Seventy years have passed since the inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane were massacred and all homes and businesses destroyed, but here in this ghost town near Limoges, France, it is still June 10 1944.
It was on this day that members of the dreaded S.S. stormed the town and massacred its residents.
The men were rounded up and shot in barns, the women were herded into the local church which was set ablaze with hand grenades.
Today Oradour exists as a massive memorial - a chilling time capsule where the burned out homes remain exactly as they were on the day they were torched, and even the car of the mayor still lies rusting in the main street.
Veterans of the Das Reich division - members of which had spent three years murdering civilians on the Russian front - were moving up to the Normandy battlefields to try to counter the Allied invasion forces when they detoured into the sleepy hamlet which had existed for 1,000 years.
It is thought Oradour was destroyed because of resistance attacks on the division as it moved north. But another theory is that the booty - massive amounts of gold - of Das Reich officers was stolen and they believed the peasants of the village had it.
Ironically, many of the soldiers who took part in the massacre were from the Alsace region - the disputed borderland that has changed hands many times between France and Germany down the centuries
Francois Hollande, the French president, will accompany president Gauck on the visit.
For many years the relatives of victims had opposed any homage to Oradour by a German leader.
The two presidents are due to visit the village square where the residents were rounded up by German soldiers ostensibly to have their identity papers checked.
The women and children were then locked up in the church while the men were taken to a barn where machine guns awaited.
Chai....
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