Place:La Baule-Escoublac, Loire-Atlantique, France

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La Baule-Escoublac, commonly referred to as La Baule, is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department, Pays de la Loire, western France.

A century-old seaside resort in southern Brittany with villas, casino, luxury hotels and an original mix of old Breton and seaside culture with a 9 kilometre long sand beach, La Baule has long been home to French high society's seaside residences. During July and August each year, the population of La Baule increases dramatically with many Parisians staying for weeks and regular day-trippers from Nantes. Parisians can take the train in Paris Montparnasse Station and it is about 3 hours to go to La Baule. Despite this, La Baule is still virtually unknown outside France.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

In 1779, a violent storm buried the village of Escoublac, near the current location of La Baule, under sand. Escoublac was rebuilt further inland. At that time, the very unstable dunes were occupied only by customs officers, who gave them the name of Bôle, a term indicating an easily flooded maritime meadow.

Birth of a seaside resort

It was only in 1879, when the Saint-Nazaire-Croisic railroad was conceived by Parisian industrialist Jules-Joseph Hennecart that the tourist potential of the coast was recognised.

Just before the inauguration of the line, Hennecart bought 40 ha of dunes for the Society of Escoublac Dunes (Société des dunes d'Escoublac) and commissioned local architect Georges Lafont to design the new town. Lafont designed a long sand promenade named Avenue de la Gare (today Avenue du Général-de-Gaulle) and a chapel (see picture). After the railroad opened Lafont built more than 250 villas, taking the lead in the development of the seaside resort.

Rise of a seaside resort

In 1918, casino business magnate François André (see Groupe Lucien Barrière) set up the redesigning of the La Baule resort based on the Deauville model by combining casinos, luxury hotels and sports facilities all on one site.

In the 1920s, Parisian businessman Louis Lajarrige designed the Bois d'Amour district at La Baule-les-Pins and formed an agreement with the railroad company to move the rails away from the seaside to ensure a direct access to the beach. On July 27, 1927 the new stations of La Baule-les-Pins and La Baule-Escoublac were inaugurated while the old station was torn down to create a flower garden square. By that time, La Baule has become a fashionable seaside resort.

Poche de Saint-Nazaire

During World War II La Baule formed part of the protective stretch of coast leading to the nearby harbour city of Saint-Nazaire, home of one of the biggest U-Boat stations that the Germans built. It not only serviced the German submarine fleet, but was also the only dry dock on the Atlantic capable of housing the German battleship Tirpitz, one of two Bismarck-class ships built for the German Kriegsmarine during World War II.

La Baule and the surrounding areas were heavily occupied by the Germans throughout World War II. During the occupation a large number of Jewish residents and resistance members were deported to the concentration camps; in La Baule itself 32 Jewish men, women and children - the youngest of whom was 3 years old - were deported (with the assistance of the local French police) to Auschwitz where they all perished.

In 2011 a small group of local residents formed a group to create a permanent memorial, in the form of Stolperstein, to the 32 Jewish deportees since, although there was a memorial in La Baule to 40 named war victims, there was no mention there or on any other memorial of the 32 Jewish deportees. The Mayor refused to allow a request for the Stolpersteines to be installed, claiming that to do so might infringe the French constitutional principles of secularism ("laïcité") and freedom of opinion ("liberté d'opinion") and that the Mairie would therefore need to consult the Conseil d'État, France's constitutional court. In fact, Stolpersteines contain no reference to the religion of the victim who is commemorated and 'freedom of opinion/expression' has never been invoked in either French or European jurisprudence to justify the refusal to commemorate individual victims of war crimes. The Mayor of La Baule has consistently refused to elaborate on his reasoning and there is no record of the Municipal Council of La Baule having sought a declaration from the Conseil d'Etat in respect of these objections.

Such was the importance attached to the area by the Germans that their troops kept fighting in La Baule and Saint-Nazaire for nine months longer than in the rest of the department, eventually surrendering on May 11, 1945 (3 days after the German unconditional surrender), making this one of the last liberated parts of France. This episode is called Poche de Saint-Nazaire from the French expression poche de resistance.

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