Tulle was not destroyed because of what it had done, but because of what its suffering could demonstrate. Das Reich had learned these techniques in Eastern Europe and was using terror to instil obedience in the populations of towns and villages across South West France.

The following day, the division would carry out another atrocity: Oradour-sur-Glane. Tulle was part of a continuum of violence, intended to echo far beyond its streets. After the bodies were cut down and left in the local dump, life resumed, and silent grief became synonymous with life in Tulle.

Widows raised children alone. Families learned not to speak. Grief settled into walls and pavements. Even today, the absence is visible: Names carved into stone, Photographs on memorials that remind us of the scale of the loss. To remember Tulle is to acknowledge not only how men died. But how the living endured.

Today, that silence is being broken. Education, conferences, interviews and films are helping to heal the wounds and teach us the lessons from a world war driven by hatred and fanaticism. Tulle is working hard as a beacon for hope and peace.