Article published in La Presse de la Manche on 20/06/24.
FOUCARVILLE. Ceremony attended by Fondation Adenauer students
TWELVE Franco-German students from the Fondation Adenauer, chaired by Anja Czymmeck, visited D-Day memorial sites.
MP Philippe Gosselin was keen to meet these young people from various universities on Friday June 14 in Foucarville, in front of the stele reminding us that this was the site of a prison camp. Benoit Lenoël and Anne Broilliard published a book in 2017 about this camp built by American engineering, with the help of the prisoners themselves.
Soon to be a museum
The camp included 74 barracks and 1,435 tents, three theatres (including a 400-seat one used occasionally as a cinema and ballroom), an open-air school pompously named “University”, three barracks… and a 1,000-bed hospital. It housed up to 60,000 prisoners, including 218 generals and 4 admirals under the command of American Lieutenant-Colonel Warren J. Kennedy, a humanist camp leader. Philippe Gosselin recalled the importance of reconciliation between the two countries after
being freed from Nazism. “Peace is no longer a matter of course,” he added, referring to Ukraine. Jens Münster, Member of the German Parliament for Rhineland-Palatinate, one of Germany’s sixteen federal states, put it this way: “Let’s consider Peace to move Europe forward”.
In Foucarville, where the prison camp was located, a museum is due to open soon.
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