France is remembering 75 years since Nazi troops massacred 642 people in Oradour-sur-Glane and destroyed the small village near Limoges.

A mass took place Monday at the site of the deadliest massacre in Nazi-occupied France to remember the tragedy on June 10, 1944. Several wreath-laying ceremonies and a march were also planned.

Four days after the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy, a company of troops belonging to the fanatical SS "Das Reich" division herded hundreds of civilians into barns and a church and set the town on fire.

A new village has been built but the old town's ruins have been left untouched as a testimony to Nazi horrors.

The killings were believed to have been ordered in retaliation for the kidnapping of a German soldier by the French Resistance.