German President Attends World War II Ceremony in France
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Version 0 of 1. For the first time since World War II, a German leader joined French officials in commemorating the worst atrocity committed by the Nazis in France. President Joachim Gauck of Germany and his French counterpart, François Hollande, joined hands on Wednesday in a quiet ceremony commemorating the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane, in central France, where Nazi troops killed 642 villagers in 1944. The presidents were joined by Robert Hébras, one of the two remaining survivors of the attack, as they stood silently before the ruins of a church where women and children were locked in before a toxic gas was released and the building was set on fire. The men later walked through Oradour-sur-Glane, which was preserved by the state after the war and turned into a memorial. “Our presence is much more than a symbol,” Mr. Hollande said at a joint news conference at the memorial center near the village. “It is the assertion of a promise. A promise to honor everywhere and always the principles that have been ridiculed by the torturers of yesterday but also of today.” The visit was seen as a symbolic effort to seal the postwar alliance between France and Germany. |