last survivor of the Oradour-Sur-Glane massacre, Robert Hébras died

To see his sparkling eyes, who could have guessed that he experienced the horror? At 97, Robert Hebras passed away Saturday, February 11. He was the last witness to the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane (Haute-Vienne), which claimed the lives of 643 innocent people. The mayor of this martyred village, Philippe Lacroix, says he was afraid “that we forget. It was his great fear, and he often told me: ‘Young generations need to know what happened here, so that it never happens again’“.

Women and children burned alive

He was 18 years old, on June 10, 1944, an SS division landed in his village. “It was 2 p.m. when we heard the sound of a caterpillar coming from the bottom of the village.“, he had said. The inhabitants are gathered in the square, the men led into a barn, then machine-gunned. With five other survivors, he manages to flee. Locked up in a church, the women and children are burned alive by the Nazis, where his mother and two sisters perished.