Category: Discovering places of conflict

Guided tour along the Path of Remembrance

On Sunday, June 7, at 3:00 p.m., the former deputy mayor of Thil, Mr. Gino Bertacco, welcomed about fifteen members of the Ad Pacem association at the entrance to the site –designated a national necropolis in 1984 – for a guided tour of the camp.

As they walked along the Path of Remembrance from the parking lot at the site’s entrance to the Crypt, located high up on the hill, Mr. Bertacco provided detailed explanations to help visitors understand why the Germans built this camp in 1943 and abandoned it in September 1944 as American forces approached following the Normandy landings.

Surrounding the parking lot at the entrance are sculptures by various artists that symbolize the barbarity that took place in and around this Nazi camp – the only one built by the Nazis on French soil.

The Path of Remembrance leads to a landscaped area where a crypt stands; it was built to house a crematorium and all the artifacts found that prove the existence of this concentration camp. Along the path, starting in the 1970s, artists have placed sculptures depicting the atrocities that took place there.

In front of the crypt, Mr. Bertacco explained how the camp was built, starting in early 1943, in such a way that it would not be visible to residents living in the surrounding area. During the German occupation, most of the French residents of Thil had fled to the Gironde region, while those of Italian origin remained in the village. Many Italians worked in the mine alongside the prisoners. However, the homes of the French residents were looted during their absence. When these people returned from Gironde after Thil’s liberation, they went up to the camp, where they tore down and took everything made of wood. All the wood was thus used by the civilian population for heating after the war. This is the main reason why there are no traces left of the camp’s existence.

Only two posts from the old gate have been recovered; they now stand at the entrance to the small plaza in front of the Crypt. It is also here that an impressive sculpture stands, depicting a prisoner entangled in barbed wire, either falling or trying to get back up. It is the work of students from the Lycée Jean Macé in Villerupt, who donated it to the site in 1978.

Prisoners who died in the camp or in the mine were cremated in the open air using kerosene in front of the mine entrance on wooden railroad ties. The draft of air coming from the mine kept the fire burning. But since the smell could be detected far and wide, the Nazi commander, Eugen Walter Büttner, ordered that the bodies be burned on wood piles on the hill above the camp. Yet the smell still lingered in the surrounding area.

This prompted the commander to bring in an oven that had been used at the slaughterhouse in the town of Villerupt to burn animal remains. It was set up not far from where the bodies had previously been burned. But with the end of the war approaching as the Americans advanced from the west, only two or three prisoners are believed to have been burned there.

Inside the Crypt, Mr. Bertacco used a scale model to show how the camp was laid out. The model was reconstructed based on aerial photographs taken by the Allies. On one side of the camp lived the Germans, and on the other, lined up in rows of two, were the eight barracks, each housing about a hundred prisoners. Their numbers were checked regularly every day using the stone that each prisoner had to pick up in the morning on his way to the Tiercelet mine and deposit in the evening, upon his return, in front of his barrack. In the crypt, a drawing made by a prisoner shows the prisoners descending toward the mine in their gray uniforms striped with white, each holding a stone.

Most of the camp’s prisoners were skilled workers: electricians, machinists, fitters, lathe operators, millers, etc. When a prisoner died, the camp’s SS commander, Büttner, had him replaced by a prisoner from the Natzweiler-Struthof camp in Alsace. Jewish prisoners who had come from Natzweiler-Struthof and Soviet female prisoners who spent the night at the Errouville camp worked in the Tiercelet Mine.

This Sunday, the group was unable to visit the Tiercelet Mine, where the 800 male prisoners from the Thil camp and the 400 Soviet women from the Errouville camp came to work. The work was intended to manufacture parts for the V1 rocket following the destruction of Peenemünde in northern Germany by aerial bombardment.

The Tiercelet Mine is currently closed and cannot be visited until the ongoing restructuring is complete.

At the end of the tour, the association invited everyone to enjoy some drinks and homemade treats.

Visit to Fort Fermont, a large structure in the fortified sector of the Maginot Line

Twenty members of the Ad Pacem association met at 9:30 a.m. at the entrance to Fort Fermont for a guided tour lasting about three hours, which allowed them to see and understand this military defence structure, built between 1931 and 1935.

Construction of the Maginot Line

Thanks to the electric train and the good maintenance of the site, the tour was easy to follow: the group travelled thirty metres underground through the galleries connecting the living quarters, storage areas (warehouses) and defence posts occupied by soldiers in the huge concrete structure of Fort Fermont. The Maginot Line is a line of defence named after André Maginot, a native of Lorraine (F), who succeeded Paul Painlevé as Minister of War at the end of 1929. Painlevé had opted, as early as 1925, for a defence policy in the event of a new war with Germany. He had set up a special commission which defined the route and components of a line of defence to fortify the borders with Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and part of Belgium. The Maginot Line stretches from Dunkirk to the south of Nice with around fifty small and large structures and, at regular intervals, casemates and observation points.

Fermont undefeated

From 1936 onwards, Fort Fermont was regularly occupied by its full complement (580 soldiers, 75 non-commissioned officers and 21 officers) ready for combat.

From 10 May 1940, German troops went on the offensive and fighting continued until 27 June 1940, when all French soldiers evacuated the fort, five days after the armistice.

Fermont remained undefeated during the hostilities and was occupied by the Germans until September 1944. The fort was then used by American soldiers during the winter of 1944-1945 as a rear base for troops engaged on the Ardennes and Luxembourg fronts.

The Fermont fortification is still owned by the Ministry of Defence, which has made it available to the Association des Amis de l’Ouvrage de Fermont et de la Ligne Maginot (Friends of the Fermont Fortification and Maginot Line Association). This association maintains it and makes it accessible to the public in order to preserve its memory.

On Friday 28 June 2024, twenty-four members of Ad Pacem met up at around 9pm at the entrance to the Carrières d’Haudainville, near the town of Verdun (F), to watch Europe’s largest Sound and Light show on the 14-18 war.

The scenic representation of major historical events in the Battle of Verdun (F) began at dusk and ended around midnight. Through the intersecting destinies of Germans and Frenchmen, the audience witnessed the relentless chain of events that led to the First World War. Thanks to a good sound system and professional staging, spectators had the impression of plunging right into the heart of the fighting, into the “Hell of Verdun”, with the evocation of the suffering and anguish of the soldiers and their families. Whether in the French or German trenches, the soldiers suffered the same fate: the cold, the mud, the lice and the rats… with, sometimes, a little respite at the back despite the nights full of anxiety about the fighting to come.

All the scenes are designed to shock with their truth: gripping battle scenes, stabbing attacks, death awaiting the attackers, firemen in a burning Verdun, a funfair in a back-front town, the first air battle in history… At the same time, the show is characterised by a concern to educate: through the narrative, the portrayal of the characters and the alternation of frenetic and calm tableaux or sequences, audiences of all ages can witness this painful chapter in humanity and keep a vivid memory alive.

The technical resources deployed to achieve this feat are extensive: special effects, giant image projections on the quarry walls and impressive sets. All this was achieved with 200 actors, most of them volunteers, 800 costumes, hundreds of spotlights and floats, a period train, etc.

The show ends with a German and French soldier shaking hands under the light of a torch held by a civilian. Yesterday’s enemies have become today’s friends.

Cultural outing in Belgium

On Saturday 17 June 2023, the committee of the “Ad Pacem servandam – Pour la Paix et contre la Guerre” association organised a visit to the Bastogne War Museum (B).

This museum is a major remembrance site in the Ardennes dedicated to the Second World War. It houses many maps, settings, testimonies and films from the time of the Second World War, enabling visitors to relive and understand the Battle of the Bulge, which took place from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945 around the town of Bastogne.

From 10 a.m. to 1.30 p.m., the sixteen-strong group visited, at their own pace, all the exhibitions and multimedia rooms with audio guides that, thanks to interactive terminals placed along the route, inform visitors in their chosen language (Dutch, English, German or French) about the important events of this Battle.

Visitors can also enjoy an immersive experience thanks to three multi-sensory shows that take them on the journey of four characters at the heart of the conflict.

After lunch on the terrace of the “Bistrot de la Paix”, the group moved on to the Bois St Jacques, where they were able to (re)experience, for thirty minutes, a key moment in the battlefield of the Bois Jacques through an augmented reality mobile application. For a brief moment, they were able to share in the daily life of Easy Company’s G.I.s holed up in the foxholes.

The group in front of the museum entrance

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The Association Committee “Ad Pacem servandam” held its peace march this year in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The aim of the march was to attend important war sites from World War II and the Bosnian War (1992-1995) to see if the consequences of these wars can still be felt today.

After spending several days trekking in unique mountainous terrain, we visited war museums and monuments in Mostar and Sarajevo. During meetings with representatives of the religious communities we learned how difficult their coexistence is today. The wounds of the Bosnian wars are not yet healed. In Jablanica we also had the opportunity to learn about the aftermath of the Battle of Neretva.

Continue reading “There will be no peace in the Balkans without peace between religions” →

On the 17th and 18th of December 2019 our association “Ad pacem” organized a cultural and educational trip to Alsace. Together with three teachers, twenty-five pupils from the Lycée de Garçons in Esch-sur-Alzette (Luxembourg) visited the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, the Alsace Moselle Memorial in Schirmeck and the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Visit of the concentration camp

Twenty-five pupils from the Lycée de Garçons d’Esch-sur-Alzette undertook an educational trip to Alsace on 17 December, accompanied by three teachers, Mr Claude Pantaleoni, Mr Christian Welter and Mrs Dora Almeida.
The first stop was a visit to the former Nazi concentration camp of Natzweiler-Struthof south of Strasbourg, where we arrived by bus at about 10.30 am. The whole site is a “national necropolis” where 22,000 people, mostly political deportees and resistance fighters, were murdered because of their opposition to the Nazi system. Many of approximately 400 Luxembourgers who were interned there also lost their lives.

Continue reading “Cultural trip to Alsace” →

On Saturday 26th January 2019, the board of our non-profit organization visited Thil, a small French town located some eight kilometers from Esch-sur-Alzette, with twelve student members of our association to visit the site where in the years 1943-44 the Germans built a concentration camp.

On the path of remembrance which leads from the parking to the crypt, you can see various sculptures representing mankind martyrized by the camp’s barbarity. In the crypt Mr. Gino Bertacco, Thil’s deputy mayor, explained the reasons why the Germans built this camp in 1943 and why it was abandoned in September 1944.
Afterwards we visited the Tiercelet mine (opened from 1885 to 1945). Mr. Daniel Pascolini told us how the camp’s prisoners came to work here every day alongside female soviet prisoners. Their forced labor was destined to build the various components of the V-1 flying bomb.

[expand title=”Touch here to read the complete text about our visit to Thil (F)“]

Sculptures and the Memorial Crypt

We started walking up the crypt from the parking on the path of remembrance. On the way there we listened to the explanations of the deputy mayor who detailed all the evidence proving the existence of the now largely forgotten camp. Starting in the seventies of the 20th century several works of art, depicting the barbarity which occurred on this grounds, have been placed along the way.

In front of the crypt Mr. Bertacco and Mr. Morello explained how construction of the camp started in early 1943. Its design and layout hid it from the surrounding population’s sight. The Germans abruptly abandoned the site in September 1944 when the American forces approached the city of Longwy. During the German occupation of the area, the French citizens of Thil found refuge in the Gironde region, while the inhabitants of Italian descent stayed on site. A lot of Italians worked in the mine alongside the prisoners. A lot of the French people’s homes where looted in their absence. When these people came back from the Gironde after Thil’s liberation, they went to the camp and took everything made out of wood. They used the wood to heat themselves after the war. This is the main reason for the lack of physical remains of the camp. Only two steel posts were found which can now be seen near the entry of the crypt. This is also where you can see an impressive sculpture of a man trapped in barbed wire, he may be trying to get up and escape or be dropping to the ground in exhaustion. This sculpture is the creation of students of the Lycée Jean Macé in Villerupt who donated this piece of art to the site in 1978.

The captives who died in the camp or in the mine were burnt outside the entry of the mine. Petroleum was used to set the bodies on fire. The air stream coming out of the mine kept the flames ablaze. The stench of this procedure could be smelt in the distance. This is why Eugen Walter Büttner, the commanding Nazi officer, requested the bodies to be burnt on bundles of wood on the hill near the camp. A white cross behind the crypt indicates the spot where this happened. But as the stench was still noticeable in the area around, the commanding officer requisitioned an oven from Villerupt’s slaughterhouse. The oven’s original purpose was to burn unusable remains of animals. It was installed near the spot where originally the corpses were burnt. According to the deputy mayor not more than two or three prisoners were burnt in the oven as the American forces were advancing from the west.
Inside of the crypt, Mr. Bertacco explained to us the layout of the camp using a scale model created with the means of aerial pictures taken by the allied forces. On one side of the camp there were the living quarters of the Germans, on the other there were eight barracks. Each barrack accommodated up to 100 prisoners each. The numbers were regularly checked. Each morning the prisoners had to carry a rock to the mine and back to the barracks at night. A drawing done by a former captive shows the prisoners dressed in clothes with grey stripes walking to the mine and carrying a stone. After the war a Luxembourger who was detained at the camp donated his original uniform a museum . This uniform is exhibited in the crypt.

Building the V-1 flying bomb

The camp’s prisoners were mainly trained workers like electricians, machinists, fitter-assemblers, turners etc. Their job was to turn the mine into a production area for the German V-1 flying bomb. At the death of a prisoner, the camp’s SS commander Büttner, had the deceased replaced by a captive from the camp in Natzweiler-Struthof in Alsace.

After the visit of the crypt we drove to the entrance of the Tiercelet mine in Thil where the camp’s prisoners went every day to work alongside the Soviet female prisoners of the nearby camp in Errouville (F). We were greeted by Mr. Daniel Pascolini, who was in charge for our visit alongside Alain Fioritti, Dominique Thénière and Brice Morello, a group of volunteers working to preserve the memory of the historical importance of the mine. They led us through the part of the mine which is accessible to the public.
At the entrance of the mine two commemorative plates, one in French, the other in Russian, commemorate the soviet female prisoners who died in the mine as they were forced to work for the Nazi war machine. Their remains were left under the rocks which killed them.

Equipped with safety helmets we were directed into the mine. The volunteers explained the work the prisoners had to do. Various objects found in the mine are shown along the way. They serve as silent witnesses for the presence of the prisoners from both camps and the SS guards (SS is short for Schutzstaffel, an elite Nazi group) of the Todt organization (a civil and military engineering organization in Nazi Germany).
In the mine we saw a place where a rockslide had happened. On top of the rocks we saw an orthodox cross. Mr. Pascolini explained that at this very location 27 Soviet women were buried alive in a tragic accident while they were building concrete walls to stabilize the area. Their bodies have never been extricated and are still buried under the rocks which claimed their lives.
A cement mixer of the German firm Regulus was found deep down in the mine and dragged out.
Not one V-1 flying bomb has ever been assembled in the mine although some parts were built on the site. We couldn’t visit the underground workshops situated deep inside the mine. This part of the mine has not been secured nor marked out yet and is therefore closed to the general public.[/expand]