Organisations

The Basque Pyrenees Freedom Trails Association [Euskal Pirinioak Askatasun Bideak Elkartea] is a not-for-profit organisation based in the Basque Country, which preserves the wartime escape routes crossing the western Pyrenees.

The Chemin de la Liberté Association is based in the Pyrenees town of St Girons, the starting point for the 4-day arduous trek over the Pyrenees to Esterri D’Aneu in Spain. It is a route representing the many wartime crossings over the high Pyrenees taken by guides and their evaders – Allied airmen, persecuted Jewish families, resistants and others fleeing occupied Europe.

In the 1990s, collaboration between a former Italian POW, Keith Killby, the Liceo Scientifico, and Roger Stanton of ELMS, developed the notion of a trail from Sulmona to the Sangro River to commemorate the escape of Italian POWs and the help they received following the 1943 Armistice.

The Association is based in Anglet. Their goal is to preserve the memory of the Basque Country Comète network to whom the airmen of the Allied forces, and others, during the Second World War, owe so much.

Focus Areas: Memorial upkeep, Research support, Community events, Freedom Trails collaboration with Les Amis du reseau Comète.

'The Crow’s Flight Trail' was developed in collaboration with the Association ZZB NOB Slovenije [Association of the Combatants for the preservation of the values of the National Liberation Struggle of Slovenia]

The WW2 Escape Lines Memorial Society is dedicated to the memory of the escapers, evaders and Helpers of WW2, who demonstrated courage, co-operation and humanity in the face of adversity, an example for the generations who follow them.

The Yorkshire Air Museum & Allied Air Forces Memorial at Elvington works closely with ELMS to host reunion events, exhibitions and educational workshops dedicated to escape-line history. The former RAF Elvington airfield commemorates the...