page_title: Internment camps in France
section_title: During World War II and the Vichy regime
hierarchical_section_title: Internment camps in France / During World War II and the Vichy regime
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Zentralbild II. Weltkrieg 1939-45 Nach der Besetzung Frankreichs durch die faschistische deutsche Wehrmacht werden die nazistischen Rassengesetze auch in Frankreich eingeführt. Die Pässe festgenommener Juden in Paris werden geprüft. 8281-41 August 1941
context_page_description: There were 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 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 were however used during the Algerian War. Several of these were then used to intern harkis after the 19 March 1962 Évian Accords.
context_section_description: As early as 1939, the existing camps were indiscriminately filled with German anti-Nazis (Communists, German Jews, etc. Following the 1940 defeat, and the 10 July 1940 vote of full powers installing the Vichy regime, these camps were 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.
  Beside Jews, Germans and Austrians were immediately rounded-up in camps, as well as Spanish refugees, who were later deported. 5,000 Spaniards thus died in Mauthausen concentration camp. The French colonial soldiers were interned by the Germans on French territory, instead of being deported.
  The Third Republic and the Vichy regime would successively call these places "reception camps" (camps d'accueil), "internment camps" (camps d'internement), séjour camps (camps de séjour), "guarded séjour camps" (camps de séjour surveillés), "prisoner camps" (camps de prisonniers), etc. Another category was created by the Vichy regime: the "transit camps" ("camps de transit"), referring to the fact the detainees were to be deported to Germany. Such "transit camps" included Drancy, Pithiviers, etc. In particular, Pithiviers was used in 1941 for the green ticket roundup, and Drancy in 1942 for the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, before the victims were deported.
  During the 1943 Battle of Marseille and urban scaping operations in the center of town, 20,000 people were expelled from their homes and interned during several months in military camps nearby Fréjus (La Lègue, Caïs and Puget).
  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 (mostly Jewish) with the aim of forming a collection of preserved skeletons for the use of Nazi professor August Hirt.
caption: Arrest of Jews in France, August 1941
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