though, of course, Oradour still generates words by the million. The involvement of Alsacien soldiers enrolled in the German Army against their wishes – the Malgré Nous – continues to cause ill feeling within France. Meanwhile, German authorities are considering reopening cases against six surviving ex-SS men allegedly present at Oradour. The release of Stasi files brought to the fore fresh evidence against them. And there rumbles on a revisionist claim that Resistance men had their share of the blame for the atrocity.

But that’s what you learn afterwards. While there, you stagger from the site, stunned. The modern little town of Oradour – built next door in a neat, anonymous Fifties manner – will provide you with coffee or lunch. You may, though, need to get farther away. So head north for the Monts de Blond hills. The tiny road snakes up densely wooded slopes, past dark lagoons and through hamlets alive with flowers. By the time you arrive in Mortemart, a lovely, Cotswold-style village, your spirits may be stilled. Against the odds, there is some good in the world.

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Oradour-sur-Glane: mute testimony to dark deeds