Local donations
Soldiers' effects and documents given by families in the area.
Florival fr — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Florival fr — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Florival fr — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Florival fr — CC BY-SA 4.0
Because it explains what you are looking at. Many of the villages in this valley that you wander today were **destroyed in the winter of 1944–45**, and what looks to you like an old house may be a careful post-war reconstruction — Riquewihr is specifically remembered as one of the few that survived. An hour here changes how you see the whole region. Add that **Turckheim** itself is a handsome walled village, less crowded than Riquewihr, so the trip is not for the museum alone.
Older school-age children, yes, with an adult and some explanation. The museum is about **a real war**, with weapons, uniforms, documents and battle dioramas, and the subject is inherently heavy even though it is presented seriously and without harrowing imagery. Teenagers interested in military history will find it rich for its size. Small children, no — there is nothing here for them to do, and the better choice for them in this region is the **Écomusée d'Alsace**, with its space, animals and crafts.
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A small museum in the village of **Turckheim** west of Colmar, devoted to one of the harshest and least known battles of the liberation of France: the **Colmar Pocket**. By the autumn of 1944 Allied forces had freed most of Alsace, but the Germans held and fortified a pocket around Colmar west of the Rhine. The battle to reduce it ran from December 1944 to February 1945 through an **exceptionally severe winter** — snow, frost and mud — fought by French and American forces together, costing thousands of lives on both sides and among civilians, and destroying whole villages in this valley. The museum tells the story through weapons, uniforms, documents, photographs and soldiers' personal effects, with dioramas of scenes from the fighting, many of its holdings donated by local families. It is a **modest local museum** rather than a large national institution, but it is honest and direct — and it explains why the houses in many of the beautiful villages you visit here are newer than they look.
Soldiers' effects and documents given by families in the area.
Scenes from the winter fighting in snow and mud.
A walled village with its three gates around the museum.
25 Rue du Conseil, 68230 Turckheim