NORMANDY 

Normandy-Caen Peace memorial-Emotional and moving visit

Memorial sites
and beaches main page

D-Day beaches and war memorials

Ste-Mere-Eglise

 Caen-Musée pour le Paix

 Pegasus Bridge
Benouville
Ranville

The Memorial is on the Caen Ring road (N 13) to the west of its junction with the D 17. By bus take a no.17 from the place Courtonne.
The main building of the Memorial is built on the remains of a German commanding bunker, a massive edifice in "pierre de Caen". Built on three levels, it uses a lot of audio-visual techniques to set the Battle of Normandy into the context of WWII, with thematic links to previous and related conflicts.
First symbol: the large central fracture, evoking the Allied breakthrough in the Atlantic Wall.
Shot with symbolism, its centrepiece starting from the large central hall is a walk-down spiral gallery with a wall, the "CERCLE DU TEMPS" (circle of time), covered by names of philosophers who counted in History. It’s chronicling now our century’s descent into war with a second fracture: the red line indicates the appearance of the anti-Semitic "sentiment". The visit can start.....We enter a dark corridor who will decline all along a brilliant explanation about the roots of WWII.
"FAILLITE DE LA PAIX" (failure of peace): from 1918 on, different facts will oppose the European understanding: the Mussolini march on Rome, the 1929 crash of Wall street, the power demonstrations of the nazis in Nuremberg, all this on small screens proffering also multiple Nuremberg rallies. End of hostilities, the Allies retreat at Dunkirk. White veil…now we are taken in a bubble.
Suddenly the amplified voice of the Fuhrer shrieks in our ears! It’s mass conditioning. Today nobody admits that they were bewitched. Try to speak: your voice can also be very loud! Could the individual be treated as an equal with a dictatorship?
"LA FRANCE DES ANNEES NOIRES", (France in the black years), arrival of the Germans in France, the dishonour for the French at Compiegne you can hear a surrealistic phone conversation just after the signing between Weygand and Huntzinger), darkened rooms evoke the years of occupation, wide space mirror the world widening of the 1942 conflicts. The ignoble collaboration of the Vichy militants is not forgotten, the Resistance, the Genocide...... A room you will never forget: the one where the faces of the deportees fade slowly, in the dark. On the floor, little flames of hope and tortures. Only Yad Vashem in Jerusalem outpaces this in emotion.
"GUERRE MONDIALE, GUERRE TOTALE" (World War, Total War): America joins the war! A light is beginning to shine. All is well mapped and explained to follow the evolution and the slow backing off by the Teutons. In bulk: posters of the war effort), photographs of the first test of the atomic bomb (on the wall, a letter from Einstein), the preparations of the Overlord operation (seen from the British side), etc...

Gift from the US 8th AAF

PROJECTED MOVIES: Three not to miss and if you are pushed for time, see these first.  First a film-montage of using both real and fictional footage, vividly recounts D-Day as simultaneously experienced by both the Allies and the Germans, then in a stunning turning decor, the "Bataille de Normandie" and its subsequent progress in a series of illuminated maps, and finally, “Hope”, a documentary film by the French actor Jacques Perrin, "Esperance", retracing the strong and important peace time moments since the liberation of Paris and concluding with images of continuing conflict and idealistic calls for world peace.
Exit the main building, and take the stairs or elevator to the inferior platform. Here is the GALERIE DES PRIX NOBEL DE LA PAIX, first museum ever dedicated to these benefactors of humanity. A long corridor with portraits. No prize was given during the Word Wars (except in 1917 to the Red-Cross). The first coloured man was named Lutulli, the last Frenchman to have obtained it, in 1968, was Rene Cassin (editor of the Human Rights Declaration). Amnesty International got the prize in 1977, the Dalai-Lama in 1989. Women? Aun San Kuyi, the pretty and courageous Burmese, and Roberta Menchu, who defends the Indians of Guatemala)

Bibliography

A holiday history of France, by Ronald Hamilton (London-Hogarth press), Region Normandie, ses merveilles, ses cicatrices, by Louis Letellier (ed. Cloison, Rouen 1995), Holt’s battle field guides, Normandy Overlord by Holt, Tonie and Valmai (Sandwich, Kent), Guides du Routard, (ed.Hachette), La France des petits chemins: Normandie, by J. de la Valléé (ed. Cité presse, Paris 1998), Six armies in Normandy, by John Keegan, (paperback ed. Pimlico)-“Memorial pour le Paix, brochure”.  

Arromanches artificial port

 Bayeux war memorials

 Omaha beach 
     
 
Pointe du Hoc
     
 
Utah Beach