Internment camps in France


Numerous internment camps and concentration camps were located in France before, during and after World War II. Beside the camps created during World War I to intern German, Austrian and Ottoman civilian prisoners, the Third Republic opened various internment camps for the Spanish refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War. Following the prohibition of the French Communist Party by the government of Édouard Daladier, they were used to detain communist political prisoners. The Third Republic also interned German anti-Nazis.

Then, after the 10 July 1940 vote of full powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain and the proclamation of the État français, these camps were used to intern Jews, Gypsies, and various political prisoners. Vichy opened up so many camps that it became a full economic sector, to the extent that historian Maurice Rajsfus writes: "The quick opening of new camps created jobs, and the Gendarmerie never ceased to hire during this period." In any case, most of these camps were closed definitively after the liberation of France at the end of World War II. Some "regroupement camps" were however used during the Algerian War. Several of these were then used to intern harkis after the 19 March 1962 Évian Accords. Finally, the Camp de Rivesaltes in the Pyrénées-Orientales and the camp of Bourg-Lastic in the Puy de Dôme were also used to intern Kurdish refugees from Iraq in the 1980s.

First World War and later

The first internment camps were opened during the First World War to detain civilian prisoners. These prisoners were detained in Pontmain in the department of Mayenne, Fort-Barreaux in Isère, in the military camp of Graveson, in Frigolet near Tarascon, Noirlac, and Ajain.
Other internment camps were used for Armenians in the 1920s-1930s ; Gypsies after the 1912 Act on nomadism.

Spanish Civil War

The most infamous internment camps before World War II were used to intern the Spanish Republican refugees and military personnel during the Spanish Civil War. In 2 weeks in January and February 1939 around 500,000 men, women and children crossed the border. These were interned mostly in camps in the Roussillon Province, such as the Camp de concentration d'Argelès-sur-Mer although internment camps for defeated Spanish Republicans were established in all of French territory, even in Brittany, in the north-west of France. These camps were located in:
To these camps must be added the camps for the German prisoners in 1939, and those of the Colonial Empire, not well known in Europe.
Furthermore, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who had been named Consul in Paris for Immigration, organized the transportation to Chile of 2,200 Spanish refugees who had been detained in the camps on board the Winnipeg, which departed on 2 August 1939, and arrived in Valparaíso at the beginning of September 1939.
After 1940 when the Nazi Germany divided France in occupied and free zone, the camps were also used to imprison Jews, Gypsies, and sometimes gays, and the original prisoners were used as forced labor to make the camps larger.

During World War II and the Vichy regime

As early as 1939, the existing camps were indiscriminately filled with German anti-Nazis, "internment camps", séjour camps, "guarded séjour camps", "prisoner camps", etc. Another category was created by the Vichy regime: the "transit camps", referring to camps that briefly held prisoners before deportation to other Nazi camps. Beaune-la-Rolande, Pithiviers, Drancy and Compiègne formed the core of the internment and deportation system for Jews in northern France. Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande were used during the 1941 green ticket roundup as well as during the 1942 Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, before the victims, including children, were transferred to Drancy and finally deported to Auschwitz were they were murdered.
During the 1944 Battle of Marseille and urban in the center of town, 20,000 people were expelled from their homes and interned during several months in military camps nearby Fréjus.
The camp of Struthof, or Natzweiler-Struthof, in Alsace, one of the concentration camps created by Nazis on annexed French territory, included a gas chamber which was used to kill at least 86 detainees with the aim of forming a collection of preserved skeletons for the use of Nazi professor August Hirt.

Second World War camps

Camps under foreign authorities

The Nazis also opened Struthof in Alsace.
The United States military police also possessed legal authority over the camp in Septèmes-les-Vallons, in the Bouches-du-Rhône.

Ilags

Ilag were internment camps established by the German Army to hold Allied civilians, captured in areas that were occupied by the Germans. They included US citizens caught in Europe by surprise when the war was declared in December 1941 and citizens of the British Commonwealth caught in areas engulfed by the Blitzkrieg.
  • Besançon in the Doubs. Also called Frontstalag 142, it was actually an internment camp. At the end of 1940, 2,400 women, mostly British, were interned in the Vauban barracks and another five hundred, 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 in June 1940 and remained in use 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 meagre 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.
  • Vittel, Frontstalag 121 was located in requisitioned hotels in this spa near Epinal in the Vosges department. Most of the British families and single women were transferred here from Saint-Denis and Besançon. In early 1942, women over sixty, men over seventy-five and children under sixteen were released. The overall population was thus reduced to about 2,400. The inmates included a number of North-American families and women.
Although not architecturally conceived as an internment camp, the in Paris was used during the July 1942 Roundup. Most internment camps, however, were not conceived as such. The was also used during the Algerian War.

Colonial administration

Within the French colonial empire, the Vichy régime established labour camps for Jews in Algeria and in Morocco. They included:

The liberation

German prisoners of war

Camps were also used after the liberation to intern German prisoners. In Rennes, after General Patton's United States Third Army liberated the city on 4 August 1944, about 50,000 German prisoners were kept in four camps in a city of 100,000 inhabitants at the time.
In the Camp de Rivesaltes, the German prisoners worked extensively in the reconstruction of Pyrénées-Orientales, between May 1945 and 1946, 412 German prisoners of war died in the camp.

After World War II

Indochina War

Internment camps were used to receive French from Indochina following the end of the Indochina War in 1954, as well as approximatively 9,000 Hungarian refugees following the Budapest insurrection of 1956. Humanitarian concerns largely intertwined with repressive aims, and internment restrictions and assistance given to populations varied widely.

Algerian War

Internment was also put to use during the Algerian War, generally under the name of "camps de regroupement" to prevent their falling under the influence of the opposing FLN forces. were brought to French metropolitan territory.
In France, some camps used under Vichy were opened again, in Paris in particular, to hold suspected FLN and other Algerian independentists.

The Harkis

Internment camps were also used to intern the Harkis after the 19 March 1962 Évian Accords which put an official end to the war. Finally, the Camp de Rivesaltes in the Pyrénées-Orientales, and Bourg-Lastic in the Puy de Dôme, used to intern Jews, were also used to intern Harkis in the 1960s, and Kurdish refugees from Iraq in the 1980s.