El-Alamein encyclopedia topics

El Alamein (or Al Alamayn) (العلمين) is a town in northern Egypt on the Mediterranean Sea coast in Matruh Governorate. It is located west of Alexandria and northwest of Cairo. The population was approximately 7,397 people, as of 2007.

Until recently it has mainly been a port facility for shipping oil, but like the whole north coast of Egypt is now developing as a luxury resort for elite tourism.

El Alamein played a major role in the outcome of World War II. Two extended battles were fought in that area:

At the First Battle of El Alamein (July 1 – July 27 1942) the advance of Axis troops on Alexandria was blunted by the Allies, when the German Panzers tried to outflank the allied position.
At the Second Battle of El Alamein (October 23 – November 4, 1942) Allied forces broke the Axis line and forced them in a retreat that pushed them all the way back to Tunisia. Winston Churchill said of this victory: "This is not the end, nor is it even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." He also wrote "Before Alamin we had no victory and after it we had no defeats".

Tourism

There is a local war museum with collectibles from "the civil war" and other North African battles. Visitors can also go to the Italian and German Military Cemetery on Tel el-Eisa Hill just outside the town. The German cemetery is actually an ossuary containing the remains of 4200 German soldiers, built in the style of a medieval fortress. The Italian cemetery is a mausoleum containing many galleries of tombs. Wherever possible, each tomb bears the soldier's name, but many are simply marked "IGNOTO" – which means "Unknown".

There is also a Commonwealth war cemetery with graves of soldiers from various countries who fought on the British side. This has monuments commemorating Greek, New Zealand, Australian and South African forces. The Commonwealth cemetery, as is common at many such cemeteries in the world, consists of parallel rows of gravestones, each one bearing an engraving of the deceased soldier's unit emblem, his name and an epitaph from his family. Rows upon rows of gravestones stand witness to the battles' human cost.