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Sarah Farmer
Martyred Village
Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane
$22.95, £16.50 paperback
978-0-520-22483-4
Available Now
317 pages, 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches, 25 black-and-white photos, 1 map
February 1999, Available worldwide
Categories: History; French Studies; European History
February 1999, Available worldwide
Categories: History; French Studies; European History
"Awaited with impatience, the book does not disappoint. . . . Far from being an anthropology of memory or an inventory of commemorative rites, it is a real work of contemporary history. As penetrating as those of such other scholars as Robert Paxton and Peter Novick, it permits us . . . to demonstrate the mechanism that in France obstructed the punishment of the collaborators and of the murderers of civilians."—Le Monde
"In the idea of turning ruins into a monument was to freeze a single moment of horror, in her fascinating book...Sarah Farmer demonstrates how Oradour was then drawn into a different nightmare. The town wanted to be a symbol; instead it became a mirror of France's long, painful and divisive struggle to come to terms with itself after the war....What makes her account so gripping is that, through the drama of Oradour, she also throws light on debates that continue to this day, not least about France's role in sending 78,000 Jews to Nazi death camps."—Alan Riding, New York Times Book Review
"Moving and angry…The only things that distinguish Farmer's account from a Dostoevskian novel is a meed of hard, effective science and a depressingly familiar story of the powerfully malignant effects of racism. Deeply convincing." —Times Higher Education Supplement
"Massacre and survival, ruins and memory, mourning and commemoration, these are the themes of this unassumingly powerful book, which . . . derives its narrative strength from the archives of Haute-Vienne, local interviews and a finely tuned response to place, site, and the transmission of grief and anger. Martyred Village is a work of careful historical reconstruction and analysis, where the subject is both event and memory."—Times Literary Supplement
"Farmer . . . presents a fascinating study of the impact of memory on people and history."—Rose M. Cichy, Library Journal [starred review]
"Sarah Farmer has written an engrossing account of one town's place in France's national memory that illuminates the bitter post-war debates over justice and collaboration."—The Economist
"In the idea of turning ruins into a monument was to freeze a single moment of horror, in her fascinating book...Sarah Farmer demonstrates how Oradour was then drawn into a different nightmare. The town wanted to be a symbol; instead it became a mirror of France's long, painful and divisive struggle to come to terms with itself after the war....What makes her account so gripping is that, through the drama of Oradour, she also throws light on debates that continue to this day, not least about France's role in sending 78,000 Jews to Nazi death camps."—Alan Riding, New York Times Book Review
"Moving and angry…The only things that distinguish Farmer's account from a Dostoevskian novel is a meed of hard, effective science and a depressingly familiar story of the powerfully malignant effects of racism. Deeply convincing." —Times Higher Education Supplement
"Massacre and survival, ruins and memory, mourning and commemoration, these are the themes of this unassumingly powerful book, which . . . derives its narrative strength from the archives of Haute-Vienne, local interviews and a finely tuned response to place, site, and the transmission of grief and anger. Martyred Village is a work of careful historical reconstruction and analysis, where the subject is both event and memory."—Times Literary Supplement
"Farmer . . . presents a fascinating study of the impact of memory on people and history."—Rose M. Cichy, Library Journal [starred review]
"Sarah Farmer has written an engrossing account of one town's place in France's national memory that illuminates the bitter post-war debates over justice and collaboration."—The Economist
Among German crimes of the Second World War, the Nazi massacre of 642 men, women, and children at Oradour-sur-Glane on June 10, 1944, is one of the most notorious. On that Saturday afternoon, four days after the Allied landings in Normandy, SS troops encircled the town in the rolling farm country of the Limousin. Soldiers marched the men to nearby barns, lined them up, and shot them. They then locked the women and children in the church, shot them, and set the building and the rest of the town on fire. Residents who had been away for the day returned to a blackened scene of horror, carnage, and devastation.
In 1946 the French State expropriated and preserved the entire ruins of Oradour. The forty acres of crumbling houses, farms and shops became France's village martyr, set up as a monument to French suffering under the German occupation. Today, the village is a tourist destination, complete with maps and guidebooks.
In this first full-scale study of the destruction of Oradour and its remembrance over the half century since the war, Sarah Farmer investigates the prominence of the massacre in French understanding of the national experience under German domination. Through interviews with survivors and village officials, as well as extensive archival research, she pieces together a fascinating history of both a shattering event and its memorial afterlife.
Complemented by haunting photographs of the site, Farmer's eloquent dissection of France's national memory addresses the personal and private ways in which, through remembrance, people try to come to terms with enormous loss. Martyred Village will have implications for the study of the history and sociology of memory, testimonies about remembrances of war and the Holocaust, and postmodern concerns with the presentation of the past.
In 1946 the French State expropriated and preserved the entire ruins of Oradour. The forty acres of crumbling houses, farms and shops became France's village martyr, set up as a monument to French suffering under the German occupation. Today, the village is a tourist destination, complete with maps and guidebooks.
In this first full-scale study of the destruction of Oradour and its remembrance over the half century since the war, Sarah Farmer investigates the prominence of the massacre in French understanding of the national experience under German domination. Through interviews with survivors and village officials, as well as extensive archival research, she pieces together a fascinating history of both a shattering event and its memorial afterlife.
Complemented by haunting photographs of the site, Farmer's eloquent dissection of France's national memory addresses the personal and private ways in which, through remembrance, people try to come to terms with enormous loss. Martyred Village will have implications for the study of the history and sociology of memory, testimonies about remembrances of war and the Holocaust, and postmodern concerns with the presentation of the past.