Monuments
and memorials to one thing or another, one war or another abound in
France.  But for tourists in search of
an almost unforgettable experience, the Memorial to peace perched on a
flag-bedecked hillside on the edge of lower Normandy’s bustling capital city of
Caen is hard to beat.

 Created
initially to honor those who fought and died to liberate France from Nazi
occupation in 1944, “The Memorial” as it is officially titled, is actually a
gigantic museum with a difference.

 World
War II and particularly the landings and 
battles in Normandy--which left Caen 
a wasteland of bombed and burned buildings--remain the centerpiece of
the Memorial’s exhibits.  They
constitute an awesome collection of uniforms, weapons, campaign maps, films,
scale models and photos artfully and thoughtfully assembled and organized to
take the visitor along the path that led from a flawed peace agreement at the
end of World War I to its sad and murderous sequel in World War II.   

 It
is certainly that drawing card that has brought millions of visitors to the
museum since its official inauguration by France’s late President François
Mitterrand on the 6th of June, 1988, a date chosen, symbolically to
coincide with the anniversary of the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy in
1944. 

 But
beyond its World War II reminders, what makes The Memorial different from the
various smaller war-souvenir museums that abound in Normandy particularly, is
that it has expanded and developed over the years  to become a center for reflection about the idiocy of all wars
including the regional conflicts, Vietnam, Rwanda, Tibet and others that have
marked the last half of this century. 
And it has punctuated that extra message in a stellar series of
conferences, lectures and special exhibits devoted to that theme.

 For
that reason, the list of prestigious peace-oriented figures who have lectured
or visited there is imposing—The Dalai Lama, President Vaclev Havel of The
Czech Republic, Elie Wiesel of Israel and former President Lech Walesa of
Poland, former United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and
Bernard Kouchner, France’s Foreign Minister who also was once the U.N.’s
Administrator in the war-shattered Yugoslav province of Kosovo.  

 In
addition, the Memorial has been a “must” stop for many former Nobel Peace Prize
winners, Wiesel and Walesa among them, and such American notaries as John
Eisenhower, the son of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Senator Bob Dole, former
candidate for the U.S. presidency,  and,
of course, bevies of high level French politicians, four of the country’s
former Prime Ministers and three of its last Presidents.