Following the old First World War front line, the Musée Territoire 14-18 sheds light on a great many aspects of a conflict that left a lasting impression on the local landscape and population.

Here you can visit a number of museums (Musée de la Batellerie, Musée du Noyonnais); an interpretation centre (Espace Découverte in Rethondes), which will prepare you for your visit to the battleground by using modern technology to present the main stages of the conflict in the area; several quarries (Confrécourt, Montigny); a large number of cemeteries, monuments and remains (various French cemeteries; two German cemeteries, including the biggest in the Oise; a number of bunkers, including that of the Crown Prince of Bavaria, at Nampcel; the ruins of Plessier-de-Roye and Ourscamp abbey); follow our hiking trails, and immerse yourself in the everyday lives of civilians and soldiers a hundred years ago.

 In late August 1914, the German 1st Army invaded the Oise and the Soisson area. It passed Compiègne and Senlis, then went on down the eastern side of Paris to participate in surrounding the French troops. But the French, aided by the British, halted the invaders at the Battle of the Marne (5 to 10 September 1914). The Germans then retreated, stopping on the right bank of the Aisne. From 14 to 20 September 1914, the very violent fighting that took place across the Noyon and Soisson areas brought little change. While the belligerents tried to break the deadlock by attempting to outflank each other to the northwest of Noyon (the start of the ‘Race to the Sea’), the front became established in the area for 30 months, along a line that passed through Roye, Lassigny, Ribécourt, Autrêches and Soissons. The inhabitants of the towns and villages near the front line were evacuated, while the Germans occupied Noyon and the northeast of the department of the Oise. Following the German retreat over the Hindenburg Line in March 1917, the Oise was liberated a first time. But although life tended to return to normal with the return of the civilians, the German offensives of spring 1918 prolonged the fighting in the area until the end of August 1918. The various battles waged during this period transformed towns and villages, which up until then had been spared, into “flattened country”.

The clearing in Rethondes nevertheless became the symbol of peace regained, with the signing of the Armistice on 11 November 1918.

Sources : ©Musée Territoire 14-18

Fondé en 1988 à l’initiative d’anciens résistants et passé sous gestion du Département du Loiret en 2008, le Musée se compose de deux bâtiments de plain–pied, pleinement accessibles à tous les publics. Le premier se consacre aux espaces d’exposition permanente, tandis que le second accueille conférences, expositions temporaires et ateliers pédagogiques. Une salle de consultation des archives et de la bibliothèque du Musée est également accessible sur demande. Attenant au Musée, un paisible jardin propose au visiteur un espace mémoriel en hommage aux résistants–déportés du Loiret.

The museum officially opened in May 2008, with support from the Château-Thierry community of communes and Picardy Region. The project is the initiative of the mayor of Belleau, and the design and management of the collections is in the hands of the district authority of Château-Thierry, in conjunction with many collectors of First World War memorabilia, all of them true enthusiasts.

In a first area of the museum is a permanent exhibition on the American Cemetery and the Marine Corps.

In a second area, temporary exhibitions look at themes related to the First World War.

History of the Battle of Belleau Wood:

The Battle of Belleau Wood took place in June 1918, with the involvement of American soldiers of the 2^nd Division, notably Marines who had just arrived from eastern France. After one month of fierce combat, the American soldiers, including the Marines, won this battle which today is still considered as the first major engagement and the founding event of the Marines’ reputation. Each year they send a delegation to celebrate Memorial Day at the end of May.

The Marine Corps had 1,062 dead, 33 missing, 3,170 wounded and 445 victims of gassing during the fighting in the Belleau sector. That was more than half the Marine Brigade troops: more than all the losses recorded since the creation of the Marine Corps in 1775. But Paris was saved, the Americans had proved their valor in combat, and the French Army had regained morale and was able to count on its new allies. After Belleau, the Germans never again progressed toward Paris until the end of the War. This was the beginning of the road to Victory. The Marines earned their nickname of “Devil Dogs” at Belleau for their tenacity in combat.

A few days later, on 29 June 1918, General Degoutte, commander of the 6the French Army, proclaimed on the agenda: "Given the brilliant behavior of the 4^th Brigade of the 2^nd Infantry Division of the United States, which took Bouresches in hard-fought battle and the control point of Belleau Wood, fiercely defended by the numerous enemy, the Commanding General of the 6^th Army hereby declares that in all official documents, Belleau Wood shall forevermore be referred to as “Marine Brigade Wood”.

Sources : ©Musée de la Mémoire de Belleau 1914-1918

The museum tour will explain to visitors all about:

• The first royal troops created by Richelieu in 1622 intended for shipborne battle.

• The first modern sailors.

• The marines from the great war and the Ronarc'h brigade to the landing companies of the eastern front.

• The first commandos formed in England.

• The marine regiments of the Second World War.

• The engagement of the land and waterway units of the navy during the Indochina War.

• The commando and sailor operations of the AFN.

• The history of the navy school

• The navy today.

Autres informations

Site Web

Contact: musee.fusco@orange.fr

Base fusiliers marins
BP 92 222
56998 Lorient CEDEX

Sources: Website /http://musee.fusco.lorient.free.fr

Webmaster: musee.fusco@orange.fr

Cité de la Muette was a collective housing unit built in the 1930s but was never completed. In 1941 it became an internment camp and then, in 1942 a camp to group together Jews of France before deporting them to the extermination camps. Between March 1942 and August 1944, around 63,000 of the 76,000 Jews deported from France passed through Drancy. Cité de la Muette was inhabited again as of 1948 and has gradually become a memorial for Drancy: commemorative plaques, erection of a memorial monument, buildings listed as historical monuments since 2001. 

A place of history and education open to everybody, the Drancy Shoah Memorial covers an area of 2,500 m² on five levels. It has a permanent exhibition on the camp's history, several educational rooms, a documentation centre and a conference room. With its large windows facing Cité de la Muette, the dialogue between the two is constant. Just after entering, visitors can see on the wall the faces of 12,000 Jews who were interned at Drancy between 1941 and 1944.

The permanent exhibition uses video testimonials, archive documents and photographs from the period to tell the history of the Drancy camp and the daily life of those interned here from 1941 to 1944, the organisation of the deportations from 1942, and the construction of the camp's memory after the war. Ten documentaries by Patrick Rotman are broadcast. In the middle of the exhibition, the House of Children, designed by Delphine Gleize, allows visitors to learn the fate of children who were interned and deported.

A number of educational activities are possible. For school children there are educational workshops, memory trails, general and themed visits and dedicated areas. In the documentation centre, scanned publications, photographs, films and archives on the history of Drancy can be viewed. School children and the general public can carry out research on the camp and on the people to whom this site is dedicated. A number of testimonials will be collected from the population of Drancy in connection with local associations to improve the collections.

The Drancy Shoah Memorial is complementary to the Paris Shoah Memorial. It is a place of mediation between the site of the former camp and the public, a place of history and transmission. It will allow school children and the general public to be better informed of the history of Cité de la Muette and particularly the central role of the Drancy camp in excluding French Jews in the Second World War and in the implementation of the "Final solution" by the Nazis in France, with collaboration from the Vichy government.

Drancy Shoah Memorial - 110-112, avenue Jean-Jaurès - 93700 Drancy
Tel.: +33 (0)1 77 48 78 20 – Email: contact@memorialdelashoah.org

www.memorialdelashoah.org

Article by the Memorial on the inauguration
 

Reception for groups and school parties:
Tel.: +33 (0)1 53 01 18 01 – Email: education@memorialdelashoah.org

Getting there:

Public transport - RER B to "Le Bourget"
then bus 143 to "Square de la Libération".
Bus 143 and 703, stop at "Square de la Libération"
Bus 151, 251, 684 and 551, stop at "Place du 19 mars 1962"

By car - Market car park.

Autolib terminal: 105, avenue Jean-Jaurès

Paris-Drancy shuttle:
Every Sunday until 31 March 2013 (inclusive).
2pm: leave from Mémorial de la Shoah (17 rue Geoffroy-l’Asnier, 75004 Paris)
arrive at Mémorial de Drancy at 2.45/3pm
5pm: bus returns to Mémorial de Paris
 

Opened in 2012, the Mayenne Deportees Memorial is a visitors’ site that pays tribute to the people of Mayenne who were deported to the Nazi concentration and extermination camps during the Second World War.

This remembrance site is also a learning centre and a place of artistic expression and sharing.

The Memorial consists of two complementary spaces:

the Remembrance Area and the Vigilance Area. Objects collected from the camps, exhibitions, timelines, a wall of names, and written and oral accounts of deportees are presented in a unique and accessible setting.

Through the Memorial, the organisation that manages the site hopes to raise the awareness of present and future generations about the values of tolerance and respect, human rights and fighting all forms of discrimination.

The Memorial’s permanent exhibition, “Souffrances et Espoirs” (Suffering and Hope), takes its title from the eponymous book by Mayenne deportee Marcel Le Roy.  The exhibition is split into three parts: “Before arrest”, “In the camp” and “Freedom and hope”.

First-hand accounts, extracts from deportees’ memoirs and photographs will take you down the long road to the hell of the camps. A tribute is also paid to the Righteous Among the Nations, who put their lives in danger to hide Jews.  The last part of the exhibition looks at Europe and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This part is the link with the Vigilance Area, which seeks to raise people’s awareness about current events.

Maps and timelines explain the context of the period and provide an introduction to the visit.

The Association pour le Mémorial de la Déportation organises a variety of activities (conferences, temporary exhibitions, readings, etc.) throughout the year.

Source : ©Mémorial des Déportés de la Mayenne

AERI has been working for more than ten years to produce CD-ROMs (or DVD-ROMs) on the local Resistance.
It has set up a dynamic network of several hundred people throughout France (teachers, resistance fighters, archivists, historians, students, academics, curators, representatives of local authorities and associations, etc.); acquiring know-how using a methodology for working in a network through a website and skills available to the teams (jurists, cartographers, foreign researchers, etc.); gathering a considerable documentary collection of more than 30,000 documents (posters, tracts, letters, newspapers, photos, audio documents or film archives, etc.), 25,000 historical records (thematic, bibliographical), 50,000 names, 19,000 events, and more than 6,000 places referenced, 20,000 archive and bibliographical references.

This was the source of the idea to create a reference portal site in cooperation with many partners (foundations, ministries, local authorities, museums, archive centres, associations, research centres, etc.) on the period: the on-line Museum of the Resistance (1940-1945). The computer tools used demonstrate the Internet’s contribution in terms of presentation and analysis of documents as well as their educational use.

Thanks to the Internet tool and the related technologies, the on-line Museum of the Resistance has become a site for the general public that is visible because it has a domestic and international dimension, showcasing digital cultural content bringing together resources, diffusing information and guiding the visitor to the appropriate contact.

Since January 2012, the “AERI department” has been pursuing its missions within the Fondation de la Résistance.

The on-line Museum of the Resistance has been open to the public since January 2011, with:

Regional exhibitions: an exhibition on the Drôme has been on line since January 2011.

A provisional exhibition on the Resistance in PACA was posted on line in December 2011.
The definitive exhibition will be ready at the end of 2012 or at the beginning of 2013. For the Ile-de-France region, work is underway on places of remembrance with a smartphone application.

An exhibition of photos and documents on the clandestine newspaper “Défense de la France” was posted on line in February 2012.

A virtual exhibit on the Libération Nord Resistance movement is being prepared with the “Musée du Général Leclerc de Hauteclocque et de la Libération de Paris-Musée Jean Moulin”.
Work is underway on other exhibitions: the Resistance in the Jura, Ardèche, etc.

Thematic exhibitions: an exhibit of gouaches by Albert Fié (resistance fighter from the Drôme département) presented since January 2011, an exhibit on Serge Ravanel, a struggle for unity since August 2011 and the Eysses, a prison in resistance (1943-1944) exhibit since January 2012; a chapter on the itinerary of resistants from Eysses will be added in 2012. A provisional exhibition on the Jewish Resistance Organisations will be put on line in 2012. An exhibition is being prepared on the history of the Vercors (2014), Resistance insignia and armbands (2013), etc.

Beyond the “Exhibitions” spaces, the virtual museum has a media centre, “media base”, where all the documents exhibited in the virtual museum are listed. Educational workshops for teachers and their students are proposed in the form of a blog. They can work on topics related to the exhibitions, school programmes and the “Concours national de la Résistance et de la Déportation”.

http://www.museedelaresistanceenligne.org/

AERI - 16-18 Place Dupleix - 75015 Paris – Tel.: +33 (0)1 45 66 62 72 - Fax: +33 (0)1 45 67 64 24

E-mail : musee@aeri-resistance.com

An updated scenographic presentation

The collections

For the very first time, the Museum’s collections will be showcased in a 300 m² itinerary, mainly focusing on the unique features of the Resistance in the urban context of the city of Lyon. This comprises the heart of the new project.

Photographic Archives

The new exhibition also highlights the work of three renowned photographers of the period: André Gamet, Charles Bobenrieth and Émile Rougé.

Educational department

Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation

14 avenue Berthelot - 69007 Lyon

Tél : 04 78 72 23 11

www.chrd.lyon.fr

C.H.R.D press kit :

The first French soldier fell on July 25th, 1870 in Alsace. The non-commissioned officer from the 12th regiment, Claude Pagnier, was killed in a clash with a patrol of Baden dragoons at Schirlenhof. From 3 August, the Third German Army, which was under the orders of the Prussian price Frédéric Guillaume, occupied Wissembourg and the River Lauter. On 4 August 1870, the first major confrontation took place in town and on the slopes of the Geisberg hill. The French army, under the command of General Mac-Mahon, was defeated for the first time; despite heroic resistance, the disadvantaged vanguard of General Abel Douay's Second Infantry Division succumbed to Prussian attack.

The Battle of Woerth-Froeschwiller on 6 August 1870. The German forces had set up on the east bank of the Sauer and those of the French army, in much smaller numbers, on the heights of the Froeschwiller Plateau, between Langensoultzbach and Morsbronn-les-Bains. Neither side intended to fight that day, but skirmishes near the river, at Woerth, triggered the hostilities. Froeschwiller was therefore an improvised battle. The armies were engaged in a violent battle all day long. Despite the strong resistance, the right wing of the French army was overrun at around 1 pm and the Germans conquered the village of Morsbronn.

MacMahon made a strategic mistake of launching the 2^nd cuirassiers of the Michel brigade into highly unfavourable terrain, notably interspersed with hops plantations. The French troops were mowed down in the streets of the village of Morsbronn by Prussians snipers. The Germans continued to make progress, conquering Elsasshausen and then threatening the road to Froeschwiller. MacMahon then launched four regiments of the Bonnemain cavalry division against them at around 3.30 pm. But once again the result was a massacre. The 1^st regiment of Algerian tirailleurs nonetheless managed to slow the German advance with a daring assault, but had to give in due to a lack of ammunition. The battle continued in the village of Froeschwiller, which suffered intense bombing and fell at 5 pm.

The results of the battle were disastrous: some 10,000 killed among the French and 10,640 among the Germans.
Many mass graves and tombs were dug; the populations of Woerth and Froeschwiller were requisitioned to bury the dead. The Museum of the Battle of 6 August, located in Woerth, is totally dedicated to this tragic battle that opened up the Vosges to the Prussian army.

Practical information: Access by lift for people with reduced mobility (except for the tower).
Car park at the Museum entrance, for buses less than 100 metres away - Boutique, - Guided tours in French and German in the Museum and outside on the battlefield.

Contact: Association des Amis du Musée et du Patrimoine de Woerth et Environs 2, rue du Moulin - 67360 Woerth
Tel.: +33 (0)3 88 09 30 21 - Fax: +33 (0)3 88 09 47 07 - E-mail: mus6aout@gmail.com

Guides are available for groups in the Museum and on the battlefield.
To organise a tour, send an e-mail to: ville.woerth@wanadoo.fr