Michel Brissard acquitted by the Chartres court in 2010

In La Renaissance du Bessin of October 12, 2010, Murielle Bouchard reports on the acquittal of Michel Brissard, director of the D-Day Omaha museum in Vierville-sur-Mer. He had appeared the previous Thursday before the Chartres Criminal Court for illegal possession of weapons, after the case presented in the previous Tuesday edition.

The collector tells of a very fast hearing: according to his account, the presiding judge announced the acquittal and ruled that the customs seizure was irregular. He says he never doubted that he had not engaged in trafficking, but says that a conviction would have led him to stop everything. He still disputes the obligation to provide proof of origin for these World War II weapons and presents his activity as a duty of memory. It is his words and his reading of the case that the interview reproduces.

Michel Brissard then estimated the attendance of the museum at fifty thousand visitors per year. He does not know how to measure the effect of the procedure on the entries, the results of which remain good. On the other hand, he says he is deeply hurt to have sometimes been called a trafficker, after having set up a museum alone and without subsidies and having fought daily to find beautiful pieces. He highlights the worldwide reputation of Omaha and believes that the museums of the Bessin coast play an essential role in the local economy.

He now wants to carry out, with a friend, an extension project for which he already has land. The article is about the creation of the museum, in the immediate vicinity of the landing beaches, eleven years ago. No opening date for the expansion has yet been announced, but important collection items were due to arrive in the following weeks to be exhibited later.

The photograph is older than this procedure: taken in 2008, it shows Michel Brissard surrounded by gendarmes during the restitution of the Enigma, a German secret message coding machine stolen a few months earlier at the museum.

Reconstructed or uncertain passages:
- The article reports an acquittal; the precise grounds for the decision are described through Michel Brissard’s account, without reproducing the judgment.

Archive image: https://vierville.cordelle.eu/PhotosDocuments3/Image2.jpg