Posted on 01/26/2006 6:44:54 PM PST by saquin
THE museum set up by the French authorities to commemorate the D-Day landings is struggling under a mountain of debt amid a sharp decline in the number of visitors.
The Memorial Museum in Caen, Normandy, has been accused of mismanagement for turning its back on the Second World War to concentrate on subjects from feminism to Father Christmas. In recent months the museum has focused efforts on transforming itself into a “place of reflection on the contemporary world”.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Claude Quétel, who was sacked as the museum’s chief historian last year after protesting that it had fallen victim to political correctness. “The vocation of this place was to become the great museum on the Second World War in France. It’s drifting away from that idea, and it’s a dramatic error.”
In the grounds, for instance, are gardens created as a homage to the British, Canadian and American soldiers who lost their lives “so that freedom could triumph”.
But the museum’s brochure talks in pacifist tones of the need to “combat the violence around us . . . Peace begins at home, in the office, with our neighbours.”
“It is bizarre,” said Alain Chesnel, who runs tours of Normandy battlefield sites for American visitors. “I don’t advise people to go there. They should be retracing a page of our history, not presenting exhibitions that have absolutely nothing to do with it.”
Opened by François Mitterrand in 1988, Le Mémorial de Caen was designed to commemorate the Second World War, and notably the Battle of Normandy, in which 53,000 Allied troops lost their lives. The late French President described the museum as an “act of vigilance, confidence and hope”.
“But there was an ambiguity because it was officially called a Museum of Peace and told to look at the whole of the 20th century and not just the war,” said M Quétel. “That’s where the problem comes from.”
In 2002 the museum, which is run by Caen town council, opened a €13.72 million (£9.4 million) extension that includes sections on “the principal disorders in the world today” and the need for “eco-responsibility”. Stéphane Grimaldi, who was appointed director in October, said that it had lost €400,000 when the number of visitors fell to 400,000 from 560,000 in 2004, the 60th anniversary of D-Day.He announced cost-saving measures, including cuts to the guided tours of the D-Day landing beaches. His rescue plan includes exhibitions on Living without Petrol and on Father Christmas.
M Quétel said: “I think they are turning their backs on the war and that’s a shame.”
I have always wanted to go and see the place my uncle died to free, but its occupied by morons and America hatting Muslims.
Hint to the French...time you made friends with the people who freed you. Before I die they will be begging us to free them again.
Good thing the French didn't create cornflakes because they could screw those up too.
"Combat" the violence? Isn't that sort of, well, violent?
A society that is unable to concentrate on singular issues, particularly one like this of historic good and evil, is doomed.
The French re-write of history would make Jimmah Cahtah proud.
This kind of nonsense has overtaken quite a few museums and other institutions, with the exception of those with a history and a well developed sense of their mission, but it's especially dispiriting at a museum meant to memorialize those who gave their lives at Normandy.
And we thought the Smithonian was PC. This place takes the cake.
Beg they will and their pleadings will fall on deaf ears this time. I too lost an uncle to free those self righteous fools. They are not worthy of American blood!
The effort illustrates the extraordinary importance that the Left places on the control of symbols. By preference, a good Marxist symbol should represent the very opposite of its counterpart in reality because its foremost goal, in common with unscrupulous Mesmerists, is to emasculate the mind.
Fortunately, there is still a D-Day museum in France that tells the real story. It was built by veterans.
http://www.junobeach.org/Centre/index.html
You can feel relieved by this: My buddy and I from Torrejon AB, Spain spent a month of leave running around Europe. We didn't like France in 1985. We went to the Eiffel Tower.
We urinated all over elevator #2 that goes to the bar on top.
Then we silently sat at the far side of the bar from elevator #2 and checked out the people leaving it. Until it was time to get to our 1st Class train to Diepp, with bunk beds and air conditioning and a little sink to wash up in the next day.
Be proud of the Air Force:) We do things before you think of them:):)
Agreed. Their sacrifice is something very very powerful and cannot be dimmed by time, and in my opinion this is a slap in their collective faces. I'm constantly disappointed in Europe. It never ends...
Every damn Zoo I take my kids to is full of that message.
Last time I was in Paris the entire city smelled like urine.
Undercover and immature.
You should visit Korea.
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