FOUCARVILLE IN NORMANDY
EUROPE'S LARGEST GERMAN PRISON CAMP
A PAGE OF HISTORY
On June 6, 1944, the Allied armies landed in France, which had been occupied by the Germans since 1940.
A few days later, the American authorities set up transit camp no. 1 in Foucarville, Normandy; a few months later, it became one of the largest camps for German military prisoners in Europe – Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, etc., all captured under German army uniform: the Continental Central Prisoners of War Enclosure (CCPWE) 19 was created.
Under American command, the CCPWE 19 was set up. CCPWE 19 will see over 100,000 captives pass through its doors, a veritable world outside the world , until February 1946, when it is dissolved. It disappeared without a trace from the landscape.
BIRTH OF THE PROJECT
Autumn 2021, more than 75 years after the end of the war, the daughter of Col. Warren J. Kennedy, camp commander, entrusts her father’s archives to the W. J. Kennedy Foundation (hosted by the Fondation Mérimée, recognized as a public utility), created to preserve the Kennedy documentary collection.
“It was the first time in my military career I ever had a chance to build something instead of to destroy”
Cel Warren J. Kennedy
Camp Commander
As Colonel W. J. Kennedy put it when he laid the foundation stone for the camp’s German chapel in 1945: the CCPWE19 was the site of an unprecedented experiment in “reorienting” Hitler’s soldiers through culture and learning.
It was also the scene of some wonderful stories of friendship and solidarity between the captives and their guards.
This very rich collection, “at a human level”, reserves a very important part for the prisoners themselves and has inspired a team of enthusiasts to launch an unprecedented project: the creation of a museum on the exact site of the camp.
- To help people understand and feel how captivity was a transformative experience, helping to bring Europe out of the war and build a lasting peace, we bring together American, German, French and neutral viewpoints,
- To resurrect this vanished world for visitors who may be the children and grandchildren of those who fought in Normandy.
As the very first museum to focus on wartime captivity in liberated Europe, our project looks to the future, proposing an itinerary that gives captivity its historical breadth while weaving links with the present. In particular, it will place the Foucarville camp on a European scale, through comparisons with other experiences of German prisoners held at the same time in France, the UK, occupied Germany and Poland.
Helping us...
If we are to succeed in faithfully writing this still little-known page of European history, we need to complete the collections. We are therefore appealing for your support to help us :
Expand the circle of living witnesses and their direct descendants, ready to testify in writing or orally
Find documents, archives, diaries entries and objects relating to the CCPWE19 camp, depot no. 14 in Douai, depot no. 152 in Saint-Aubagne, the Sosnowiec camp in Poland and the British camp,
Collect any information that would contribute to a better understanding of this subject.
Three generations after the end of the war, when the last witnesses of this period can still pass on the baton, and Europe is once again experiencing war, our project aims to seize a historical moment to explore the captivity of military prisoners in Normandy, and to insert it into a transnational history.
A PROJECT OF INTERNATIONAL SCOPE
Our project is supported by major patrons, French institutions – such as the Service historique de la défense,ECPAD and the archives départementales du Nord – as well as international ones – the Bundesarchiv and the ICRC – and our very active “Cercle des témoins et descendants directs” (German, American and Norman).
Our project is selfless. It will be carried out exclusively by the non-profitWarren J. Kennedy Association.
INFORMATION,
A TESTIMONIAL,
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PROJECT?
