World War II is slowly fading from a luridly real memory to just another chapter in a history book. The generation that has witnessed the war has grown old. Today, we must ask ourselves how we keep this memory alive in the minds of our younger generations, so that the lessons learnt are not forgotten.

Like the memories of the war, the Atlantic Wall built by Hitler in occupied French territory against the expected Allied attack is crumbling and decaying. The fortifications designed by Albert Speer stretch 2685 km along the French coastline and have swallowed 1.2 million tonnes of steel and 17 million cubic meters of concrete. Although abandoned, large parts of the fortifications that stretched from Spain to Scandinavia still exist today.

The psychological impact of seeing a real historical object is immense. History transforms from a fairy-tale we read in a book to something real that we can touch. Why has the Wall not been declared a historical monument to preserve at least parts of it for the educational benefit of the future generation? Unlike sites of concentration camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland or Mauthausen in Austria, the Wall has been ignored.

It may be that the French government does not want to put focus on this symbol of defeat and collaboration.  Jerome Prieur, author of the book Le Mur Atlantique, stresses that “a lot of French construction companies got very rich out of building the Wall,” while at the same time the Wall itself was built with forced French labour. The Vichy government had an agreement with the Organisation Todt, the civil engineering group of the Third Reich who built the wall with what often amounted to slave labour. Private destinies and social history intertwine here where so many have lost their lives. Too painful and unpleasant to acknowledge, the older generation has chosen to ignore the Wall, or rather, to watch it decay.

This is about to change. Interest in the Wall and its preservation is spiking. The Wall is being dug up.

Marc Mentel, founder of Gramasa, the “Archaeological Research Group for the Atlantic Wall: Arcachon Sector”, sees the death of the last WWI veteran as the initial spark of a newfound interest in the Wall. The curiosity of the younger generation is triggered by the fear of forgetting one’s own history.

“Nowadays we wouldn’t for a minute consider destroying our medieval castles. But that is what is exactly happening to the Atlantic Wall, which is just as much part of our history” says amateur archaeologist Jean-Francois Laquieze to the BBC. Even those who have tried to forget for so long, like 91-year old Rene-Georges Lubat who was forced to work on the construction of the Wall himself, think that it should be preserved: “It is important to remember what happened - the ignominy of it all, the cataclysm that we had to endure.

"Is the preservation of part of the fortifications worth the effort and money? Or could the land be used for other purposes, such space as our ever-expanding urban areas? There has to be a balance between the preservation of our trans-national cultural heritage that the Wall is part of, and sensible investment. Just like the battlefield at Verdun that allows us to empathise with the horrors of trench warfare that soldiers had to endure, a restoration of part of the Wall could act both as a tourist attraction and an educational centre. Like the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam or the museum at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, the Wall could bring another side of history and a near-forgotten set of stories to life.

We need the Wall as a reminder, a manifestation of our collective memory.

Originally published 20 September 2011