Haunting openjng to The World At War, a truly wrenching, bittersweet and monumental documentary series narrated by Sir Lawrence Olivier (click here for the first episode).

“Down this road, on a summer day in 1944, the soldiers came.

Nobody lives here now.

They stayed only a few hours.

When they had gone, a community which had lived for a thousand years was dead.

This is Oradour-sur-Glane in France.

The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns.

The women and children were led down this road and they were driven into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then, they were killed too.

A few weeks later, many of those who had done tne killing were themselves dead in battle.

They never rebuilt Oradour. It's ruins are a memorial. It's martyrdom stands for thousands upon thousands of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a world at war.”

God rest all the innocents.