Second world war memorabilia under threat as thieves steal from museums to order

08-04-2008, 07:48 AM,

A BURGEONING international market for second world war memorabilia is putting strain on the numerous small museums that commemorate the 1944 D-Day landings, which are increasingly under the eye of unscrupulous collectors, French police say.

Two recent thefts have highlighted poor security at the more than 25 collections - mainly in private hands - which draw thousands of summer visitors along the Normandy coast. In one incident, the booty included a rare German "Enigma" encoding machine which investigators suspect was stolen to order.

In the other, scores of items - including several weapons - were replaced by fakes and then resold to dealers.
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"In recent years there has been a huge increase in demand for anything from the second world war - guns, uniforms, buckles, helmets," said Michel Brissart, who runs the Omaha D-Day museum at Vierville-sur Mer.

"It all ends up going abroad: the US, the Emirates, Russia, Australia. Here in France we are too poor to keep it."

It was Brissart's museum - overlooking the scene of the US landings on Omaha beach - that two assailants targeted in March this year, overpowering the receptionist when she opened for business. The thieves took some 30 articles, including daggers, uniform caps and firearms - as well as the Enigma machine valued at £120,000.

"Practically everything they took was German, because sadly German memorabilia commands a much higher price than Allied stuff," said Brissart. After reporting the incident to police, Brissart alerted contacts in the world of collectors and two weeks later he was telephoned by a dealer in Paris.

"He said he'd been approached by two men with a list of items for sale, including photographs. It was ours, all right." Police staked out the dealer's premises and two men - aged 19 and 20 - were arrested. The Enigma has been returned to Vierville with most of the other goods. Six items are still missing.

"They said they'd visited my museum and had the idea there and then of carrying out the robbery. But it's nonsense. They were acting on instructions," said Brissart. Two weeks ago it was the turn of the Musée de la Résistance in the Brittany village of Saint-Marcel to find itself victim of the mania for D-Day collectables. It commemorates the exploits of the French maquisards who linked up with the Allies after the landings.

"It was some regular visitors who'd been coming to the museum for years who saw that something was wrong and raised the alarm," said village mayor Henri Briand. "We locals were too close to the place to pay attention to what was in the showcases." What was wrong was that gradually - over several years - uniforms, weapons and other pieces of military equipment had been removed and replaced with convincing replicas.

"The culprit was an employee of the museum and is under investigation. Police are questioning the owner of a Normandy antiques shop, where several of the original items were found.

"It made good business sense, because, for example, an original American Garand rifle can sell for 800, while a good facsimile will cost just 180," said a police official close to the investigation. "A real German forage cap can sell for 600, while a replica will get about 100."

It is many years since relics of the campaign turned up in the fields and hedgerows of the Normandy bocage, or washed up after storms at sea.

"Today the pressure is on because there's so little on the market. The only new items come from house sales," said Frederick Fourqumen, owner of the Dead Man's Corner museum at Saint-Come-du-Mont near Utah beach .

"An old man will die and the children come up from Paris to sell off the house. They'll clear out the attic and discover a ration kit or a piece of uniform or even a gun. The dead man will have picked it up as a youngster after the fighting was over, and then it lay forgotten all these years. I got hold of a parachute that way recently," he said.

Fourqumen has had his own difficulties after customs inspectors raided Dead Man's Corner last month on a tip-off. They confiscated 15 second world war firearms as well as explosives and bullets, which they said contravened regulations as they were still in working order. The museum is demanding their return - they include an extremely rare German FG-42 paratrooper's automatic rifle valued at £50,000.