World War II & the Holocaust in France

The Airborne museum is in the heart of the town of Sainte-Mère-Eglise, near the site of the 82nd Airborne parachute drops. The entrance is in front of the bell tower of the church on which the parachutist John Steele hung. Using historic artefacts and archival images, exhibits explore all aspects of the D-Day landings, from preparation in England to the liberation of Normandy. These exhibits are extensive, spread over five buildings. It is one of the more popular attractions relating to D-Day, attracting many thousands of visitors, and with an active programme of events.

On the edge of the Forest of Compiègne is the location where the Armistice that brought an end to the Great War was signed in 1918, and another signed on 22 June 1940 between the Germans and French following the German occupation of France. The memorial site comprises the Armistice Glade and the Memorial Museum. A series of displays traces the development of the site from the end of WW1 to early WW2. The original carriage was destroyed in 1945 in Berlin, now visitors get to see a near identical carriage, that has been staged for the signing of the first Armistice.

The circular cinema comprises nine screens, on which is shown archival images (still and moving) that recount 100 days of the Battle of Normandy. Maps cover the walls of the passage leading into the cinema, detailing the stages of the battle. The screens are above head height, and there are no seats. You either stand or lean against rails. The cinema is situated on top of the Arromanches cliff, with a good view onto one of the two artificial Mulberry harbours the Allies set up for the D-Day landings. Sections of a floating roadway, codenamed ‘whales’, can be seen next to the car park.

At the tip of Pointe de Penhir, the Germans built a bunker system on the remains of an old French military fort. Known as the Kerbonn Battery, the museum is situated in one of the bunkers. A small museum, the Musée Mémorial de la Bataille de l’Atlantique de Camaret tells the story of the Battle of the Atlantic, for which this part of France with its naval bases at Brest and Lorient played an important role. Photographs and maps track the losses at see of both civilian and military ships. The museum is a tribute to the many sailors who lost their lives at sea during WWII.

As a result of the arrival of a new German commando at Drancy in June 1943 and new deportation processes, Bobigny Station became a deportation station. Not only was the station more discreet (unlike Le Bourget, it was no longer being used by the public), it was also practical – long sidings made it easier to load wagons. From July 1943 to August 1944 about 22,500 people deported from France via Bobigny – Jews, political prisoners and homosexuals. Although services of remembrance first took place here in 1946, it is only since 2023 following a restoration of the memorial site, that regular visits have been possible.

A former brick factory turned internment camp, it is the only large internment and deportation camp in France that is still intact and open to the public. In just over three years 10,000 people from 38 countries were detailed here. From 1939 to 1940 the camp was used to detain Germans and Austrians who had fled Nazism to the south of France. Following the fall of France, from July 1940 the camp was used to house ‘undesirables’. In August and September of 1942 over 2,000 Jewish men, women and children were sent to Auschwitz via Drancy. In 2012 the historic site was opened to the public as a museum. A full tour of the museum takes about 2 hours 30 minutes.

In the town of Beaurains, on the edge of Arras, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has their principal workshop, from where British and Commonwealth cemeteries and memorials around the world are maintained. In the Visitor Centre, open to all, free of charge, a series of permanent exhibits explore every facet of the work of the CWGC, from finding bodies who fell during the two World Wars, to the caring for individual gravestones in cemeteries around the world. As well as the exhibits, windows on the workshops allow visitors to see craftspeople performing their work.

In the early 1930s the Cité de la Muette was hailed as the solution Paris’s housing problem. Innovative construction techniques were supposed to offer low-income families affordable but modern homes. When completed in 1937 the ‘garden city’ failed to impress, so the Ministry of War rented the apartment blocks for the Republican Guard. From July 1940 the Wehrmacht used the complex to house POWs before turning it into an internment camp for Jews, political prisoners, homosexual and other social deviants. From the summer of 1942, people were deported to the east, most for Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The Blockhaus d’Éperlecques was built by Nazi Germany between March 1943 and July 1944 intended to launch V-2 ballistic missiles from France to London. The bunker was built using prisoners of war and other forced labour. It was designed to launch 36 missiles per day. Aerial attacks from the Allies meant the construction was disrupted and it was never completed to be used for launching missiles. Éperlecques was captured from the Germans in September 1944, but it was not until much later was the true purpose of the bunker revealed. An interesting audio tour guides visitors on a present path through the facility.

Lorient was occupied by German forces in June 1940. Admiral Karl Dönitz was eager to have his submarines based in France, closer to the Atlantic than at their bases in Germany. By the summer U-Boats were stationed in Lorient. Construction on various parts of the based commenced immediately, and continued until the summer of 1943. Despite many bombing campaigns by the Allies, no U-Boat was damaged. The impregnable base was a final stronghold for the Germans, who only surrendered two days after the official end of the war, on 10 May 1945. Today it is possible to take guided tours of parts of the base.

With 21,245 German soldiers laid to rest at La Cambe, this is the largest German cemetery in Normandy. Initially, only those soldiers who died during the D-Day landings were interred here, only a few kilometres from Omaha Beach. Later, the remains of over 12,000 soldiers from some 1,400 makeshift graves scattered throughout Normandy were brought here.  The main feature is a burial tumulus, which contains the remains of 207 unknown and 89 known soldiers. There are no individual grave markers, only groups of crosses that bear no names. An exhibition in the Visitor Centre  tells the stories of the death and suffering of locals during the war.

Built by the Germans as the first base for launching V2 rockets into London, La Coupole is one of the most stirring WWII sites in Europe.  The site was never operational. The vast dome structure that concealed the launch preparation chamber is 77 metres in diameter and 5.5 metres thick. The underground bunker complex has hundreds of metres of tunnels, now used as display areas. The facility now houses a History and Remembrance Centre, a 3D Planetarium, and a Resource and Research Centre – open to all.

Located on a 60 m high cliff overlooking the English Channel, the battery designated Widerstandsnest 48 is the only one in Normandy to retain a number of its original guns. Part of the defensive Atlantic Wall, it shelled Allied forces as they were landing on Gold and Omaha Beaches on 6 June 1944. Shore bombardment by the Allied forces severely damaged the facility, and it was captured on 7 June. A signposted walking circuit, which takes about 30 minutes, includes all the surviving casemates and bunkers.

Inaugurated on 27 January 2005, the Shoah Memorial in Paris and the Holocaust Center was initiated in the 1940s when Jewish leaders recognised the need for an archive of persecution by Nazi occupiers. Besides the archive there is also a moving memorial to the missing 76,000 or so Jewish men, women and children deported from France between 1942 and 1944 but who never returned. The alley along the north side of the memorial is now named Allée des Justes (Alley of the Righteous). Bronze plaques on the wall list the names of over 3,300 people – the Wall of the Righteous; people who helped Jewish communities during the Occupation.

Behind Notre Dame Cathedral, at the very eastern tip of the Île de la Cité is the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation. Inaugurated by President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, this memorial pays tribute to 200,000 plus children, women and men who were Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, political opponents, and so deported from all over France to Nazi concentration camps between 1940 and 1944. A crypt contains the Tomb of the Unknown Deportee: an individual who died in the concentration camp of Neustadt. Each year on the last Sunday in April a memorial ceremony is held here to remember the Deportees from France.

On the banks of the Marne River in Champigny-sur-Marne is the Musée de la Résistance Nationale. Well over 2,000 objects, photographs and documents make up the largest collection of artefacts relating to the French Resistance and WWII. These items tell the story of the origins of the resistance movement, as well as the contribution its members played in the liberation and development of post-war France. A programme of temporary exhibitions complements the permanently exhibited story of the French Resistance. Although beyond Paris, the museum is easily accessible by public transport.

The musée de la Reddition is the site where on Monday 7 May 1945 at 02h41 the first instrument of Surrender was signed by the Germans. It was here, the Collège Moderne et Technique de Reims, that General Eisenhower had set up his headquarters. The map room where the signing took place has been transformed into a museum, and the rest of the building is still a school – Lycée polyvalent Franklin Roosevelt. Besides the map room, a short film sets out the events that lead to the signing in Reims. Also on display are a range of artefacts associated with Reims during WWII from occupation to liberation.

Himmler, as head of the SS, ordered the construction of the concentration camp near Natzweiler to exploit a vein of pink granite. The camp opened in May 1941, with the first internees forced to construct the infrastructure. Granite quarrying did not start until March 1942. By 1945, over 52,000 people from 30 countries passed through the camp, 17,000 of which died. Besides the camp and the quarrying, an experimental gas chamber was built. Today visitors can take a tour of the various features of the camp, as well as the exhibitions in the European Centre of Deported Resistance Members

Established on 8 June 1944, the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer is the first American cemetery on European soil in WWII. It covers an area of 172.5 acres, with the graves of 9389 soldiers.  The Walls of the Missing have a further 1557 names inscribed on them. Most of these men fell during the D-Day landings.  An onsite Visitor Centre has a series of exhibitions that include a mix of artefacts and text, photos and film to tell the personal stories of the the soldiers. Designed to enhance your experience of visiting the cemetery, interactive displays outline the significance and meaning of Operation Overlord.

Omaha Beach is the codename for an 8 km stretch of the Normandy coastline from west of Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes to east of Vierville-sur-Mer. Taking Omaha was the responsibility of United States Army during the D-Day landings. Taking the beach was necessary to link the British to the east at Gold Beach with the Americans landing to the west at Utah Beach. Today the beach is marked by remnants of German bunkers, the Normandy American Cemetery, museums and monuments honouring the soldiers’ immense sacrifice.

Oradour-sur-Glane is a small town in the centre of France where, on 10 June 1944, the Der Führer Regiment of the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division Das Reich unexpectedly entered what was then a village with little over 650 inhabitants, rounded up all who were present at the time, massacred them, looted the houses and shops and then set fire to the town before continuing on their way north to join other German troops defending their position in Normandy. Only one person survived the attack, 64 were killed. With minimal intervention, the village has been left as a memorial ever since.

Not far from the site of the famous bridge crossing of the Caen canal is a memorial museum, dedicated to telling the story of the capture of the bridge, and other events in the immediate aftermath of the capture. Numerous artefacts, photographs and archival film footage pay tribute to the 6th Airborne Division. The original bridge, subsequently named Pegasus Bridge, can be seem in the gardens, along with a Bailey bridge, several artillery cannons, and a life-size replica of the Airspeed Horsa glider.

The cairn of Petit Mont is thought to be one of the most significant chambered tombs in Brittany. Although this is for all intents and purposes a ‘Neolithic site’, from about 6,600 years ago, it is an excellent example of how monuments constructed in one period are re-used in subsequent periods. Artefacts recovered during excavations show that this site was also in use during the Bronze Age and the Gallo-Roman period. But the most obvious evidence of re-use is the typical German bunker built into the cairn in 1943.

The Point du Hoc is a promontory with a 35 m cliff overlooking the English Channel. This was the site of one of the most daring operations of the Allied landings on 6 June 1944. The promontory was a strategic post for the Germans, with a number of casemates and observation bunkers. Just after 7 am on 6 June rangers scaled the cliffs, they held the promontory until midday on 8 June when relief arrived from soldiers who landed at Omaha Beach. A film is shown in the Visitor Centre, while information panels outline the events of June 1944.

Opened in 1992, the Centre d’histoire de la résistance et de la déportation is a museum that chronicles the work of the French resistance and the deportation of Jews from France to the death camps in the east during the Second World War. The museum is housed in a former military health school. From the spring of 1943 the school was occupied by the German Gestapo. It was here that the notorious Gestapo chief for Lyon, Klaus Barbie, tortured members of the resistance. Including the first president of the National Council of the Resistance, Jean Moulin.