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Bayeux Tapestry: the lost Nazi archive

In 1994, a French curator helped recover documents thought lost since World War Two. They came from a Nazi research project focused on the Bayeux Tapestry.

In 1994, documents from a Nazi study of the Bayeux Tapestry were rediscovered after more than 50 years.

Former curator of the tapestry, Sylvette Lemagnen, tells Helen Ledwick how the missing archive was found and returned to Bayeux, revealing new details about a wartime investigation into one of the world's most famous medieval artworks.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and archive. Each weekday, in around nine minutes, we revisit one moment that helped shape the world and hear it through the voice of someone who was there. Scientists, artists, campaigners, soldiers, leaders and everyday people tell their true stories.

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(Photo: Jeschke, Jankuhn and Shlabow working on the Bayeux Tapestry, June 1941. Credit: Herbert Jeschke collection/Bayeux Tapestry Museum)

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