As a child during the Second World War, Alice Evleth read Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose, a fantasy account of the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940. Rereading the novella this summer, she had a sudden urge, a need even, to visit Dunkirk for the first time, though she’s lived in Paris for over 50 years. That visit in September resulted in her memoir vignette titled The Snow Goose Returns to Dunkirk, published in the Impressions section of France Revisited.

Alice’s vignette in turn inspired me to visit Dunkirk for the first time, though I’ve lived in Paris for over 35 years. My goal was above all pragmatic since I sought to complement The Snow Goose Returns to Dunkirk with practical information for those interested in visiting Dunkirk to learn more about the wartime evacuation on site. Anyway, I’m always up for an excursion of discovery—all the better when planned just several days in advance with an eye to the weather report: a mild, mostly sunny October weekday.

Americans don’t generally venture much north of the Paris region. Hauts-de-France (Upper France), the region that tends toward the Belgian border, is typically off radar unless one’s heading south by car from Belgium. British travelers naturally have more of a historical connection to Dunkirk and closer proximity. Dover is 50 miles away by sea, and there remains the national memory of the important and terrible events of the spring of 1940, when, as France was falling to Germany, 338,000 soldiers were successfully evacuated from Dunkirk Harbor and the nearby beaches. From May 26th to June 4th 1940, as the German jaw closed in, 198,000 British and 140,000 Allied soldiers, mostly French, were evacuated to England. They managed to escape on British cruisers and destroyers and other military craft for the most part as well as from hundreds of “little ships.” Some 12,000 soldiers died during the evacuation, including 5000 at sea.

Dunkirk (Dunkerque in French) is just 8 miles from the Belgium border. It’s a 30-35-minute train ride from Lille and less than an hour by car from Bruges (Belgium). It’s also easy enough to set out from Paris, as I did, 2-2½ hours by train.

The video below presents a summary of my day trip to Dunkirk. Leaving early from Paris and returning late, I had adequate time to see what I’d come to see, yet other approaches are certainly possible, and an overnight would loosen the timetable.

Three zones of highlights

If willing to walk four or five miles over the course of the day, Dunkirk can be considered walkable. Meanwhile, city buses are free and so can serve as hop-on-hop-off transportation along the way. It’s also possible to rent a bike for the day and include in plans a 30-minute ride along cycling paths to the Belgian border then back.

Generally speaking, there are three major zones to explore during a short visit.

1. The town center: Belfries, Saint Eloi Church and Jean Bart

About 85 percent of Dunkirk was destroyed during the war, yet several important historical remnants can still be seen. It’s a 15-minute walk from the train station to the 15th-century Saint Eloi Belfry that can be climbed for a panoramic view over this town of just over 80,000 inhabitants. That’s a good place to start since the Dunkirk Tourist Office is on the ground floor. Though an elevator leads partway up the 190-foot belfry, you have to earn the view by then ducking your head to take the 65 steep, narrow steps to the top for the panoramic view. The chimes still sound in the belfry, and some of the 50 bells that comprise the carillon can be seen as you climb.

The belfry was once attached to Church Saint Eloi, but a French invasion of this border territory in 1558 damaged the church. Rebuilt, but never completed according to its original plans, the late Gothic church is now separated by a street from the belfry.

In its choir, by the altar, lies the tomb of Jean Bart (1650-1702), the town’s favorite son and one of France’s most famous privateers thanks to his swashbuckling service to the kingdom during Louis XIV’s numerous mid-reign wars. Among other heroics that contributed to Bart’s renown were his actions in keeping 120 boatloads of food supplies imported from Norway from falling into the hands of the Dutch, France’s then-enemy, at a time when France was in danger of falling into famine. That a swashbuckler should eventually earn the honor of such a distinguished place of burial is a clear sign of his reputation. Bart’s tomb is often covered by a rug but his tombstone is visible to the left of the choir. A statue (1845) of Jean Bart by David d’Angers, a major sculptor of the era, stands on the large square nearby.

The statue’s left cheek bears the wound of wartime gunshot from 1945. The edge of the sword was dented by shrapnel in 1940. An outline of Bart’s exploits can be read here, in French.

Several blocks away, on the way to the Dunkirk 1940 Museum and the beach district Malo-les-Bains, Dunkirk City Hall also sports an impressive belfry, a common feature of city halls in northern France.

2. The Dunkirk 1940 – Operation Dynamo Museum

Open daily, the museum is a 20-minute walk, just under one mile, from the belfry. (Again, there are free buses throughout the town.)

During my short visit, Emmanuel Clermont, a guide with the tourist office, provided excellent guidance throughout the afternoon, as well as pleasing company. Arranging in advance at the tourist office for Emmanuel or another available guide for several hours or for the day would certainly allow for an edifying visit. With or without a guide, the informative and clearly presented now old-fashion Dunkirk 1940 Museum is the place to start learning on site about the town’s war history. It’s located within the curtain walls of a bastion dating from 1874 that served as headquarters for the defense of Dunkirk during the evacuation. The presentation begins with the 12-minute video that explains how Dunkirk came to be the evacuation point following the German blitzkrieg of the spring of 1940 and about Operation Dynamo, the wartime code for the evacuation itself. The museum then presents the timeline of the battle through models of the beaches and harbor, uniforms, weaponry and vehicles, and also tells of Dunkirk through the war.

3. Malo-les-Bains: La digue, historic villas and the beach

Beyond the old bastion and the harbor, the resort area of Malo-les-Bains, where soldiers were able to board the smaller craft during the evacuation, was distinct from Dunkirk until the two merged in 1970. It was and remains a well-known seaside destination for the inhabitants of Lille and the department of Nord (North) in which Dunkirk located.

A 10-minute walk from the museum, at the western end of Malo and the start of the digue, as the seaside embankment and promenade is called, there stands a block-like monument that pays tribute “to the glorious memory of the airmen, sailors and soldiers of the French and allied armies who gave their lives in the Battle of Dunkirk May June 1940.” Oddly to me, accustomed as I am to seeing bilingual war memorials in the Normandy Landing Zone, the wording on this monument is only in French, though there are British poppy wreaths attached to an anchor on the side. It appears that the British and the French see the evacuation of Dunkirk from different angles. Initially, Churchill ordered only the evacuation of British soldier before beginning the transportation of French as well, leading to German and Vichy French propaganda that the Britain had abandoned its allies. From the monument, it’s possible to walk out to the start of the pier from which so many soldier were evacuated. (I leave it to readers to delve deeper into the subject of Operation Dynamo on site or from home.)

The sea was relatively calm and the sky clear during much of the evacuation of the spring 1940, which contributed to its success. Similar conditions accompanied my October excursion. Be forewarned, however, that the coastline of northern France is known to have weather that can go through four seasons in a single day.

While a visit to Malo invariable involves a stroll along the digue, also have a meander a block or two inland to see some of the restored or copied early 20th-century villas. Malo’s wartime destruction at 65% means that it was slightly less damaged than Dunkirk and its harbor.

About three-quarters of a mile along the digue from the monument, you’ll come upon a cluster of local hotspots for coffee, a drink or a meal: Le Tchin-Tchin, Le Red Rock Café and Le Cactuscafé.

Beer is the alcoholic beverage of choice in Upper France thanks to its numerous breweries. (What few vineyards exist in the region, in its southernmost tip, nevertheless come with high pedigree as they lie within the champagne grape-growing area.) One of the breweries (brasseries) of Upper France with the best reputation is Brasseries du Pays Flamand in Blaringhem. Their Anosteké was named world’s best pale beer at the World Beer Awards in London in 2021. Their Bracine was named world’s best triple in 2023.

Having mentioned regional beer, I ought to mention a regional dish that can go with it: waterzooi, a creamy Flemish fish stew that’s served in Belgium and in this border region of France. It’s what I enjoyed for lunch, after a dozen escargot-style mussels. I ate not along the digue, but at the stew’s namesake restaurant Aux Wrterzooi, 82 quai des Hollandais, located between City Hall and the Dunkirk 1940 Museum.

Celebrations

During the chill of winter, Dunkirk keeps warm on weekends by organizing shoulder-to-shoulder festivities throughout the Carnival season, culminating in Mardi Gras week celebrations that include the annual herring throw (yes, herring is thrown down onto an impatient, costumed crowd from the balcony at City Hall) and weekend balls. See here for more details.

Each year, Dunkirk also commemorates the events of the 1940 evacuation, highlighted by more extensive commemorations every five years. In May 2025, Dunkirk will celebrate the 85th anniversary with a major gathering of the surviving (and much restored) little ships that took part in Operation Dynamo. One of those ships—not so little after all—is docked year-round in Dunkirk. It’s the Princess Elizabeth, a British paddle steamer that made four crossing to evacuate British and French soldier in 1940. Built in 1926 and named after the infant princess who would become queen, it is docked in the port area near the Mercure hotel (see below), a 10-minute walk from the train station. It’s now a restaurant, tea room and bar.

Three 4-star hotels in Dunkirk

The overnight visitor arriving by train might stay either by the station (e.g. at the Mercure) or in Malo (e.g. the Radisson Blue or the Merveilleux). If arriving by car, staying in Malo would be the more attractive choice, though there’s parking by the Mercure as well. Or perhaps you plan to bike through Dunkirk at the start or finish of the Vélo Martime cycling route that extends over 900 miles from the Belgian border to Roscoff, near the tip of Brittany. In that case, any of these hotels can provide bike parking.

Mercure Dunkerque Centre Gare, 81 rue Florence Arthaud. The Mercure (Accor) chain has an 89-room 4-star outlet, conveniently located for train travelers just 500 yards from the station and by the pleasure port. There are port views from some of its family and “premium” rooms, all of decent size. From here it’s a 10-minute walk to the belfry and surroundings at the center of town. Parking across the street. The above-mentioned Princess Elizabeth is close by.

Radisson Blu Grand Hotel & Spa, 4-8 rue Marcel Sailly. Like the Mercure but with more amenities, this is a well-situated recent 4-star hotel (2022) from a major chain. The majority of its 110 rooms are 23m2 (230 sq. ft.), meaning sufficiently large by French standards. Many have sea views (the image above and the one the top of this article were taken from the hotel) with balcony or terrace, including family rooms. The hotel is situated at the start of the western end of the beach of Malo, a 10-minute walk from the Dunkirk 1940 Museum. The hotel’s indoor swimming pool is free to guest 7-10am and 8-10pm, otherwise it’s part of the paid spa area. The hotel has some private parking spaces.

Le Merveilleux Malo, 77 Digue de Mer. About three-quarters of a mile further along the digue (the seaside promenade), this is a 20-room 4-star family-run hotel with cozy smaller rooms, sea views from the front, and seaside eating and drinking establishments right nearby. Some private parking spaces. The same family owns Aux Waterzooi, where I had lunch.

See the official site of the Dunkirk Tourist Office for further information about the town and its surroundings, including other sights and museums related to the area’s military and maritime histories.

© 2024, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Dunkirk 1940, Dunkirk Today: Advice for a Day Trip or an Overnight appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

My parents were both great readers. In the family room, my father had built wall-to-ceiling shelves that my parents then filled with books. These were mostly adult books, poetry for my mother, fiction for my father. As I grew up, I came to enjoy his favorite authors: Mark Twain, with “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn,” of course, but also the less well known “Life on the Mississippi,” “Innocents Abroad,” and “Puddn’head Wilson,” a detective story.

They passed their love of reading on to me. I had my own large Philippine mahogany bookcase in my bedroom. It held, among others, the Oz stories, but I was a purist. I had only the original ones, those written by L. Frank Baum himself. The Oz books written by a successor after he died were just not the same. I also had a large collection of fairy tale books, notably the “color” series by Andrew Lang.

My father, an engineer working for a large oil company, was often gone on business, especially during World War II, which America joined after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when I was six years old. My father did not fight in the war as a soldier. He was an engineer, and the military draft authorities considered him more important in that role. Still, Papa would be away for weeks at a time, in the Pacific Northwest and Canada where there were oil deposits. He would send me postcards, including a humorous one showing a giant mosquito carrying off a deer. They were fun, but it wasn’t the same as having him there, reading me grownup stories like “The Count of Monte Cristo” instead of just the Mother Westwind stories Mama read to me about animals named Jimmy Skunk, Jerry Muskrat and Joe Otter.

I was bored staying home with Mama alone while my father was away. Luckily, I was saved by the neighbors. My father was often transferred because of his work, so we rented a lot of the time rather than buy a home. In 1942, we moved to Hillsborough, California. The Hammonds, our landlords, lived next door. They were not demanding or oppressive, the way landlords are often portrayed. They were open and friendly. Mrs. Hammond was particularly kind to me. One day she gave me a great gift in the form of an invitation. “I know how much you love our old house,” she said to me. “Our doors are never locked, you can come in whenever you want.” This was an unusual invitation, but for me, Mrs. Hammond was an unusual person because so unlike Mama. Her dress style was a great contrast to Mama’s. Instead of straight skirts and crisply ironed white blouses topped by cardigan sweaters, Mrs. Hammond’s home attire was faded blue jeans. They were perfect for the gardening she loved. During the war the Hammonds had a vegetable garden, a “Victory Garden” as they were called, the idea being that by growing a part of our own food, we were helping the war effort. I followed their example, and was proud of the carrots, beets, peas and string beans that I eventually provided for our dinner table.

I took advantage of Mrs. Hammond’s offer to visit next door whenever I wanted and I’d wander around the house, a big Victorian that had been in the family for generations. I mostly stayed in the downstairs rooms, which had the most character, where I would soak up the atmosphere of warmth and kindness I felt there. Especially, I’d visit her daughters Kate and Jane. Kate was six months older than I, and Jane, six months younger. They were my best friends. We played together almost every day, always at their house. Sometimes we went up to the attic, which had a trunk full of old clothes we could dress up in.

The Hammonds had only one bookcase, kept in what they called “the music room” because there was an upright piano against one wall. There, I often joined Kate and Jane to practice our scales. Music lessons were a must for nice upper middle-class girls like the three of us, the piano being the most popular instrument.

One day, when it was not my turn on the piano, I drifted over to the bookshelf across the room and explored its small collection. There were mostly medical textbooks left over from Mrs. Hammond’s time as a nurse before her marriage. But I also discovered a slim volume called “The Snow Goose” by the American writer Paul Gallico. It is a tale deriving from a real event of the Second World War, prior to the entry of the United States. It recounts the desperate sea evacuation of mostly British along with French soldiers trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk in northern France in 1940, using many small non-military ships and craft along with British destroyers and other military vessels. In the story, a large Canada goose plays a role in the rescue. “If you saw the goose,” one of the story’s fictional survivors says, “you were eventually saved.”

I read “The Snow Goose” for the first time right there on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room. It is a beautiful story, about a hunchbacked painter, an orphan girl, and a Canada goose, but because the painter dies during the evacuation it is very sad. It made me weep. Kate and Jane, busy working on a duet at the piano, did not notice my tears.

I continued to find “The Snow Goose” compelling. Seated on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room, I read it over and over. I kept rereading it until my father was transferred to Texas in 1948 and we moved away, when I was 13. Before we moved, I thought, briefly, of stealing “The Snow Goose”, carrying it off with me, but I could not do such a thing to the Hammonds, who had been such good friends to me. I left it where it was.

Years passed before I saw another copy of “The Snow Goose.” I came across it in a used bookstore in Montreal, when my late husband Earl and I were on vacation in Canada. This lovely book would be all mine, forever. It is a nicer copy than the one the Hammonds had, a special edition with four full-page color illustrations: one of the orphan girl with the goose in her arms, two of geese flying over the old lighthouse where the painter lived, and one of the Snow Goose alone in flight.

In my home in Paris where I now live, I have a bookshelf holding books that have special meaning for me. Occasionally, I’ll pick one up just to hold it in my hands or to flip through its pages or to reread it. Recently, for no conscious reason, I found myself drawn to my old and beautiful copy of the “The Snow Goose.” I reread it that afternoon and I loved it just as much as ever. I felt a connection with my six-year-old self sitting on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room. Though I hadn’t picked it up in many years, I realized that the book had been a part of my life for more than 80 years. Yet in the decades that I’ve lived in Paris, I had never been to Dunkirk, even though it’s only about 180 miles northwest of the city. I felt a sudden desire—no, a need—to go there.

I made plans to go on my own for one week this past September. I took the train to Dunkirk, a 2½-hour ride from Paris’s Gare du Nord. My daughter had reserved for me a nice hotel near the beach in Malo-les-Bains, once a distinct seaside resort, now fully a part of Dunkirk. It was from Malo that much of the beach evacuation took place in 1940.

My first day there produced typical Northern France weather, a sky like homogenous gray soup threatening rain, and a brisk wind. Reluctantly, I postponed my plan to stroll by the beach. I settled for visiting the nearby Dunkirk War Museum, Musée Dunkerque 1940 – Opération Dynamo. Operation Dynamo was the codename for the wartime evacuation. Visiting the informative museum was well worth my time. While many of the displays and photos naturally tell about the war, the evacuation and its aftermath, I was intrigued by two photos of Dunkirk and Malo before the war, before they were pounded into rubble by German bombings. In the few hours I’d been in Dunkirk, I could already see that most of what now stands has been built since the war. Always a book lover, I bought two books, one in French, one in English, both titled “Operation Dynamo.”

The following day the weather began to clear. I went for a walk on the paved promenade, what the locals call la digue (the dike), that runs the full length of the beach. I could see far out across the water, beyond the low dunes with gray-green marsh grass growing in the sand. This was one of the sites of the evacuation. There was still wind, but not so strong, and it didn’t buffet the numerous small white sailboats I saw. In a trick of the mind, I imagined that they were part of the flotilla of small craft arriving to carry the stranded soldiers away to safety to the larger ships waiting farther out, to take them on to safety in England.

The next day, I returned to the path along the beach, now with “The Snow Goose” in my purse. It wasn’t the beautiful copy I had at home, but a pocket-size edition that a friend whom I had told about this touching story and about my plan to visit Dunkirk had kindly sent me from England. I found a wooden bench where, under blue skies with powder puff white clouds, I sat and began to read. From time to time, I looked along the beaches around me where the men had awaited rescue and out to the sea before me. I noticed how shallow the water was for a good distance out. For the first time, I truly understood the need for small boats to evacuate the soldiers. The larger boats that had tried to come in to pick up the stranded soldiers could not, because there was not enough depth. Thus hindered, they made easy targets for the German planes overhead, diving and strafing. Still, the little boats were not spared.

I reread the “The Snow Goose” entirely that afternoon, occasionally pausing to contemplate my surroundings. In my mind’s eye I could see those little boats trying to dart away from the diving planes. Some got through. Others did not. The little boat in “The Snow Goose” was one of the latter. For the lonely painter and the orphan girl who had come to love him, there was only loss. Although I usually prefer happy endings, such an ending would never have touched me the way this sad one has. I was moved in an unusual way, not to tears for a beautiful tale, but by the realization of how very close this evacuation, a “non-victory” as Churchill put it, came to becoming a resounding defeat. Yet in the final accounting, 340,000 British and French troops were successfully evacuated. They formed the nucleus of an army which would fight again, and, four years later, with Americans now on their side, return to the shores of France to eventually defeat Germany.

Though this was my first time in Dunkirk, being there was like visiting my own past. I thought of the kindness of the Hammonds and our peaceable lives in California. I thought about the effects of World War II on the American home front, with our sense of a just and necessary war, and the effort to engage ordinary civilians, women and even children like me, through Victory Gardens and War Bond drives, events that marked my childhood and have stayed with me as “The Snow Goose” has for over 80 years. As I sat there, watching families now walking peacefully in the sunshine along the beach and looking out to the calm waters and little sailboats sliding on the sea, I realized that I am now old enough to remember a time that fewer and fewer do. I realized this not with sadness or even nostalgia, but with a sense of privilege at having been a part of those heroic times.

© 2024, Alice Evleth

Read the accompanying article Dunkirk 1940, Dunkirk Today: Advice for a Day Trip or an Overnight by Gary Lee Kraut.

The post The Snow Goose Returns to Dunkirk appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

On the triple occasion of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, an exhibition of Ian Patrick’s portraits of Normandy veterans at the Army Museum at the Invalides in Paris, and the publication of the expanded second edition of D-Day Portraits: Héros Anonymes – Anonymous Heroes, his collection of portraits and first-hand accounts of veterans of the Invasion of Normandy who have returned over the years, I sat down with Ian to discuss his relationship with Normandy, with WWII veterans, and with the veteran who first awakened his interest in the “anonymous heroes” of the invasion that changed the course of the war: his father.

Ian Patrick is an American-born photographer, now a dual citizen, who moved to Paris in 1979 after launching a successful career as a portraitist in New York, where he photographed such well-known cultural figures of the time as Bob Marley and Andy Warhol, among others. It wasn’t until Ian was living in France that his father, William Patrick, when visiting, told him that he had taken part in the Invasion of Normandy 1944. Together, in 1980, they visited Utah Beach, where his father had landed six days after D-Day. Since then, Ian has returned frequently to the D-Day Landing Zone to photograph veterans of the Invasion of Normandy. With the disappearance of the generation that fought in the Second World War, his 44-year project of photographing veterans is coming to an end.

What do you remember of the first time you visited the D-Day Landing Zone?

It was 1979. I’d done a photography job in La Rochelle, and since my assistant and I weren’t in a rush to get the car back to Paris, we drove up the Atlantic coast and cut across to Normandy. I remember seeing the sign for Omaha Beach and driving down to the beach and saying, “Well, there’s nothing here!” We drove up and down the beach a couple times, unimpressed, and then went up to the cemetery where we got the jaw-drop view of the tombs and the channel beyond the cliff. But we didn’t spend much time in the area because we had to get back to Paris.

Then the next time you went back was with your father?

Yes. In 1980. My father flew over on a military plane, which he could do for free as a career military man. He flew from California to Dover, Delaware, from Dover to the Azores, from the Azores to Ramstein, Germany. Then he took the train to Paris, Gare de l’Est, and walked over to our apartment by the canal [Saint-Martin]. Sometimes he’d just show up, without letting us know he was coming. But this time we knew he was coming because he wanted to meet Véronique, my fiancée at the time, before we got married.

After a few days in Paris, he was bored and he said, “How about taking me up to Normandy?” And I said, “Sure, Dad, but if it’s Calvados [apple brandy] you want we can get it in Paris.” And he said, “Yeh, I’d like some Calvados, too, but I’d like to visit Normandy because I was there in the war.” I said, “You never told me about that.” He said, “Well, let’s go up there and I’ll tell you all about it.”

At the time I had a “Quatrelle,” one of those funky little Renault cars, that wasn’t exactly a bomb on the road. Dad didn’t want to go on the freeway but on the smaller national roads because he figured he’d recognize all kinds of stuff. As soon as we got into Normandy, which you do fairly quickly from Paris, he started noticing signs for Calvados and he asked me why were there so many of them. I told him that there are lots of farmers who make and sell Calvados. He said, “Let’s go get some.” We were still two hours from the beach. We went into one, where I introduced my father and told the farmer that he wanted to try some Calvados. The farmer said, “Here’s 7 years, 10 years, 15 years.” My father said, “Let’s start with the 10 years.” He tasted it and he said, “My god, this is so much better than the stuff we had during the war. Get three bottles of that.” I said, “Three bottles, Dad?” He said, “Yeh, one for you, one for me, and one for right now.”

So we started drinking it at 9 o’clock in the morning and by the time we got to Utah Beach, we were feeling “in our cups,” as they used to say, and he started talking to me about his time in the war. He landed at Utah Beach on June 12, so the beach had been won by then, of course, but there were still corpses around. My father had started off the war as a pilot but blew his eardrums out, so they put him on the ground, which he was really disappointed about. He was an armorer, making sure that guns were perfectly in alignment and worked and the bombs properly place, anything to do with ammunition. They had a special place on the airstrip where they could lift the tail up and fire at targets to make sure that the guns were aligned correctly. What’s incredible is that they actually had gun cameras on those machine guns and rockets so that same evening the films were developed and they would project them in the barn of the farm where they were staying and write down what needed to be done. And they saw the carnage they were creating for the Germans.

When he arrived on the 12th, the airstrip where he was assigned, which was just behind Sainte Mère Eglise, was still being finished by the Corps of Engineers. It was being made so that their P47s wouldn’t have to go back to England to refuel and rearm. He was there until the end of August, after the Germans had been hammered in the Falaise Gap. From there he went to Le Mans, then Nancy, then Saint Dizier, and also provided support for the Battle of Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge. They put special pouches under the wings to drop ammunition and supplies to the men who were stuck in the Hürtgen Forest. They then moved into Germany.

I knew practically nothing of this before going to Normandy with him. I knew that he was in the war but he never talked about it. He was a career army man but he never talked about the war. I lived on army bases as a kid and saw army stuff all the time. When you’re a little kid you play army but you don’t necessarily ask your father if he ever killed any Germans or stuff like that. It was with our trip to Normandy that he started talking about it.

Why do you think it took your father so long after the war to come to Normandy given that returning there came to mean so much to him?

My parents came to Paris in 1950 on their honeymoon from Austria, where my father was stationed. My mother was already pregnant with me. I have photographs of him in his uniform at the Eiffel Tower—in those days you had to wear your uniform when you traveled. They also went to Nice. After I was born, we lived in Austria and later we lived in Germany. We’d go on vacation to the French Riviera or the Italian Riviera. They liked going to Vienna as well. But Dad never talked about the war. After we moved to the U.S., they loved coming back to Europe because they lived a long time here. But Normandy wouldn’t have been a place that he would think of going with my mother. So when he came to visit alone that time, it was an opportunity for him to go and for me to go with him. My mother had no interest in the war. But when she came with him later, she realized the effort and the massiveness of the invasion and… you can’t help, even if you’re opposed to the military and to war, you can’t help but take your hat off to those people who were a part of it and who lived through it. My parents returned may times, especially my father.

That trip with your father, to whom you dedicate “Anonymous Heroes,” your book of veterans’ portraits and their first-hand accounts, must have been the spark to your interest in photographing veterans.

Yes. We drove up and down the Utah Beach that first time. He showed me certain bunkers where he would tell me what kind of shell had hit it to make the hole or the mark on it, using all this military jargon. He was into ammunition because that was his job. Then he wanted to find the farm where the airstrip had been. Of course, the strip was no longer there, and there was no sign marking where it had been. Also, most farmers in the area didn’t want visitors. But we drove into one farm in my “Quatrelle,” where we met a lady named Alice. It was lunchtime, and she and the family came out with their napkins in their hands. “Oui, Monsieur?” she said to me. “Excusez-nous,” I said, “Mon papa est vétéran…” and right away she said to him, “Entrez, monsieur.” So we went in and they brought out two plates and we sat down to eat with them. My father was in tears, he couldn’t believe it. Their welcome was so sweet. At the end of the meal, the farmer went out to the barn, or wherever he went, and he comes back with a half-full dirty old bottle of dark alcohol, and written in chalk on the bottle was “1944.” He gave us each a little snort of it. It was absolutely delicious and my father started crying again. He said, “This isn’t the kind of stuff that we had in 1944. What we had was green rotgut, whatever we could find that the Germans left behind.” From there we went into Sainte Mère Eglise and we meet other people who then invited us in for coffee. My father couldn’t believe the welcome we were receiving. I took some pictures of him on the beach and in different places.

After that I decided to go up there every year on the sixth of June, and I would take pictures. Many times, there were no veterans at all. I would go each year, whether my father would come to France or not. Years later, I went to a fair in a hotel in Paris promoting Normandy for the upcoming 50th anniversary [1994]. By that time I’d already done a number of photographs. I met the secretary of the Comité du Débarquement [Landing Committee] and showed her some pictures. She said, “Oh c’est bien!” Then she explained that not only was she a part of the Landing Committee but she was also the director of the Musée de la Tapisserie in Bayeux, and she invited me to show my work in the Salle du Chevalier, which is the vaulted hall that later became the giftshop of the museum. So that was the first exhibition of my Normandy work, which I’d been taking just out of my own interest until then. From then on, she would send me an official invitation to the June 6th ceremonies every year so that I had actual credentials to go wherever I wanted to photograph veterans.

I also then started to interview the veterans, usually calling them on the phone after meeting them since there was no time to interview them during the ceremonies. On the phone, they would speak differently, more freely, as though to themselves, since they were alone and weren’t perturbed by my presence. Sometimes they’d go off track and I’d bring them back with another question. I asked them to tell me about their experience, whatever was bizarre or sad or happy that they wanted to recall. Most of them didn’t talk about terrible stuff. Some of the ones who landed on Omaha Beach did, in a very cold manner. A lot of them didn’t want to talk at all. I just tried to let them tell me what they wanted to tell me.

I wasn’t necessarily meeting them at the ceremonies. I would attend the big ceremonies, and I might come upon a smaller one here and there that I only learned about when I got there. Nine times out of ten it was just serendipity that brought me in contact with a veteran. I have photographed veterans I happened to come upon in the cemeteries while they’re paying homage to a particular person. I got the shot of Major Howard at Pegasus Bridge because the owner of the B&B where we were staying during the anniversary that year [1993] told us about an event that was taking place there on June 5th. So we immediately went there, and there they were, Major Howard and a few men popping Champagne. There weren’t that many people. There were no guys dressed up as paratroopers as you’d see more recently. There was just Madame Gondrée at the café by the bridge when I was in there talking with Bill Millin. Some years when there were few veterans, I would do landscapes, which is why there are some landscapes in the show and in the book, photographs of ceremonies and of places that reek with history.

In my first show for the 50th anniversary there was very little text next to the portraits. Just who they are, were they are, basic facts. Then little by little, as I took more portraits and gathered more stories, I realized that I had material for a book, which I put together with the backing of the Military Museum at the Invalides [in Paris] for the 65th anniversary in 2009. That year I also had exhibitions of my work at the Invalides and at the Museum of the Battle of Normandy in Bayeux, near the British Cemetery. That’s the first time that I put together the photos with the text [first-hand accounts] at an exhibition as well as putting them in the book.

After that first edition I continued to meet veterans, and even since completing the new edition last year I’ve met others. For example, I recently met some Belgian soldiers who managed to get to England during the war and joined up with a brigade that took part in the Invasion of Normandy under British command.

How often did your father return after that first visit?

He would come every two or every five years. He would come for the big ceremonies and some little ones as well. Even if it wasn’t the sixth of June, whenever my parents would come to France they would usually drive to Normandy, even without me.

In the early years of his visits, my father and I would be at Sainte Mère Eglise and school children would come up to him and ask him for his autograph. My father said, “Why do they want an autograph from me? I’m just an old veteran.” I had to bug him to put on his medals. He didn’t want to wear them, it embarrassed him because he thought it would be showing off. He didn’t even bring them for the 65th [2009] though I thought he might. I hadn’t told him in advance, but he was going to get the Legion of Honor at the Invalides that year along with 50 other veterans. I didn’t want to tell him before he got to France because I knew that he would be angry about getting a medal now. Finally, I told him about it when he got to France. He was kind of embarrassed. He hadn’t brought his medals, so I called my sister and asked her to dig through the drawers in his bedroom to find them and to send them asap. She did, and the day of the ceremony I pinned them on him. He complained, “Where the hell did you get those?” But he was enthralled by the whole thing, a big ceremony—he thought it was incredible. Then we all went to Normandy for the 65th anniversary commemorations. They reserved a train for the veterans, red carpet at the station, the band of the Garde Républicaine playing Glen Miller, wine and foie gras on the train. Then a bus took us from Caen to the American Cemetery. My father sat with all of the veterans on the podium, where they all shook Obama’s hand and Sarkozy’s hand. Then we all went back to Paris, exhausted.

He and my mother both passed away a year later, in 2010. They wanted their ashes spread together at Utah Beach, which we did.

Why did you want to put together a new edition of your book?

Because this could be the der des ders, the last flame. There are at least 25 additional veterans in this edition. I’ve met a lot more British and Americans but especially British through British families who live or have vacation homes in Normandy. I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in Normandy over the years. The British and the Dutch get together a lot, say for a drink on a Thursday or Friday evening, and a lot of them have fathers who were veterans. So I’d meet the fathers when they came over. Many of them have become part of the Deep Respect Association, with which I’m involved. [Editor’s note: Created in 2010, Deep Respect is a Normandy-based non-profit whose mission is to preserve and transmit the memory of veterans of the Second World War who contributed to the success of Operation Overload and to help veterans who participated in the Battle of Normandy visit the region.] We take around the veterans when they visit and it’s super interesting listening to them talk about their battles.

A series of your portraits and stories from the book are now on permanent display at the Overlord Museum Ohama Beach that’s located at the round-about where one turns to enter the Normandy American Cemetery. How did that come about?

The museum houses a tremendous collection of war materials—tanks, artillery, much more—started in the 1970s by Michel Leloup. He presented some of it in a museum in Falaise but as he grew the collection he began looking for more space and for a location with potential to draw a wider audience. He died before the project to move it to the site near the American Cemetery was completed. It was opened in 2013 by his son Nicolas.

For the 70th anniversary, in 2014, I had an exhibition at the round-about at Omaha Beach where the big monuments are located. Nicolas saw the exhibition and asked if he could buy some of the photos. I said, “Sure.” He bought about five. Since the veterans in the some of the photographs were at the event, we got pictures of them with the photographs, which they signed, which helped promote the museum. Over the next few years, the museum really took off, so Nicolas decided to expand the museum to show more of the collection, and in part of it he’s now consecrated one long corridor to presenting about 70 of my photographs—a lot of which he bought and some of which I donated—along with the text of the stories the veterans told me. My daughter Leah did the scenography and the soundtrack of 40s music and various sounds (waves, planes, bombs) for the exhibition.

You’ve now been photographing veterans for 44 years. With so few Normandy veterans still with us, and very few able or willing to travel, where does your project go from here?

I’ll still see some veterans this year and possibly next. But since I am basically a portraitist, there will soon no longer be men to photograph. That means that the project is now passing into the archival stage. It’s important to show them. I want to help maintain through the show at the Invalides, the permanent exhibition at the museum and the book the memory of those who are or will soon no longer be around to share their stories first-hand. The portraits are a way of people getting to know these veterans as they were as young men and as they were when I met them.

Where to see Ian Patrick’s photographic work

– His personal website Ian Patrick Photographer.
– Permanent exhibition at the Overlord Museum, near the entrance to the Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer.
– The book: Héros Anonymes – Anonymous Heroes: D-Day Portraits. The captions and first-hand accounts of veterans are in both English and French. The book is available at major museums in the Normandy Landing Zone—the Overlord Museum, the Airborne Museum in Sainte Mère Eglise, the Arromanches Museum, the Utah Beach Museum and the Pegasus Bridge Museum—as well as at the Army Museum at the Invalides in Paris. It can also be ordered directly from the author by contacting him at ianpatrickphoto@gmail.com.
– Temporary exhibition at the Army Museum at the Invalides, June 1 to August 26, 2024. The exhibition is presented under the arcades surrounding the main courtyard. Entrance is free as it isn’t necessary to purchase to museum ticket in order to enter the courtyard. 129 rue de Grenelle, Paris.

© 2024. Interview conducted by Gary Lee Kraut.
All photos © Ian Patrick.

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On our visit to Lyon, my husband and I stayed in the city center, Presqu’ile (the Peninsula), where we walked narrow, cobbled streets enjoying intriguing shops and wonderful restaurants. Crossing the Saône on a pedestrian bridge, we explored the remarkably preserved Roman ruins at Lugdunum, part of the UNESCO World Heritage site and wandered through Vieux-Lyon (Old Lyon). It is among the most beautifully preserved Renaissance districts in Europe thanks to the intervention in 1962 by Minister of Culture, André Malraux, who saved it from destruction and made it the first “secteur sauvegardé”—protected zone—in France.

Yet I was drawn to the CHRD, across the Rhône, because of my enduring desire to understand how ordinary citizens muster the will to resist, sacrifice and survive in the face of inhumane and repressive treatment. In visiting the CHRD, I hoped to gain insight into WW II beyond dates, battles, and distinguished names from history books.

By coincidence, we were in Lyon on Victory in Europe Day which commemorates the unconditional surrender of Germany to the Allies on the 8th of May 1945. President Emmanuel Macron was there to pay tribute to the Resistance and to the memory of Jean Moulin, but public transportation was disrupted and gatherings to the parade were discouraged, so we watched the ceremony on television. We were touched by its solemnity and by conversations we had with people during the day. Memories of war endure in the collective consciousness of France, and Lyon is a particular reminder of that period as it was both a center for Nazi forces and a stronghold of the French Resistance.

Jean Moulin, who unified disparate resistance fighters throughout France and served as the first President of the National Council of the Resistance until his torture and subsequent death in 1943, is revered throughout France. In 1964, during the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, he received France’s greatest posthumous honor when his remains were transferred to the Pantheon in Paris

The day after the May 8th commemoration of Victory in Europe, we walked from our hotel, near the bank of the Saône, toward the Rhône as we headed to the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation. Along the way, we encountered striking public monuments to suffering and sacrifice during World War II in France and to injustices to humanity in other parts of the world. After traversing Place Bellecour, kilometer 0 in Lyon and the third largest square in France, we came upon a solemn and stunning permanent exhibit memorializing the Armenian Massacre of 1915, considered the first genocide of the 20th century. Installed on Place Antonin Poncet, adjacent to Bellecour, it beckons passersby with a series of 36 white columns made from Armenian stone on which are inscribed poems by Armenian poet Kostan Zarian. The site is bordered by large, evocative photographs of people and sites associated with the massacre.

On the other side of Place Bellecour, in front of what was a café during the war, stands a looming statue called Veilleur de Pierre (Stone Watchman), erected where five resistance fighters were murdered by Nazis in July 1944. An inscription entreats, “Passant va dire au monde, qu’ils sont morts pour la liberté” (Passerby tell the world that they died for freedom). The passionate simplicity of that voice through time touched us deeply.

We crossed the Rhône on Pont de l’Université, itself a vestige of the war; as were 22 other bridges in Lyon, it was destroyed by the Germans on September 2, 1944 in order to slow the American advance as German forces fled north. The bridge reopened in 1947 with the original stone piers supporting the rebuilt arches that span the river.

Entering the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation, we were welcomed by attentive staffers who spoke little English but were helpful when we plunged ahead with our less than perfect French. The headsets with English audio that we were given worked intermittently, but during our visit we encountered empathetic visitors, who, upon hearing our English, offered translations without being asked. And the artifacts and photographs in the CHRD convey powerful commentary without requiring words.

We were encouraged to start our visit with a film about Klaus Barbie. Barbie, head of the Gestapo in Lyon, was known as the Butcher of Lyon because of his brutality toward prisoners, primarily Jews and members of the Resistance. In addition to ordering the torture and execution of thousands of prisoners, Barbie personally tortured those he interrogated in savage ways, often for days on end, using devices such as spiked balls and hot needles, along with causing near drowning and trauma to open wounds to maximize pain. After the war, Britain and later America recruited him to help with intelligence to infiltrate Communist cells. In 1950 the United States helped him assume a new identity and relocate to South America, where he remained as an agent of the Americans while maintaining his Nazi ideology. In 1983 the Bolivian government arrested and deported him to France. That same year, the United States officially apologized to France for helping Barbie escape justice for 33 years.

Barbie’s trial was held in Lyon between May and July 1987. The Barbie Trial, Justice for Memory and History, produced by legal journalist Paul Lefèvre, highlights witnesses who endured Barbie’s physical and psychological torture. The film has English subtitles, so we understood the compelling accounts of those who had been brutally interrogated by Barbie or had relatives tortured and killed by him. Included in the film is testimony by Sabine Zlatin, founder of a children’s home in Izieu, a small village in the hills outside of Lyon which for two years served as a refuge mostly for Jewish children. In April 1944, 44 children, all under the age of 14, and their caregivers were arrested and sent to their deaths at Auschwitz. In her emotional statement against Barbie, who had signed the order to seize the children, she addressed the court in a broken, emotional cry: “The children, 44 children. What were they supposed to be? Members of the Resistance? They were innocents.” We were riveted by the voices of witnesses and repulsed by the smiling, arrogant Barbie. The documentary lacks artifice; it is humanity in the raw. Following the film, the audience in the small theater exited in silence. (Barbie was sentenced to life in prison. He died of cancer in prison four years later, at the age of 77.)

The light of the museum lobby and the sound of voices breaking the silence brought relief from the weightiness of the film. We were instructed to go to the second floor to begin the self-guided tour which starts with the history of the building.

The main gallery is composed of a series of exhibits that provide information about the complex and dangerous workings of the Resistance as well as insight into daily life under the occupation. A visitor may choose to follow the order of the displays, which contain primary source material such as newspapers, identity cards, ration books, photographs and posters, as well as hardware used for communication and intelligence, thus building a chronological background of the period. Others may prefer to focus on exhibits that target personal interests, pausing to contemplate or make connections with other visual and written information.

On display are materials created by the Resistance as well as those used to propagandize against it. Posters and leaflets recruiting support for the Resistance are presented next to posters hailing the Vichy government and promoting the vilest of Nazi ideology. Communications equipment, clothing worn by its members, the parachute Jean Moulin used to reenter France after meeting with de Gaulle in London in 1942, and photographs from the period create not only vivid images of war but a history of individual and collective sacrifice. It is particularly touching to see handwritten diaries and letters belonging to members of the Resistance and citizens of Lyon.

Prominent among exhibits are newspapers, flyers, and other print material effectively used by the Resistance to inspire confidence in eventual victory, to convey important information about the effort to subvert occupation, and to disseminate information to Resistance members. Compared to today’s complex telecommunication systems that instantly provide information and propaganda, this use of printed language on paper may seem simplistic. Its effectiveness, however, is evidenced by the ability of the Resistance to transmit intelligence and perform acts of sabotage while maintaining a constant presence in the public mind. Likewise, the handguns and rifles on display seem so basic compared to modern lethal technology; they support the image of the intrepid Resistance fighter as a confident armed man with a cigarette in hand. The real men, women, and youths resisting occupation and conquest, however, lived dangerous clandestine lives among the populace and assumed many responsibilities. Some fed people, hid them, and transported weapons where needed; others planned and conducted subversive attacks on German interests or dispatched information. Since there were collaborators within the population, the Resistance relied on the integrity of individuals and on munitions obtained clandestinely.

The vital role of women, accounting for between 12 and 25 percent of Resistance members, was not fully recognized until decades after the war. Women did what was needed, including transporting arms, relaying information, and hiding Jewish children. In some cases, they also took part in acts of sabotage. Because women were not as readily suspect as men, they were effective in avoiding Nazi scrutiny. I was not surprised by the suppression of the contributions of woman, but, as always, when reading history that is revised to include truth as well as popular myth, I empathized with the invisibility of such sacrifice. It is suggested that the contribution of women to the Resistance influenced Charles de Gaulle’s government in exile to grant women the right to vote in 1944.

Photographs and audiovisual testimonies add human dimension to dates, statistics, and information. The dedication of men and women who risked everything to oppose tyranny is made palpable by valuable equipment like the “Minerve” printing press clandestinely operated in Nazi-occupied Lyon to produce communiques, coded messages, and information for the populace. Likewise, guns carried by members of the Resistance underscore their constant proximity to death. The lives of those who committed themselves to saving France and to the post-war future is both inspirational and challenging. I wondered if I could have measured up to their sense of duty and courage? If needed, could I stand up to dangers threatening the world today? I found myself reading names of those captured, tortured and in many instances killed and whispering them under my breath to honor them: “Marc Bloch, Marie Besson, Daniel Cordier, Pierre Poncet.”

The historical narrative moves from the Resistance into a space that focuses on the capture and deportation of Jews, immediately made real by the display of the authentic striped flannel suit of a deportee interned in a concentration camp. It was donated by Jacques Micolo who kept the clothing after his liberation from captivity. Further exploration discloses detail about the Jews of Lyon and the indignities suffered as they were identified, captured, and deported to camps. Quite poignant is a series of drawings of the Ravensbrück concentration camp by Nina Jirsikova who survived and was liberated in 1945. The images depict women enduring a claustrophobic and humiliating existence, overseen in some cases by the contemptuous scrutiny of their guards. Barefoot, often naked, the women initially appear devoid of expression, but a closer look reveals identity and individuality seeking survival amid extreme depravation.

Exhibited documents include forged identity papers, leaflets announcing the roundup of Jews, a yellow Star of David declaring “Juif” (Jewish), and photographs of children and adults sent to concentration camps. Particularly poignant are objects from Ravensbrück made by captives that testify to their will to survive and reflect aspects of life in civil society. Mittens, for instance, made from a camp blanket elicit a momentary smile because they appear so child-like. Documentation on the CHRD website states they were made by an inmate as a present. How generous of the resourceful tailor to create cheerful warmth for a friend amid shared deprivation and imprisonment. Also from Ravensbrück is a multicolored deck of playing cards made by Yvonne Rochette who survived captivity.

As in the section concerning the Resistance, there are audiovisual testimonies of Jews of Lyon who were targeted by Nazis. Time spent in this sad gallery infuses painful reality into what could tragically become just a chapter in history were it not for artifacts collected and people remembered.

This section of the museum does not lend itself to random wanderings; the exhibit about the Jews of Lyon leads to a beautifully detailed dining room from Lyon in the 1940s complete with period furniture, tableware, and a radio broadcasting events of the day. We felt as if we had gone back in time to a modest apartment belonging to a family wary of every announcement over the wire and every noise from the street. There is a certain warmth because it is so homelike—despite the portrait of WWI hero then collaborator Maréchal Pétain—but it is accompanied by feelings of dread culled from the collective experience of witnessing the horror of the Barbie trial, the urgency of the Resistance, and the road to death for Jews.

This feeling was heightened when we walked down a dimly lit industrial stairwell to an austere stone basement. The effect of introducing a visitor to the fear of those captured and descending in the dark to interrogation and torture is powerful. At the bottom of the stairs, we sat on bench seats, saw a short film about the Resistance, and learned how even as individuals and groups worked against Nazis and collaborators, the leadership was documenting and formally writing concrete goals and organizational structure for a post-war government. Members of the Resistance were among the factions that helped develop the constitution and government of the Fourth Republic, which governed France beginning in 1946.

Before we left the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation, we stopped to explore a special exhibit dedicated to Madeleine Riffaud who, when only 18 years old, joined the Resistance and functioned as a liaison between units of partisan fighters. Now 99, she is one of the last surviving members of the Resistance. She famously killed a German officer in broad daylight in Paris. Riffaud was captured and tortured but upon release rejoined the Resistance. After the war she was awarded the Croix de Guerre and later become a journalist who focused on human rights. She traveled widely, reported from Algeria, and lived with the North Vietnamese resistance for seven years. She is also an author, poet, and the subject as well as coauthor of two graphic novels that tell her story, “Madeleine Riffaud, Résistante.” The CHRD used the title of her book as the name for its exhibit. Although the exhibition closed in June 2023, all past exhibits, including this one, can be explored on the CHRD’s excellent website.

As my husband and I walked away from the CHRD in the late afternoon, we commented on the incisive and highly effective planning behind the exhibits. Informed by personal histories and primary source materials, we emerged with a picture of a dark and dangerous time in which individual citizens from every segment of society—shopkeepers, professionals, students—came together to be part of a local and national alliance to resist Nazi terror and help defeat it. Likewise, the horror confronting the Jews of Lyon was made real, as was their resolve to survive and maintain moral integrity.

I was drawn to 14 Avenue Berthelot because of its connection to the ascent of evil and to evil’s eventual defeat. Witnessing the Barbie trial in the place where he made decisions that destroyed so many lives reveals the long, traumatic arc of that rise and fall. Likewise, seeing the faces and names of people who recognized evil in their own time and in their own city speaks to the importance of the courageous choices they made to combat occupation and barbarism. It also reinforces the implied mission of the CHRD as stated on their website— “History, Essential to the Present.”

I am not certain that my experience enabled me to understand how people muster the courage to sacrifice and survive, but I do recognize the strength and integrity of the individual who decides that he or she can make a difference. I believe the curators of the CHRD want visitors to appreciate how defying tyranny at the grassroots level impacted the events of the war and how it led to freedom in France and the Western world. The courage and sacrifice of men and women in combatting barbarism remains with me in the faces and names I encountered in the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation.

© 2024, Elizabeth Esris. Cover image by Michael Esris.

Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation(CHRD), 14 avenue Berthelot, 7th arr. Lyon.

Jean Moulin, the Children of Izieu, French resistance fighters and many others were tortured or otherwise held prior to execution or deportation at the Prison of Montluc, about one mile from the CHRD. The site is now the Mémorial National de la prison de Montluc (National Memorial Prison of Monluc), which pays homage to resistant fighters, Jews and hostages who were victims of the Nazis and of France’s Vichy government, while also examining the politics of repression and persecution from 1940 to 1944. 4 rue Jeanne Hachette, 3rd arr. Lyon.

Lyon Tourist Office, Place Bellecour, Lyon.

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Relatively well known in France but little beyond its borders, the history of the home for Jewish child refugees that operated in the pre-Alpine village of Izieu from May 1943 to April 1944 provides a remarkable glimpse of migration, childhood and caregiving under perilous conditions. It’s a story—history—that can resonate well beyond France, beyond an interest in the period of the Second World War, and beyond one religious group. It is a story of humanity and inhumanity for the ages.

However worthwhile the trek, one would have to travel well off the beaten track to visit the memorial and museum that now occupies the former children’s home in Izieu, located in an isolated hillside village 45 miles east of Lyon off the route to Chambery. But now, and until July 23, 2023, an exceptional and unexpectedly uplifting exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Art and History (MahJ) allows Parisians and visitors to Paris to examine the children’s drawings and words—with a paper “filmstrip” as pièce des résistance—and to learn of the remarkable efforts of their caregivers to allow them to flourish under perilous circumstances.

The former children’s home is now officially called Maison d’Izieu, Memorial to Exterminated Jewish Children, a name that speaks of the horror that came to 44 of the children who lived there and their caretakers. Yet the title of the exhibition at the Mahj—“You Will Always Remember Me,” Words and Drawings of the Children if Izieu—speaks above all of the creativity, comradery and well-being of the children who lived there and of the devoted and caring staff that enabled it.

Though far removed from Frank family’s Secret Annex in Amsterdam, there is, says Dominique Vidaud, director of the Maison d’Izieu, a parallel to be seen between the children’s collective body of work and the Diary of Anne Frank. As with Anne Frank’s writings, the drawings, stories and letters of the children of Izieu, supplemented here by archival documents and photographs, provide an intimate and universally understandable vision of their creators in their time and place and hopes for the future.

This is not a singularly French history. In fact, what makes their story and the exhibition particularly notable is how the children of Izieu and their caregivers, as well as authorities and villagers who sought to help or harm them, reflect a much wider view of European history and of childhood and childcare itself.

The arc holding together the three rooms of the exhibition is the memory of the remarkable caregiver and caretaker Sabine Zlatin, a woman trained as an artist who devoted herself to ensuring, during wartime and under constant threat, a form of normalcy for child refugees by creating an environment worthy of a healthy, active, developmental, educational and imaginative childhood, a survivor who went on to testify to condemn one of the prime hands of their extermination, and who spearheaded the drive to preserve their memory.

The historical context

The first of the three rooms of the exhibition presents the historical context for the existence and demise of the children’s home in Izieu. A map occupying one wall (shown below) is especially informative for visitors who are unclear of the geography of Jewish pre-war migration and wartime displacements or of the administrative borders of France during the German occupation and the location of major internment camps and of Izieu itself.

Sabine and Miron Zlatin were part of a wave of thousands of eastern European Jews of the 1920s and 1930s. Born in Russia and having lived in Poland as a teenager, Miron Zlatin (1904-1944) emigrated to France in 1924. Sabine Chwatz (1907-1996) immigrated from Poland as a young woman and reached France in 1926. They met in Nancy, in eastern France, where she was studying art and literature and he agricultural science, and married in 1927. The couple bought a poultry farm, and a decade later Miron gained national recognition in the field. Thanks to that recognition, they were both able to obtain French citizenship in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the war. The couple had no children.

Emigrant Jews who had not obtained French nationality by the fall of 1940 or whose French nationality would be revoked were among the first in the German-occupied zone of northern France to be interned and later among the first to be deported. Yet the institution of anti-Jewish laws of 1940 and 1941 and the implementation by German occupiers and French officials of the Final Solution, the Nazi plan to eliminate Jews in territories they occupied, would eventually put Jews throughout the country in peril.

Sabine, by then naturalized French, trained and worked as a nurse with the Red Cross in the unoccupied, so-called “free” zone until hardening anti-Jewish laws caused her dismissal in February 1941. She then joined the Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), a welfare agency for Jewish children that was already active in France in the late 1930s, as a social aid to help families interned in camps in southern France and to help with the transfer of orphaned children and children otherwise separated from their family to group homes. The children in her care reflected the pan-European, as well as pan-Mediterranean, movement of Jews in the late 1930s and during the war. Most of them were born in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria of parents who had previously immigrated from eastern Europe, and there were some German-born and Algerian-born children as well.

The first convoys of Jews from France destined for the Nazi death camps left for Auschwitz-Birkenau in March 1942. By July, French authorities were actively delivering Jew to the Nazis for deportation, not only adults as Germany originally requested but children under 16 as well. Whereas Jews in the unoccupied zone, though subject to anti-Jewish laws, had been largely out of reach of Nazi occupying forces, French authorities launched round-ups in the south as well beginning in August 1942. And in November that year, after American and British forces landed in North Africa, German troops took control of the formerly unoccupied zone as well, making the situation for the Jewish refugees under the Zlatins’ care more perilous. No longer safe from possible internment or deportation, those operating homes for Jewish children needed to find more secure locations. The solution for the Zlatins and others was to move to safety in the departments in the furthest edges of southeastern France, which were occupied not by Germany but by Italy.

The home for child refugees in Izieu

In search of a safe environment for the children, the Zaltins obtained permission from supportive French authorities (yes, there were some) in the departments of Hérault (southwest France), where they’d been living, and in Ain (southeast), where they sought to move, to occupy a large house in Izieu, within the Italian-controlled zone. Though Mussolini’s Italy had numerous parallel aims with Hitler’s Germany as a founding fellow member of the Axis powers, the Italians had little interest in applying the Nazi policies of exterminating Jews.

In May 1943 the Zlatins and a group of children left Lodève, in Hérault, to settle in Izieu. Though located in an isolated village where it would not call attention to itself, the “Colony for child refugees from Hérault,” as it was called, was neither hidden nor clandestine in Izieu. Neighbors and local authorities were well aware that it housed Jewish children and was operated by Jewish caregivers and teachers. Some villagers openly provided material assistance, and their children later told of playing with the children from the home.

The home in Izieu provided refuge for 105 children for various lengths of time during its 11 months of activity. Despite the material hardships (limited ration cards, cold in winter, lack of running water other than from a fountain outside) and while faced with the children’s the psychological and emotional trauma of having their parents taken from them, the Zlatins and staff sought to create an environment that would be as wholesome, creative and normal as possible for the children ages 3 to 16. Days were organized around schooling, domestic chores, outings into the immediate natural surroundings, preparing and eating meals, arts, craft and theater, individual (rather than collective) bedtime stories, sleep.

Instead of showing misery, the drawings, writings and photos presented in the second room of the exhibition reveal children being children: playful, imaginative, creative, laughing, mocking, singing, with an endless appetite for paper for their projects. For the children of Izieu, anti-Semitism and the war itself seemed to be kept at bay. Their drawings give no hint of current world events and lurking danger. Instead, we see colorful drawing of Puss and Boots, of American cowboys and Indians, of boys playing games, of a safari, of pleasing landscapes, of medieval tales, of valiant Cossacks. We see a list of classroom assignments for children aged 6 to 12. We see photographs that reveal outings as nature-filled as at any children’s camp, always with an air of solidarity. One senses a secular, French pedagogy.

The Gestapo raid

Yet Sabine Zlatin was aware that the situation was becoming increasingly perilous. Following the Italian surrender to the Allies in September 1943, Germans forces entered the former Italian-occupied zone of southeast France. Word came of Jews being arrested in the region. Faced with impending danger, she left for Montpellier on April 3, 1944 in search of a more secure location for the children. On April 6, the Gestapo raided the home and arrested nearly all those present: 44 children and seven adults, including Miron Zlatin. One child escaped through a window to safe hiding with a neighbor as the raid got underway. The deportation process—first to Drancy, the transit hub north of Paris, then to Auschwitz—then began under orders of Klaus Barbie, the infamous “Butcher of Lyon.” Miron Zlatin and two of the older children were killed by firing squad in Estonia. The others were gassed in Auschwitz, except for one adult who managed to escape.

Of the 60 other children who had passed though the home at various times in the 11 months prior to the raid, all but one appears to have survived the Holocaust, a testimony to the relative success of networks and of individuals protecting them and perhaps to their own fortitude. About 77,000 Jews from France perished in the Holocaust while approximately 75% of the overall Jewish population of France at the start of the war survived. More specifically 88% of French Jews, 58% of non-French Jewish and 85% of Jewish children survived. Among the survivors who had spent time at Izieu was Paul Niedermann, subject of this 2014 interview by Janet Hulstrand for France Revisited. In 1987, Klaus Barbie was sentence to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity. Sabine Zlatin testified at the trial, as did Paul Niedermann.

You will always remember me

I provide this outline of history as background for those who might not be aware of it. However, the focus of the exhibition at the MahJ is not actually on that full sweep of events. While our awareness of the arrestation and murder of the children or staff might darkly cloud our examination of the drawings and photographs, our view of them begins to be cleared by the exhibition’s emphasis on the efforts of the Zlatins and their staff to create an environment where the children under their care could develop under the best conditions possible: nutritionally, educationally, psychologically, creatively and fraternally. And our view is further cleared by the exhibition’s placing front and center the joy seen in the children’s drawings and words. They then appear luminous.

Upon her return to the site of the crime three weeks later, Sabine Zlatin gathered for safekeeping the drawings, letters and notebooks that had been left behind in the silenced house. A first commemorative ceremony was held there on April 7, 1946.

The title of this exhibition comes from a phrase that appears twice in a little notebook (below) that she found in which children wrote to their friend Mina Aronawicz as they were leaving the home while Mina was staying, as one might sign a school yearbook. Born in Brussels in 1932 to Polished parents, Mina was one of the children arrested in the Gestapo raid and killed at Auschwitz. Several months earlier, her friends wrote in her notebook: Tu te souviendras de moi. You will always remember me.

The paper “filmstrips”

The exhibition’s third room presents the creative, collective pièce des résistance of the exhibition: three “filmstrips” made of sheets of paper glued together into long scrolls that bear crayon drawings and scenarios written by the children in 1943. The 2-3-yard scroll are fragments of paper “filmstrips” that were projected on a screen, as with a magic lantern, while the children provided the voices and sound effects to play out the scenarios they’d written.

The most complete of the three bands, Story of Ivan Tsarawitch, was recently made into an animated film. In 2021, the Maison d’Izieu asked Parmi les lucioles films, an animation studio based in Valence, south of Lyon, to work with students of the Emile Cohl Art School in Lyon to give movement to the crayon drawings. Students at the Aimé Césaire Middle School in suburb a Lyon provided the voices and sound effects for the film. Like the children of Izieu, the middle-school students were born to non-French parents and recently arrived in France. A documentary of the making of animated film can be viewed in that third room.

The film is a notable accomplishment in its own right. It also serves as a contemporary echo of the ideas, drawings and voices of the children of Izieu. The project, says Dominique Vidaud, director of the Maison d’Izieu, represents a prolongation of the work of the scroll’s original creators.

Of the other two bands, one lacks some text and the other lacks some drawings. Nevertheless, he says that with proper funding he who would like see them turned into animated films as well.

Sabine Zlatin eventually donated the saved material and other personal documents to the Bibliothèque National de France (BnF), the French National Library. “For the most part,” she said, “[these drawings] remained nearly forty-five years in my home. Carefully guarded, never looked at because too painful a memory.”

In 1988, she spearheaded the creation of the Museum-Memorial of the Children of Izieu, to which she donated other material. In 1994, President François Mitterrand inaugurated the museum-memorial at the former home in Izieu as a national remembrance site. Sabine Zlatin died in 1996. In 2000 the name was changed to Maison d’Izieu, Memorial to Exterminated Jewish Children.

Tu te souviendras de moi / You will always remember me, at the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme (MahJ), 71 rue du Temple in the Marais district of Paris, 3rd arrondissement, until July 23, 2023. Descriptive panels at the entrance to each of the rooms are in English as well as French. Otherwise, exhibition notices are in French only but the displays themselves (drawings, photographs, documents) and their dates often speak for themselves. The exhibition is organized with the assistance of the BnF and the Maison d’Izieu, with support from the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah and the Fondation Rothschild. See here for opening times.

Maison d’Izieu, Mémorial des enfants juifs exterminés, 70 route de Lambraz, Izieu. See here for opening times. In 2023 and 2024, the Maison d’Izieu commemorates the 80th anniversary of the children’s home.

© 2023, Gary Lee Kraut

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Admittedly, war touring isn’t for everyone. After all, that’s far from the Eiffel Tower, isn’t it? (Well, no, you can actually see the Eiffel Tower from an American war cemetery.) And you’d rather be drinking Champagne, right? (Well, the largest U.S. WWI monument in France actually overlooks Champagne vineyards at Château-Thierry.) And you’d rather visit the Gothic cathedrals of France than the war shines of Americans. (You mean like those that you’ll pass along the way?)

OK, I won’t try to convince you. But if you’ll give a look and listen to the presentation below, you’ll see and learn why someone—maybe not you, but you’ve got curious friends and relatives, right?—might want to visit these sights.

Don’t just take my word for it.

Earlier this year I met with John Wessels, Chief Operating Officer of the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), to ask if the ABMC would be willing to participate in a Zoom talk with me to explain to readers of France Revisited the interest of knowing about and one day visiting the American WWI sights of France. He readily agreed. There was then a question of finding the right person to co-present with me.

I’ve written many articles about touring American war sights in France relative to both the WWI and WWII, I’ve have given lectures in the United States on the subject, and I’ve personally taken numerous travelers to visit these sights. But I’m a generalist regarding travel and touring in France. So I needed a true specialist to join me for the presentation, preferably a military historian who’s visited the sights to be discussed who could speak authoritatively about both major events of the First World War and the creation and evolution of memorials, monuments and cemeteries. Thanks to John Wessels and to the ABMC’s media and communications duo of Hélène Chauvin in Paris and Ashley Byrnes in Arlington, we found the perfect specialist for the program: Ben Brands, the ABMC’s historian and a war veteran himself (Afghanistan).

I now invite you to watch the France Revisited “Conversation with an Expert” below in which Ben Brands and I speak about the American WWI memorials, monuments and cemeteries of France. This presentation—illustrated with numerous maps and photos—was conducted and recorded via Zoom on November 10, 2022, with a live audience of readers of France Revisited. Several segments were rerecorded shortly thereafter so as to resolve technical problems and for coherence.

The timeline below the video indicates the list of topics, events and sights along with the speaker, whether Ben Brands (BB) or myself (GLK). The full presentation lasts 1½ hours. If you wish to watch only portions of the presentation, I recommend that you watch it directly on Youtube and on full screen so that you can click or tap directly on the timeline in the Youtube description section in order to arrive at segments of particular interest to you and better view details of the images. Be sure to watch my introduction and Ben Brand’s conclusion to understand the underlying reasons for organizing this presentation.

Video timeline

0:00:00 Introduction by Gary Lee Kraut
0:05:40 Ben Brands presents the work of the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC)
0:07:12 Who is Ben Brands? What is his role as historian at the ABMC? His tour of duty as a company commander in Afghanistan.
0:12:22 A comparison between a WWII map of the Invasion of Normandy 1944 and WWI maps of northern and northeastern France and Belgium. (GLK)
0:15:24 American entrance into war. Pershing visits Lafayette’s tomb in the Picpus Cemetery in Paris. (BB)
0:18:39 The annual changing of the American flag over Lafayette’s tomb in Paris. (GLK)
0:19:30 Origin and evolution of the ABMC. (BB)
0:23:35 The Lafayette Escadrille Memorial. (BB)
0:27:41 The Suresnes American Cemetery. (GLK, BB)
0:32:00 Mont Valérien, a major French WWII memorial, a 5-minute walk from the Suresnes American Cemetery. (GLK)
0:34:17 The American Naval Monument at Brest. (BB)
0:36:39 Why didn’t the Germans intentionally harm the Allies’ WWI sights during WWII? American involvement in the Somme. The Somme American Cemetery. (BB)
0:40:35 Cantigny. (BB, GLK)
0:42:09 Amiens and the American Red Cross huts at the former Cosserat Textile Factory. (GLK)
0:45:01 Art Deco design and architecture in Saint Quentin and Reims. (GLK)
0:46:33 The American Monument at Château-Thierry, Paul Cret, Belleau Wood, the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery. (BB)
0:57:52 The French-American House if Friendship in Château-Thierry. (GLK)
0:58:34 The Oise-Aisne American Cemetery. (BB)
1:01:04 Quentin Roosevelt, a president’s son killed in aerial combat. (BB)
1:05:08 Anne Morgan and the National Museum of French American Cooperation in the Château de Blérancourt. (GLK)
1:05:56 The Saint Mihiel American Cemetery and the Montsec American Monument. (BB)
1:09:20 Philanthopist Belle Skinner and the village of Hattonchâtel. (GLK)
1:10:18 Verdun and the Douaumont Ossuary. (GLK)
1:11:56 The Montfaucon American Monument. (BB)
1:14:18 African-American soldiers: segregation, heroes, awards and burials. Jewish grave markers. (BB)
1:20:52 The Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery. (BB)
1:23:09 The Romagne German Cemetery, Jean-Paul de Vries’ Romagne 14-18, Sergeant York. (GLK)
1:25:17 The French and American Tombs of the Unknown Soldier. (BB)
1:27:25 Conclusions by Gary and Ben.

Sights discussed in this presentation are located in the Paris region and the departments of Finistère (Brittany), Somme (Upper France), Aisne (Upper France) and Meuse (Eastern France).

Text © 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Where and Why to Visit the American WWI Sights of France appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Seventy-five years after the Liberation of France, a visit to the D-Day Landing Beaches and the WWII memorials, museums and cemeteries of Normandy remains high on the wish-list of Americans and other international travelers to France. Yet few are aware of the French role in the Liberation of Paris.

A new, free, highly informative museum, partially located in an air raid shelter used by the Resistance during the liberation of the capital, provides insights into the history of Paris and Parisians during the Second World War.

The Liberation of Paris

By mid-August 1944, as the Allies were breaking out from Normandy and simultaneously gaining a foothold in the south of France, General Charles de Gaulle, who had led the Free French in exile, disagreed with the Allies as to the urgency of liberating Paris. For the Americans and allies, Berlin was the prime objective in the effort to defeat Nazi Germany. Paris, of little strategic value, could be bypassed on route to the German capital. But for de Gaulle, liberating Paris was essential to the country’s future unification and independence, and that required securing military and political French control of the capital sooner rather than later.

The issue was soon forced. Strikes had formed on August 10, growing to a general strike on August 18, and the insurrection began the following day. Skirmishes broke out and barricades were set up as a scrappy, lightly-armed Resistance fighters, policemen and civilians emerged from the shadows in an attempt to take on some 20,000 German soldiers and 50 tanks. On August 22 General Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, gave permission to the French 2nd Armored Division, commanded by Free French General Leclerc, supported by the American 4th Infantry Division, to enter the city.

On the evening of August 24, Leclerc’s men entered Paris from the south and southwest, including along the road that would later be renamed Avenue du Général Leclerc. In the afternoon of August 25, German military governor General Dietrich von Choltitz, aware of the futility of fighting for control of the city in the face of advancing armies and unwilling to follow Hitler’s orders to leave the city in ruin, surrendered German forces in the Paris region. After four years of German occupation, the capital was free again.

De Gaulle entered Paris that afternoon. He proclaimed at City Hall the continuity of the French Republic and the restoration of Paris’s lost nobility with a phrase famous in the capital to this day: “Paris! Paris outragé! Paris brisé! Paris martyrisé! Mais Paris libéré!” (Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated!) He went on to say that Paris was “liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies, with the support and the assistance of all of France…” with little mention of Allied efforts other than to acknowledge “the help of our dear and admirable allies.”

Had Paris been strategically important to the Allies and the Germans, there would have been far greater material damage to the city in an effort to dislodge the occupying forces, so, thankfully, little direct help was necessary from those “dear and admirable allies.” The museum gives them more due, yet this is appropriately and above all a French affair, and as such it offers foreign visitors insights into the German occupation, the French Resistance (and collaboration), the liberation of the capital and several of the homegrown heroes of the war.

General Leclerc and Jean Moulin

Located in the 14th arrondissement, across the street from the entrance to the Catacombs at Place Denfert-Rochereau, the museum partially occupies an underground air raid shelter that was used by Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy in August 1944 as a command post to direct the Paris Resistance during its uprising. (The segment of avenue in front of the museum bears his name.) The command post presents period newsreels along with displays about its functioning during the uprising, including the critical role played by Rol-Tanguy’s wife Cécile.

The museum, actually three related museums in one—it’s full name is the Museum of the Liberation of Paris/ General Leclerc Museum / Jean Moulin Museum—highlights the roles of General Leclerc and resistance organizer Jean Moulin, two French heroes from very different backgrounds who helped liberate France from within and without.

When France fell to the Germans in June 1940, General Leclerc, a military officer from a Catholic aristocratic background, escaped the country and over the next three years helped assemble and lead Free French forces in Africa, North Africa and Europe. Born Philippe de Hauteclocque, he changed his name to Leclerc to protect his family in France from reprisals. He eventually assumed command of the 2nd Armored Division, integrated into Patton’s Third Army.

Jean Moulin, meanwhile, was a Socialist and a rising prewar civil servant, the youngest prefect in France at the time of his nomination. After the fall of France, Moulin refused to become a pawn for the German occupation and focused on coordinating General de Gaulle’s activities and those of various Resistance groups within France. His work required clandestine travel (including a hazardous nighttime parachute jump) during trips back from London to meet with de Gaulle. Under constant threat of detection by the Germans, he negotiated with and unified most groups of the French Resistance in a single structure, becoming the first president of the National Council of Resistance in the spring of 1943. In June, several weeks after the council’s first official meeting, Moulin was arrested. He was tortured by the Germans—notably by Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon”—and died of his wounds on July 8.

Visiting the museum

While the museum exhibits are heavy on archival material (letters, government decrees, posters, etc.), there are poignant historical objects, such as Moulin’s matchbox for concealing microfilm, Leclerc’s desert uniforms and a graffiti fragment from a Jewish family deported from Paris’s Drancy transit camp.

The museum also offers a variety of multimedia exhibits and interactive maps which show the location of key buildings requisitioned by Germans during the Occupation, Resistance strongholds and sites of fighting during the Liberation. At Barbès metro station, for example, a Resistance commando team, led by Colonel Fabien (after whom another metro station on line 2 is named) assassinated a German soldier in the summer 1941. The Hotel Lutetia housed the Abwehr, the German counterintelligence service, during the Occupation and then at war’s end was a processing site for the few returning French who survived German concentration camps.

Sections of the museum are punctuated by short films (all with English subtitles) presenting visions of life in Paris during the war, from pro-German propaganda newsreels condemning Allied bombing raids to instructions for women how to paint their legs in the absence of silk stockings. The final sections include extensive footage of outgunned Paris Resistance fighters battling the German Army and of de Gaulle’s famous Liberation speech (“Paris outraged!…”).

Spartan grey walls and a realistic soundscape give the interior the sound and feel of a military bunker. The subterranean command post resounds with the clack of invisible typewriters, ringing telephones and the whine of an air raid siren. As the exhibits progress to the darkest period of the war for Paris, the visitor descends into the basement of the building, and later, after the Liberation story, one emerges into a sunlit atrium adorned with French flags and offering views of the neighborhood where Leclerc’s American M4 Sherman tanks rolled to the center.

Other wartime memories in Paris

The Liberation Museum adds an important voice to the city’s extensive historical narrative of World War II. Elsewhere in Paris, memories of the Second World War can be viewed from other angles at the Army Museum at Les Invalides (sections devoted to de Gaulle, to WWII, and to the Order of the Liberation); at the Shoah Memorial in the Marais; at the Deportation Memorial behind Notre-Dame; on plaques commemorating Resistance fighters and deported Jewish school children, and in the form of pockmarks from fighting during the Liberation of Paris.

Evidence of damage can be seen on the southeastern corner of Luxembourg Palace (the Senate building), on the southeastern corner of the Palais de Justice (the central courthouse on Ile de la Cité) and on the wall of the Tuileries next to the Place de la Concorde, as well as elsewhere.

The material damage in Paris was limited during the war, but the city’s liberation brought about the death of 1000 resistance fighters, 156 soldiers of the 2nd Armored Division, 588 civilians and 3200 Germans, along with thousands of wounded.

Since 1945 the Cross of the Liberation, an order created by General de Gaulle, has been a part of the arms of the City of Paris.

Post-museum R&R

The museum draws visitors into its subjects so well that the curious traveler could end up spending over an hour and a half here (while the rest of the family visits the Catacombs?) before emerging to contemporary café life in liberated Paris. Numerous cafés are right nearby, but consider heading away from the bustle to a stroll and a sit one block away on Rue Daguerre, the neighborhood’s wonderful pedestrian food market street.

Practical information

Museum of the Liberation of Paris/ General Leclerc Museum/ Jean Moulin Museum
Place Denfert-Rochereau, 75014 Paris. Metro Denfert-Rochereau.
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10AM to 6PM. No entrance possible after 5:15PM.

Tickets are free for the permanent exhibition, where displays present texts in English as well as French. The free ticket gains entrance to the command post in the air raid shelter, however only a limited number of people are allowed into the post at any one time, so visitors should request a timed reservation (not available online) to visit it as soon as they enter the museum in the hopes that tickets remain for the following hour.

The 100 steps down to the command post are steep, so a visit to that part of the museum could be difficult for visitors with small children or limited mobility. For those unable to access the command post, a virtual tour can be viewed on tablets available at the reception desk.

© 2019, France Revisited

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I was pleased at their sight. Standing beneath my umbrella I counted eight, no, ten, no, twelve, or more rabbits scattered along the lawn and I felt contemplative as I watched them, though contemplative of what I cannot say. After a minute I heard voices behind me and looked back as two military officers walked by, and they looked at me, a man beneath an umbrella on the edge of the lawn as the museum was closing, and while one offered slightly more than a half-smile to say, “Yes, there are rabbits here,” the other offered slightly less than a half-smile to say, “Don’t you dare step onto that lawn.” I admit that I wanted to despite the little don’t-walk-on-the-grass sign at my foot, but not given to such transgression I stood there on the edge of the lawn, contemplating I don’t know what, as several rabbits looked over to me as though to say “Are you coming or not, because if you are we’re going to run away and if you aren’t we have to keep an eye on you, so make up your mind,” though my mind wasn’t indecisive at that moment, merely pleased, at peace, contemplative and somewhat lonesome for the touch of fur, unless that latter was my heart.

Yes, I did want to touch the rabbits, but I was nevertheless deeply satisfied just standing there, where I felt privy to a communion with nature in Paris on a grey, drizzly day, and perhaps it was that that I was contemplating on the edge of the rabbits’ lawn, that nature, that communion, that satisfaction, that peace, though contemplating may not be the right word for it since I felt, above all, a deep, still satisfaction. I was there, and so were the rabbits. And as though to compare my connection with the wild rabbits with my connection with the history of the military complex they inhabited, I went inside the courtyard of the Invalides, of the Army Museum, and took in the view of its vast orderly space, where Napoleon stood in the shadow on the balcony at the far end and where the gilt dome of Saint Louis beneath which he lay rose beyond, and while I still had in mind the lush green lawn and the hearty grey-brown rabbits, I also now had in mind the expansive and restrained emotion of the courtyard of the Invalides, its pride, its ambitions, its history and ceremonies (Dreyfus, Afghanistan, Saint Barbe), its grandeur.

Between the rabbits and the courtyard, I’d been in the Invalides complex for less than 10 minutes and might have gone home then but I first wanted to use its rest room since I will sometimes decide that I’m going home then not arrive for several hours, either because that’s the way I am or because that’s the way great cities are. There were rest rooms, I knew, near the gift shop, but the museum had closed and I wasn’t sure to get in, but when, after crossing the courtyard, I asked the guard by the entrance to that portion of the building if the rest rooms were still open, he said “Go ahead, downstairs” with a surprising lack of obstruction and I realized that he thought I was on the premises for an event rather than as a straggling museum-goer. Indeed, when I came up the stairs from the rest room the guard pointed to my right, so I followed the direction of his finger and came upon a small crowd of well-dressed men and women entering a hallway outside of which a sign indicated an exhibition entitled Eisenhower – de Gaulle Alliance and Friendship in War and Peace.

A woman with a guest list stood by a desk by the entrance and asked my name, which I gave, and as I did I noticed someone waving in my direction from a few yards down the hallway, and even though he wasn’t waving to me, I waved back, leading the woman to not look at the guest list but rather to say “Oh, OK, I see, welcome” to which I replied “Thanks,” and entered the hallway gathering. I now felt obliged to walk up to the fellow who waved. He was a slight man with kind droopy eyes wearing a uniform the color of wet sand whom I recognized as General Alexandre d’Andoque de Sériège, director of the Army Museum. I introduced myself while shaking his small, warm hand and he said “Thanks for coming.” “My pleasure,” I said, leaving him to greet the person he had actually waved to, and as I turned I nearly bumped into General Christian Baptiste, former director of the Army Museum, wearing plain clothes, nice plain clothes, a suit actually. “Good evening, my general,” I said, and we shook a firm shake.

I looked around at the gathering crowd then down at my blue polo shirt and black pants and brown pleather jacket, clothes I hadn’t given much thought to when leaving home to visit the rabbits, and realized that I was conspicuously the only person present without a uniform, a suit, a skirt or a dress, yet I’d just shaken hands with two generals I’d recognized, so perhaps I did belong. In any case I played it cool and scholarly and began to read the panels of the Eisenhower-de Gaulle exhibition in the long corridor leading to the Museum of the Order of the Liberation. Though I knew a few things about Dwight Eisenhower and Charles de Gaulle and about their relationship concerning plans for D-Day and the Battle of Normandy and the Liberation of Paris, I hadn’t previously thought much about the parallels in their lives: they were born six weeks apart to religious and patriotic families; both were frustrated by their distance from the front during the First World War; both wrote texts promoting the importance and development of tank divisions at a time when both chomped at the bit of their hierarchy; both became generals; each approached the other warily while developing mutual respect after their first encounter in Algiers when de Gaulle began to form the French Committee of National Liberation (Comité Français de Libération Nationale) and sought American recognition.

I read some of the panels in English and others in French, depending on whether I could stand unobstructed closer to the left or the right, and, while the texts appeared to be equal in content, when I read in English I saw de Gaulle as a pompous Frenchman trying to represent in exile a defeated nation and who wanted to be considered its savior whereas Eisenhower was clearly the man of the moment, whereas when I read in French I appreciated de Gaulle’s ambition, his desire to exert Free French control so as to quickly return France to the role of a nation among nations, making him, too, a man of the moment.

I stopped reading when General Alexandre d’Andoque de Sériège, as the museum’s director, walked up to the small podium set up toward the end of the hallway in front of the flags of France, Europe and the United States and began welcoming distinguished guests—a government official, French generals, American military attachés, foundation presidents—who in protocolar order went up to the podium to speak about French-American bonds, the Eisenhower-de Gaulle bond, D-Day and its 75th anniversary. When last the government official spoke she told of a man named Jacques Lewis, a military liaison who was the rare Frenchman to land on Utah Beach, and of his various deeds in favor of French-American military relations and the cause of victory. She said that he was now 100 years old and lived at the Invalides, and I realized that he was present though I couldn’t see him because I was five yards back and we were all standing while he must have been seated. A certificate given to him by the United States Army Europe was read in English and translated in French, and after the applause died down and General d’Andoque de Sériège invited the assembly to a reception, I made my way to the side of the podium until I stood before a handsome, well-dress, decorated man in a wheelchair, Jacques Lewis, who wore the Legion of Honor and other medals and had on his lap a large framed “certificate of appreciation.”

While Mr. Lewis looked to someone to his left I leaned forward to read to myself the certificate whose text I only half heard when it was twice read aloud about the United States Army Europe recognizing Major Jacques Lewis for his contributions on Utah Beach on 6 June 1945 as a liaison officer with the 2d Armored Division, at the start of a long march through France, and, surprised to read 1945 instead of 1944, I bent closer to be sure that I’d read it right, and when I looked up I again I was nose to nose with Mr. Lewis who offered a smile that said “I’m honored, moved, but overwhelmed, so many people fawning over me, I’m tired” and I replied with a smile that said “I came looking for rabbits and don’t really belong here be here but I’ve been to Utah Beach dozens of times and given dozens of lectures about touring Normandy and you’re 100 years old and landed on Utah Beach(even though your certificate mentions 1945) and are now a resident of the Invalides, meaning that you’re at once a living monument to Allied victory and heir to nearly 350 years of pensionnaires at the Invalides, so you represent the entire military history of a place that is now also home to wild rabbits, and since I know all this then I do belong here and would like to shake your hand,” and I did, a large, gentle, human hand that I then covered with my other hand as though to keep it warm.

When finally I let go and straightened up a woman reached her arm out to hand me her phone and asked if I’d take her picture with Mr. Lewis, and I saw from her gracious height and steady coif and the way in which she put her hand gently on the veteran’s shoulder and looked for him to look to her (or to me, the cameraman) that she must be somebody, and as I was backing up to take the picture she was briefly distracted by someone who called out “Mrs. Eisenhower, when you have a moment…” and she responded “Just a moment” and I realized that I was taking the picture of Ike’s granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, so after taking a few shots and after I handed back her phone and she said “Thank you” I asked if she would be kind enough to allow me to take her and Mr. Lewis with my own camera, and she obliged. “Thank you, Mrs. Eisenhower,” I said. “You must have had a busy week with all these ceremonies,” to which she responded, “Exhausting,” and we then talked briefly about the series of ceremonies and events (75th anniversary of D-Day, 50th anniversary of her grandfather’s death, etc.) that she’d been to and that I hadn’t, other than this, which anyway covered the essential. I seemed to remember reading someplace that she now lived in Europe and asked her as much, to which she replied “No, I live in Washington, D.C.,” to which I said, “I must be confusing you with someone else’s granddaughter,” and without skipping a beat she says, “Helen Patton,” to which I said, “Sorry about that,” and we both laughed as though it were an inside joke, though many people know that the two are as unalike as, well, Eisenhower and Patton. A woman then called out “Susan” and Mrs. Eisenhower said to me, “Excuse me” and I shook her hand, which was sincere and long and warm if not as fuzzy as a rabbit’s head.

As people walked away I finished reading the panels of the exhibition—Eisenhower and de Gaulle both became presidents; they had their differences but maintained mutual respect, they visited to each other; Mamie and Yvonne died one week apart; Charles and Ike died 18 months apart—then slowly followed this beau monde of generals and military attachés and foundation presidents and Mrs. Eisenhower into one of the Invalides’s refectory/reception rooms, where, after a glass of white wine and several canapés, I asked a woman with a star-spangled scarf who was momentarily standing alone if she could point out to me the president of The First Alliance Foundation, which was a partner in the exhibition and which I’d never heard of, and she could not only point out Carole Brookins, the foundation’s founder and chairman, but also Dorothea de la Houssaye, founder and director of The Normandy Institute, another recent organization, along with many of the French generals and American military attachés present, and when I told her that I was impressed that she knew everyone she said, “Don’t be, that’s what generals’ wives do in Washington.”

The French generals and American military attachés and foundation presidents were as numerous as rabbits on the lawn, yet more approachable I found as I shook their hands and talked their talk, and even if their palms weren’t fleecy they were genuinely warm and frank.

At the first hint of the gathering breaking up I took my jacket and umbrella from the rack and left.

The courtyard was quiet except for the sound of a gentle rain.

The lawns were empty, as the rabbits had gone into their burrows, yet I stopped there for a moment, beneath my umbrella, to silently thank them for my good fortune.

© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut

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The 75th anniversary of D-Day is the occasion to commemorate the lives and actions and deaths of those involved in “the greatest sea invasion of military history” as well as the opportunity to reflect on how the events of 1944 relate to us, individually and collectively, today. We would be remiss to do one without the other.

Through movies, documentaries, books, speeches, visits and the stories of veterans, we have many memories and visions of D-Day and the ensuing 10-week Battle of Normandy. And we are moved, in a generic sense, by the view of the imaculate lawns and orderly Crosses and occasional Star of David at the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach. But moved to do what, exactly? To take pictures? To shout “We’re number one”? To jump from a parachute? To open a B&B near the coast? To read deeper? To fight for world peace? To learn about the experiences of veterans of other foreign wars? To visit other war cemeteries? To wonder why we aren’t equally “moved” by the thought of soldiers who died in Vietnam or Iraq? To honor The Four Freedoms?

Each head of state who speaks at a major ceremony seeks to interpret D-Day and the events leading to it and flowing from it in such a way that it presents a lesson or thread that fits with his or her vision of the world today. Each of them attempts to articulate his or her nations ambitions relative to the past. Passing time and evolving circumstances require that, at the risk of losing the thread altogether or twisting it to tie up an otherwise unrelated vision.

Museums, memorials, exhibitions and events throughout the former battle zone of Normandy have also evolved over time as they, too, seek to present the connection between then and now. And each major commemorative year brings with it new ways of informing, guiding, entertaining and profiting from visitors drawn to the region’s war history. Those developments are telling in their own way.

Beyond the commemorative ceremonies that accompany the 75th anniversary of D-Day and of the liberation of Norman villages and towns that followed, here are five ways in which organizations and businesses are using, (re)interpreting or inspired by Normandy’s wartime memory in 2019.

1. Normandy’s International Forum for Peace

The Peacemakers: That’s the theme of Normandy’s second annual International Forum for Peace, held in Caen June 4 and 5, i.e. immediately prior to the 75th anniversary commemorations. The forum was created in the context of Normandy’s memory of war but is focused on dealing with present wars and future conflicts rather than on the past. This year’s discussions and debates will concern tensions in Cameroon, the impact of Brexit on Irish Peace Accords, the post-peace process in Colombia, Chinese diplomacy in the new world order, conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the civil war in Syria, among other conflicts. Forum participants will be invited to sign the Normandy Peace Manifesto to be presented by four Nobel Peace Prize recipients—Jody Williams (American; involved in the fight against anti-personnel mines), Mohamed El Baradei (Egyptian; former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency), Leymah Gbowee (Liberian; leader of the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace) and José Romos Horta (East Timorese; former president who worked for a peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timora)—and other recognized and would-be peacemakers. The prevailing view of participants, if not by leaders of the world’s most powerful militaries, will undoubtedly be that of multilateralism and the sense of an international community are the central tenets of making peace.

2. Rockwell, Roosevelt & The Four Freedoms at the Caen Memorial Museum

In January 1941, eleven months before the United States declared war on Japan then on Germany, Franklin Roosevelt articulated in his State of the Union speech the four fundamental freedoms that he said should be enjoyed by people everywhere: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. For its exhibition in this 75th anniversary year, the Caen Memorial Museum, in partnership with the Norman Rockwell Museum, is presenting an exhibition of Rockwell’s work with his iconic paintings of the Four Freedoms as its centerpiece. The Rockwell paintings were first published in The Saturday Evening post in early 1943, by which time the United States was well into its engagement in the war. Needless to say, such a speech would not be given today, and today the paintings themselves might be misinterpreted as honoring nostalgia rather than freedom. Other famous and lesser-known works by Rockwell and his contemporaries give necessary context to those freedoms and those paintings. The exhibition runs from June 10 to October 27, 2019. Here’s the trailer:

3. Great Women During the War at the Juno Beach Centre

Canada is not a bellicose nation, so it’s no surprise that the Juno Beach Centre, situated just off the beach where Canadian forces landed on June 6, 1944, is the least militaristic of the museums in the Landing Zone, not to mention the one with the friendliest staff. The Centre is at once a memorial, a museum and a cultural center dedicated not only to the Canadian role in the Second World War but to broader cultural issues, then and now. The current exhibition, running through December 2019, speaks of the contributions of women during the war. It examines their courage, anguish, fear and mourning as well as the ways in which they led the way to changes in society.

4. Dinner with veterans at La Chenevière

La Chenevière, a 5-star chateau-hotel with restaurant just inland from the port of Port-en-Bessin on the route to Bayeux, is collaborating with The Greatest Generation Foundation to host a series of 17 dinner events featuring the presence of American veterans who took part in the Battle of Normandy 1944. The evening begins with a brief lecture that is then followed by a gastronomic meal during which participants have the opportunity to converse with one of the veterans. These dinners, which began in April, take place every other Thursday until Nov. 28, 2019. 190€ per person, reservation required. It isn’t necessary to spend the night at the hotel to attend.

5. Expansion of the Overlord Museum at Colleville-sur-Mer

The Overlord Museum opened in 2014 in time for the 70th anniversary by the roundabout to the entrance to the American Cemetery. It’s a private museum created by Nicolas Leloup, the son of a collector of WWII military vehicles and other military artefacts. The staging of this large collection of war material follows a tendency on the part of certain museums, especially private museums, to dramatize displays in order to appeal to a public that might otherwise be bored or lost with a straightforward or explanatory presentation. The 75th anniversary year brings with it an extension to the museum that includes a scene about the Mortrain counterattack and a section dedicated to the role of the aviation. But the drama isn’t always staged. Sometimes it’s naturally present yet removed from war, as in the presentation of Ian Patrick’s photographs from his book Anonymous Heroes, showing veterans who returned to the Landing Beaches for D-Day commemorations 45 to 60 years later.

See Taps in the Normandy American Cemetery, A France Revisited Minute.

© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut

The post D-Day Turns 75: Five Threads Leading from the Beaches of Normandy appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

December 10, 2018
Dear Friends, Readers and Travelers,

I write this in the wake of two major events in Paris over the past month that occurred by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe:

1/ On Nov. 11, the gathering of leaders of the belligerent nations of the First World War to commemorate the centennial of the armistice.

2/ On Dec. 1, the vandalization of the arch by some affiliated with the Yellow Vest movement.
It’s no coincidence that both events took place at the same highly symbolic site since each of those involved individuals holding different visions of the future of national and international institutions.

Close-up images of burning cars may be impressive, but planning violence by setting out early in the day with bocce balls in your backpack rather than an AK-47 and 50 rounds nearly seems quaint from an American point of view. Anyway, those Yellow Vests who arrived in the capital intent on destruction can’t be considered as defining the entire movement. The many who say that it’s time to “take our country back” and end the current presidency because they say so are likely more representative, with many earnest earning- and tax-related gripes, complaints and frustrations in the mix.

Parisians want to feel safe, of course. And we do—safe, secure, well-fed. Visitors should too; they may just need to turn to guidance (e.g. the hotel receptionist) to know where not to venture on a demonstration day. Personally, I’m looking forward to a visitor-filled holiday season. As to travel through the rest of France, slow traffic on a partially blocked route is the main risk—and yet another good reason to take to country roads.

Still, between the centennial commemorations and the vandalization of the Arc de Triomphe, not to mention Yemen, Saudi assassination teams, global warming and whatever the Russians are now up to, I’ve decided to make this a 5-part newsletter on the theme of war.

France Revisited is not, however, a place for pessimism. Travel means learning and wars are historical events that we can learn from. Rest assured, this newsletter also speaks of champagne for the holidays, bratwurst for Batignolles and some exceptional French cuisine for your Paris restaurant list.

Here’s the newsletter war strategy.

Part 1. Over There: WWI Sights of the American Meuse-Argonne Offensive
Part 2. Belleau Wood, the War on History and Peaceful Champagne with Gary on Dec. 14
Part 3. Paris’s New WWI Memorial
Part 4. The War on Slavery: The Abolition Route in eastern France
Part 5. Hanukkah and the War of the Maccabees (an Excuse)

Part 1. Over There: WWI Sights of the American Meuse-Argonne Offensive

The First World War left its mark throughout the department of Meuse in northeast France, from Saint Mihiel to Verdun to the Argonne Forest. This article, including three videos, examines several sights relative to the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of the U.S. First Army in the fall of 1918: the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, Romagne 14-18, the Romagne German Cemetery and the Montfaucon Monument. It also provides information about visiting other WWI sights in and on the edge of Meuse, along with hotel and B&B suggestions.

Part 2. Belleau Wood, the War on History and Peaceful Champagne with Gary on Dec. 14

No sitting U.S. president has ever visited Belleau Wood, the Aisne-Marne Cemetery and the American Monument at Chateau-Thierry, which are among the most significant American WWI sights in France. In planning for U.S. President Donald Trump to the visit Belleau Wood and the cemetery that it overlooks last month, the State Department and president-watchers of all tendencies were well aware that this was to be an exceptional occasion. Extreme precautions were made to ensure that, rain or shine, it all went off without a hitch: the photo op, the clear, simple speech, etc. The point, of course, was not for the president himself to get a tour of those sights, but for Americans at home and abroad to bear witness—and therefore participate—in his honoring of fallen countrymen and the connection between their deaths, our participation in the war, and our country today.

Cancelling the visit on a day of light rain robbed Americans of that opportunity. A president’s indifference became the indifference of American citizens. Consider it a battle won by those waging a war on our own history. But here’s the catch: you have to know what you’ve been robbed of in order to know what’s missing.

To understand the harm of the cancelled visit, try to imagine the WWII Normandy American Cemetery and Pointe du Hoc without a visiting U.S. president making a speech about how America is greater and the world better off for what happened there. You can’t. That’s because a major reason that millions of Americans feel connected enough with D-Day and U.S. involvement in the Second World War to travel to Normandy is because of Reagan’s presence in 1984, Clinton’s in 1994, Bush’s in 2004, and/or Obama’s in 2014—and Private Ryan’s in 1998.

Some of those presidents you despise, others you admire. But it’s neither that admiration or contempt that led you to Normandy; it’s the fact that their very presence focused attention on a time and a place and made it seem important, significant, moving, worthy of attention and of a 3-hour trek from Paris, rain or shine. You felt in one way or another that those sights belonged to you, no matter which president gave the speech, as long as it was given.

We have collectively now been robbed of an opportunity to feel that connection with these World War I sites. But individually you can still go. One possibility is to join me on December 14, when I’ll be leading a small group or groups from Paris to the area of the president’s cancelled visit, an hour away. In the morning we’ll visit the war sights, followed by a delicious lunch with champagne tasting. In the afternoon we’ll visit two champagne producers in the area. For those who live in Paris, you’ll be able to stock up inexpensively on champagne for the holidays.

Let me know as soon as possible if you’d like to join. The cost of the daytrip (including transportation, lunch, tastings and tours) is 270 euros per person, 520 euros for two. The first two people who can tell me the color of the cat with respect to this newsletter get 25 euros off for this week’s trip.
I’ll also be repeating this trip several times in the spring.

Part 3. Paris’s New WWI Memorial

Traveling through the countryside of France you’ve undoubtedly noticed some of the 30,000 monuments honoring those who “died for France” during the First World War, with the names of local citizens inscribe on them. Paris never had such an inscribed monument, perhaps because of the sheer number of those killed during or as a result of the war: 94,415 Parisians in all have been identified, based primarily on lists drawn up in each arrondissement in the years following the war.

The centennial was the occasion for the City of Paris to rectify that by erecting a 306-yard long memorial plaque on which is inscribed the names of each individual. Inaugurated on Nov. 11, it can be seen on the outer wall of Père Lachaise Cemetery along Boulevard de Ménilmontant.

The two major national monuments in Paris paying homage to soldier killed during the war are the above-mentioned Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe and the little-noticed monument To the Glory of the French Army 1914-1918 at Trocadero. One might add to that list the vast painting entitled Departure of the Hairy Ones [the nickname for French soldiers during WWI], August 1914, at the Gare de l’Est train station. It is the work of the American artist Albert Herter.

Part 4. The War on Slavery: The Abolition Route in Eastern France

Slavery is a crime against humanity. So decreed France in 2001, making it the first country to do so. What may seem to be a solely symbolic decree, akin to declaring the Jurassic era over, is actually a way of condemning the country’s own history with respect to slavery. Honoring the victims of slavery and the slave trade as well as major abolitionist figures of the 18th and 19th centuries, two dozen sites in eastern France and Switzerland form a constellation known as the Abolition of Slavery Route. This article concerns several of those sites in the Burgundy – Franche-Comté region in central eastern France.

Part 5. Hanukkah and the War of the Maccabees (an Excuse)

I’m sending this message at the end of Hanukkah, the Jewish wintertime festival of lights. The holiday celebrates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem by Maccabean Jews after its desecration by Syrian-Greeks. There’s nothing French about Hanukkah, but it’s the opportunity for me to recall what Jews enjoy saying that nearly all Jewish holiday are about: They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.

And that, dear readers, is my timely excuse to end all this talk of war with recommendations for three Paris restaurants, recently tested.

Café Biergit. There’s been a little bit of Berlin in Batignolles (17th arr.) ever since the cheerful Café Biergit opened its doors last May. The bratwurst and currywurst are imported from Germany, as are the bar’s 60 Rhine-style beers. Potato salad and apfelstrudel as well… totally gemütlichkeit! All dishes under 14€. Open daily. (As recommended by Corinne LaBalme.)

Le Nom m’échappe translates as “The name escapes me” and I forgot it myself after first eating there a couple of years ago. But I returned last week and enjoyed the evening so much that I am certain not to forget it again. The tight seating at this welcoming restaurant by the Bourse (2nd arr.) makes it feel like a private club in which to partake in chef-owner Damien Moeuf’s elegant bistro cuisine. Forthcoming don’t-hesitate-to-ask-questions service is provided by his wife Catherine Moeuf and young waiter/natural wine adviser Fred (offered in fluent English, if necessary). Prices: 2 and 3 courses at lunch 19 or 23€, 2 or 3 courses at dinner about 38 and 50€, respectively, plus beverages. Closed weekends.

Kei. If Kei Kobayashi’s name sounded more French to our ears I suspect that his 2-star Michelin restaurant would have more English-speaking clients. As it is, he has lots of Japanese clients along with a faithful French clientele. While his restaurant is infused with the Japanese sense of precision and exquisite design, it also bears all of the hallmarks of the heights of French gastronomy. For whatever his passport, Kobayashi is an exceptional French chef. His cuisine is presented exclusively through a selection of fixed-price tasting menus, at lunch from 58 to 199€, at dinner from 110 to 220€, without beverages. Closed Sun. and Mon. An article about Kei Kobayashi and his restaurant near Les Halles (1st arr.) will be published on France Revisited this winter.

Please let me know as soon as possible if you’d like to join on the December 14 Belleau Wood, WWI and champagne daytrip from Paris.

You spotted the cat, didn’t you?

Happy travels always,

Gary

Gary Lee Kraut
Editor, France Revisited

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