Camp des Milles

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The Camp des Milles was a French internment camp, opened in September 1939, in a former tile factory near the village of Les Milles, part of the commune of Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône). I

The camp was first used to intern Germans and ex-Austrians living in the Marseilles Area, and by June 1940, some 3500 artists and intellectuals were detained there. Novelist Lion Feuchtwanger was an inmate. Surrealist artists Hans Bellmer and Max Ernst were imprisoned in the Camp des Milles prison for most of World War II. Between 1941 and 1942 Le Camp des Milles was used as a transit camp for Jews, mainly men. Women were at the Centre Bompard in Marseilles, while they waited for their visas and anthorisations to emigrate. As emigration became imossible Les Milles became one one of the Centre de rassemblement before deportation. 2000 of the inmates were shipped off to Drancy camp on the way to Auschwitz

After the war, the site was briefly re-opened in 1946 as a factory.

Since 1993, the sites serves as a World War II memorial.

In 1995 a movie titled "Les Milles" commemorating this camp and the events that took place in this camp at the time of the Armistice in June 1940 was made.