Museum of the Atlantic Wall hosts ribbon-cutting

Aug. 18—CONNEAUT — A new museum is open in Conneaut after a ribbon-cutting on Wednesday commemorated the opening of the Museum of the Atlantic Wall.

Jennifer O'Brien, one of the owners of the museum, said she and her husband Tom originally purchased the property, located along Route 20, as a place to store their German World War II vehicles and artillery.

"We've been collectors for years," she said. "Tom is 43, and he started re-enacting and collecting when he was 15."

After they purchased the building, they realized it looked like a German WWII bunker, she said.

Converting the building was difficult.

"The roof had failed, every single piece of drywall here had mold on it, there was paneling that had sheets of mold behind it," O'Brien said. "There was a leak that, every time it rained, it flooded the building."

Work on rehabilitating the building started in April, she said.

"This is our life's work and our life's collection and that's never going to stop," O'Brien said.

She said 40 percent of the German troops at the D-Day beaches were not actually German.

Tom O'Brien said ideally, they would like to add three more pieces to have a full artillery battery.

All the changes they have made to the building are inspired by German bunkers on the Atlantic Wall, he said. Several of the museum's rooms have been renovated to resemble rooms from a German WWII bunker.

"The Atlantic Wall is what Hitler called the defenses built along the French coast, the Dutch coast, all the way up into Norway," O'Brien said.

Some of the equipment at the museum is Russian, reflecting the fact that Germans placed captured equipment in Normandy, he said.