By Nicole Pierre
On Friday 14th November 2014, an exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War was officially launched. Despite the nippy weather, members of the diplomatic corps, as well as those from the francophone community, were present at the Peace Palace in The Hague to participate in the inauguration.
Presentations were made by Jeroen Vevliet, director of the Peace Palace Library, Richard Schreurs, the president of Alliance française de La Haye and Laurent Pic the new ambassador of France to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The exhibition was declared opened after the ambassador’s speech in which he stressed the significance of the war as an important event in history but also as a landmark of European identity and unity today.
The exhibition gives us an up-close and personal view of the day to day lives of soldiers at the beginning of the war, through the private and intimate correspondence of a French soldier named Raymond Molle which he had sent to his wife Emma. Unfortunately he fell in combat in April, 1915. With Officer Molle, the so-called “unknown soldiers”, who got lost in the transmittance of our historical past but who are the true pillars of that history, suddenly get a face again.
The exhibition is opened for viewing partly in the visitor’s center and partly in the main lobby of the Peace Palace and is available until December 7th, 2014.
http://www.aflahaye.nl/en/component/content/article/2-uncategorised/47-bien-chere-emma-en
