Concentration camps in France

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There have been internment camps and concentration camps in France before, during and after World War II. Beside the camps created during World War I to intern German, Austrian and Ottomans civilians prisoners, the Third Republic (1871-1940) opened various internment camps for the Spanish refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Following the prohibition of the French Communist Party (PCF) by the government of Edouard Daladier, they were used to detain communist political prisoners. The Third Republic also interned German anti-Nazis (mostly members of the German Communist Party, KPD). Then, after the July 10, 1940 vote of the full powers to Marshall Pétain and the proclamation of the "state of France" ("l'Etat français", aka "Vichy regime"), these camps were used to intern Jewish people, Gypsies, and various political prisoners (anti-fascists from all countries). Vichy opened up so many camps that it became a full economic sector, to the extent that historian Maurice Rajsfus may write: "The quick opening of new camps was creative of employements, and the Gendarmerie never ceased to hire during this period."[1] Years before Rajsfus, Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) that the problem of refugees was the 20th century's most important problem. In any cases, most of these camps were closed after the Liberation, although such was not the case for all of them. Some remained in activity, and were used during the Algerian War (1954-62), in particular several in Paris, before and after the 1961 Paris massacre, and also to intern harkis (Algerians who had fought on the French side) after the March 19, 1962 Evian agreements. Finally, the camp of Bourg-Lastic in the Puy de Dôme, which was used during Vichy to intern Jews (among them, André Glucksmann) was used not only to intern harkis in the 1960s, but also Kurdish refugees from Iraq in the 1980s.

Contents

[edit] Before World War II

The first internment camps were opened during the First World War (1914-18), and were used to detain civilian prisoners (mainly German, Austrian and Ottomans). These prisoners were detained in Pontmain in the department of Mayenne. But the most famous internment camps before WWII were used to receive the Republican refugees during the Spanish Civil War. These were interned mostly in the Roussillon Province, although concentration camps were dispatched on all of the French territory, even in Brittany, in the north-west of France. These camps were located in:

  • Agde in the Hérault department (near Montpellier)
  • Argelès-sur-Mer, between Perpignan and the border
  • Camp Gurs in the Pyrénées-Atlantique, which received Spanish refugees following the defeat of the Spanish Republic. These were distinguished by the French state into Brigadists, gudaris (Basque nationalists) who had escaped from the siege of Santander, pilots, and farmers. The latter had trades that were in low demand, and the French government, in agreement with the Francoist government, incited them to return to Spain. The great majority did so and were turned over to the Francoist authorities in Irún. From there they were transferred to the Miranda de Ebro camp for purification according to the Law of Political Responsibilities.
  • Moisdon-la-Rivière and Juigné-des-Moutiers in Loire-Atlantique department (Britanny).[2]
  • Rivesaltes, in the department of Roussillon, closed in 1942. The Jewish detainees were sent to Drancy internment camp, near Paris, the Gypsies to Saliers and the Spanish to Gurs.[3]

To this six camps, one must add the camps for the German prisoners in 1939 (sometimes overlapping with the precedents), and those of the Colonial Empire, not well known in Europe.

[edit] During the Second War and the Vichy regime

Further information: Vichy France

As soon as 1939, the existing camps were undiscriminately filled with German anti-Nazis (Communists, German Jews, etc.) or pro-Nazi Germans or also Nazi war prisoners. Following the 1940 defeat, and the July 10, 1940 vote of full powers to Marshall Pétain, who abolished the Republic on the following day and proclaimed the regime of the "French state" (aka Vichy regime), these camps would be filled with Jews, first with foreign Jews, then indifferently with foreign and French Jews. The Vichy government would progressively hand them up to the Gestapo, and they would all transit by Drancy internment camp, the last stop before concentration camps in the Third Reich and in Eastern Europe and the extermination camps.

The Third Republic and the Vichy regime would successively call these places "reception camps" ("camps d'accueil"), "internment camps" ("camps d'internement"), "sojourn camps" ("camps de séjour"), "guarded sojourn camps" ("camps de séjour surveillés"), "prisoner camps" ("camps de prisonniers"), etc. Another category was invented by Pétain's regime: the "transit camps" ("camps de transit"), referring by that the detainees were to be deported to Germany. Such "transit camps" include Drancy, Pithiviers, etc.

There were no extermination camps in France. However, the camp of Struthof, or Natzweiller-Struthof, in Alsace, which is the only concentration camp created by Nazis on French territory (annexed by the Third Reich) did include a gas chamber which was use to exterminate at least 86 detainees (mostly Jewish) in the aim of constituting a collection of preserved skelettons (as this mode of execution did no damage to the skeletons themselves) for the use of Nazi professor August Hirt.

[edit] Non-exhaustive list of 49 camps during the war

  • Aincours, in Seine-et-Oise, is the first internment camp in the Northern Zone. It was opened on October 5, 1940, and quickly filled with members of the French Communist Party (PCF)[4]
  • Les Alliers, near Angoulême, in Charente
  • Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans (Saline royale d'Arc-et-Senans) in the Doubs, used for Gypsies[5]
  • Avrillé-les-Ponceaux in Indre-et-Loire, camp of the Morellerie for Gypsies
  • Le Barcarès in the Roussillon
  • Beaune-la-Rolande in the Loiret
  • Bourg-Lastic in the Puy de Dôme, a former military camp where Jews where detained (André Glucksmann was detained there during four years). The camp would be used after the war, for Harkis in the 1960s and Kurdish refugees from Iraq in the 1980s (see below).
  • Bram in the Aude (1939-1940)
  • Brens in the Tarn, near Gaillac (1939-1940)
  • Choiseul, in Chateaubriant in Brittany, in Loire-Atlantique (1941-1942)[6]
  • Camp of Royallieu in Compiègne in Picardie (June 1941 to August 1944). It was used to intern the Jewish detainees arrested during the January 1943 Battle of Marseille. Robert Desnos (1900-1945) and famous French Resistant Jean Moulin (1899-1943) transited through this camp.
  • Coudrecieux in the Sarthe, used to intern Gypsies
  • Douadic in the Indre department
  • Drancy internment camp, created in 1939 by the Third Republic, under Edouard Daladier's government, to detain members of the PCF (Communist Party), which had been declared illegal following the German-Soviet Pact. The "French state" of Pétain would send there the Gendarmerie to guard the camp. It had three annexes in Paris: the Austerlitz camp, the Lévitan camp, and the Bassano camp.
  • Fort-Barraux in the department of Isère.[7] It had already been used as a prison during the French Revolution; Antoine Barnave was imprisoned there.
  • Camp Gurs in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques), created in 1939 for the Spanish refugees. During the Phony War, the Third Republic used it to intern "indésirables" ("undesirables"), that is Germans who were found in France, without regard to ethnicity or political orientation, as foreign citizens of an enemy power. Among them stands out a significant number of German Jews who had fled the very Nazi regime; citizens of countries who were in the orbit of the Reich, like Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Fascist Italy, or Poland; French activists of the left (trade unionists, socialists, anarchists, and especially, communists), following the proscription of the PCF by Daladier after the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact; the first of these arrived June 21, 1940, and the majority were relocated in other camps before the end of the year. In Gurs were also interned during this period: anti-militarists, representatives of the French extreme right who sympathized with the Nazi regime, ordinary prisoners evacuated from prisons in the north of the country ahead of the German advance, prisoners waiting trial for common crimes. Then, under Vichy, Camp Gurs was used to detain foreign Jews, German Jews deported by the SS from Germany, persons who had illegally crossed the border of the zone occupied by the Germans, Spaniards fleeing Francoist Spain, Spaniards coming from other camps that had been condemned for being inhabitable or due to their scarce contingent, stateless persons, people involved in prostitution, homosexuals, Gypsies and indigents.
  • Jargeau, near Orléans, used for the internment of Gypsies
  • Lalande in the Yonne,
  • Linas-Montlhéry in the Seine-et-Oise for Gypsies
  • Marolles in the Loir-et-Cher
  • Masseube in the Gers
  • Les Mazures in the Ardennes department, where a Judenlager was opened from July 1942 to January 1944
  • Mérignac in the Gironde. This is where Maurice Papon had Jews interned before going to Drancy. Among others, Robert Aron was detained there.
  • Meslay-du-Maine, in Mayenne department (1939-1940)
  • Camp des Milles near Aix-en-Provence in the Bouches-du-Rhône, which was the largest internment camp in the South-East of France. 2,500 Jews were deported from there following the August 1942 raids. Novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, Surrealist artists Hans Bellmer and Max Ernst were among the famous inmates detained in this concentration camp.[8]
  • Montceau-les-Mines
  • Nexon in the Haute-Vienne
  • Noé - Mauzac in the Haute-Garonne
  • Montreuil-Bellay in the Maine-et-Loire, created to intern Gypsies
  • Les Tourelles in Paris
  • Pithiviers transit camp in Pithiviers. Jewish novelist Irène Némirovsky (1903-1942) was interned there.
  • Poitiers in the Vienne department to intern Gypsies
  • Port-Louis, in Morbihan, in the fort
  • Recebedou, in Haute-Garonne, in the suburbs of Toulouse[9]
  • Camp of Rieucros in Lozère (the mathematician Alexander Grothendieck was interned there)
  • Rivesaltes, in the Pyrénées Orientales;[10]
  • Fort of Romainville in the outskirts of Paris. The fort was invested in 1940 by the German military and transformed into a prison. From there, Resistants and hostages were directed to the camps. 3,900 women and 3,100 men were interned before being deported to Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald and Dachau. 152 persons were executed by firing-squad in the fort itself. A few escaped, such as Pierre Georges, alias "Colonel Fabien." From his cell, Danièle Casanova motivated and encouraged her comrades to confront their torturers.[11]
  • Rouille
  • Camp of Royalieu in Compiègne
  • Saint-Cyprien in the Roussillon. 90,000 Spanish refugees were interned there in March 1939, and it was officially closed on 19 December 1940 for "sanitary reasons", its occupants transferred to the Camp of Gurs.[12]
  • Saint-Maurice-aux-Riches-Hommes in the Yonne, for Gypsies
  • Saint-Paul d'Eyjeaux in the Haute-Vienne
  • Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe. Located near Toulouse, this transit camp was set up after the beginning of the Phony War. It was to house "individuals representing a danger to national security" - mostly militant communists. In June 1940, with the first German attacks on the Soviet Union, people with Russian citizenship were interned there. Later, foreign Jews who had been living in hiding in the South of France and were rounded up in the summer of 1942 were also sent to the camp. The inmates, especially the communists, organized many cultural activities, a "little university," in which each one contributed their knowledge for the collective good. From the summer of 1942 to the closing of the camp in August 1944, most of its inmates were deported to the East, to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.[13]
  • Saliers concentration camp near Arles in the Bouches-du-Rhône, interned Gypsies
  • Schirmeck in Alsace in the part not annexed by the Third Reich
  • Septfonds,
  • Thil in Meurthe-et-Moselle ;
  • Vernet in the Ariège which concentrated 12,000 Spanish refugees as soon as 1939. Was used after the war for the internment of the harkis.
  • Vittel in the Vosges department, where US or British citizens were interned
  • Voves in the Eure-et-Loir ;
  • Woippy in the department of Moselle, created in 1943.

[edit] Ilags

Further information: Ilag

Ilag (for Internierunslager) were internment camps established by the German Army to hold Allied civilians, caught in areas that were occupied by the Germans. They included United States citizens caught in Europe by surprise when war was declared in December 1941 and citizens of the British Commonwealth caught in areas engulfed by the Blitzkrieg.

  • Besançon in the Doubs (in the Vauban barracks). Also called Frontstalag 142, it was actually an Ilag (Internierunslager): internment camps established by the German Army to hold Allied civilians, caught in areas that were occupied by the Germans. They included US citizens caught in Europe by surprise when war was declared in December 1941 and citizens of the British Commonwealth caught in areas engulfed by the Blitzkrieg. At the end of 1940, 2,400 women, mostly British, were interned in the Vauban barracks and another 500 old and sick in the St. Jacques hospital close by. In early 1941 many of them were released, the rest were transferred to Vittel.
  • Saint-Denis, near Paris. Located in the barracks, the camp was opened June 1940 and existed until liberated by the United States Army in August 1944. Part of the grounds were surrounded by barbed wire to provide open space for exercise. In early 1942 there were more than 1,000 male British internees in the camp. The meager food rations were augmented by the International Red Cross packages, so that overall their diet was satisfactory. Life was tolerable because there was a good library and recreation was provided by sports activities and theater[14]
  • Vittel. Aka Frontstalag 121, located in requisitioned hotels in this spa near Epinal in the Department Vosges. Most of the British families and single women were transferred here from St.Denis and Besançon. In early 1942 women over 60, men over 75 and children under 16 were released. The overall population was thus reduced to about 2,400. The inmates included a number of North-American families and women.

[edit] Others (Struthof and Colonial Empire)

The Nazis also opened Struthof in Alsace (in the part annexed by the Reich). Although not an internment camp, the Winter Velodrome was used during the July 1942 Vel'd'hiv raid. It was also used during the Algerian War (see below).

In the colonial empire, Vichy created in Algeria and in Morocco labour camps ("camps de travail") for Jews in:

  • Abadla, Algeria
  • Ain el Ourak
  • Bechar, Algeria
  • Berguent
  • Bogari
  • Bouarfa
  • Djefa
  • Kenadsa
  • Meridja
  • Missour, Morocco
  • Tendrara

[edit] The Liberation

Camps were also used during the Liberation to intern German prisoners. In Rennes, after Patton's army freed the city on August 4, 1940, about 50,000 German prisoners had to be kept in 4 camps in a city of 100,000 inhabitants at the time.

[edit] After World War II

Internment camps were used during the Algerian War (1954-62), generally under the name of "camps de regroupement" ("grouping camps"). Furthermore, camps used under Vichy were opened again, in Paris, in particular before and after the 1961 Paris massacre. Among other places, the Winter Velodrome was used by the Prefecture of police, directed by Maurice Papon (who died in 2007, after having served three years of prison for crimes against humanity) to intern Algerians (then "French citizens", although their status was restricted) during the 1961 Paris massacre. Internment camps were also used to intern the harkis (Algerians who fought on the French Army's side) after the March 19, 1962 Evian agreements which put an official end to the war. Finally, at least one, Bourg-Lastic in the Puy de Dôme, used to intern Jews (among them, André Glucksmann) was used not only to intern harkis in the 1960s, but also Kurdish refugees from Iraq in the 1980s.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Maurice Rajsfus, Drancy, un camp de concentration très ordinaire, Cherche Midi éditeur (2005).
  2. ^ Moisdon-la-Rivière - Les Espagnols Internés à Moisdon-la-Rivière and Le Camp de La Forge in Moisdon-la-Rivière
  3. ^ CAMP DE RIVESALTES
  4. ^ Aincourt, camp d’internement et centre de tri
  5. ^ Saline royale d'Arc et Senans (25) - L'internement des Tsiganes
  6. ^ CAMP DE CHATEAUBRIANT
  7. ^ Le Centre de séjour surveillé de Fort-Barraux
  8. ^ Listes des internés du camp des Milles 1941
  9. ^ Liste des internés transférés à Drancy
  10. ^ Liste des internés transférés à DSrancy
  11. ^ Source site de Mémoire et espoir de la Résistance
  12. ^ Liste des internés transférés à Gurs
  13. ^ Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe Camp (note confusion about dates concerning the Phony War) (English)
  14. ^ New Zealand report p.146

[edit] Bibliography

  • La SNCF sous l'Occupation allemande, Institut du temps présent, CNRS, 1996
  • Maurice Rajsfus, Drancy, un camp de concentration très ordinaire, 1941-1944, Le Cherche-midi éditeur, 2005, ISBN 2862744352
  • Madeleine Steinberg, « Les camps de Besançon et de Vittel », dans Le Monde Juif, n°137, janvier-mars 1990
  • Thomas Fontaine, Les oubliés de Romainville. Un camp allemand en France (1940-1944), Taillandier, 2005

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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