CERCIL – Study and Research Centre on the Internment Camps in Loiret

CERCIL – Centre d'étude et de recherche sur les camps d'internement du Loiret

The CERCIL research centre was founded in Orléans in 1991. It presents information about the Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande and Jargeau camps in the Département Loiret, which, following the German occupation of Northern France, played a central role in the persecution of Jews and Sinti and Roma. In 2011, the centre was extended by a »memorial museum«, which commemorates the over 4,000 Jewish children who were taken to the Parisian Vélodrome d'Hiver cycling arena in July 1942, after which they were interned at either Pithiviers or Beaune-la-Rolande, and eventually deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp.

History

In June 1940, the French army was defeated by the German Wehrmacht, and Northern France came under German occupation; initially, the south remained unoccupied. The French Republic became the »État Français« (French State), and its Vichy-based government closely cooperated with the Germans. Vichy France established internment camps for Jewish and non-Jewish foreigners, and following the release of the »Statute on Jews« in October 1940, began ostracising Jews both in the occupied and the unoccupied territories. A further statute was introduced in June 1941. Beginning May 14, 1941, Polish Jews were held in camps at Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande in the German occupied Département Loiret; the internment of other foreigners followed in the summer of 1941. They reported to the authorities after being summoned by the prefect of Paris on the insistence of the German occupiers. Both camps were administered by the Département. Between June and September 1942, the SS deported 8,000 Jewish internees from Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers to the Auschwitz death camp. In August 1943, the SS shut down Beaune-la-Rolande, while Pithiviers continued to operate until shortly before the liberation in 1944. It was mainly used for interning political prisoners, especially communists.
The Jargeau camp was established as a reception camp for refugees at the end of 1939. In 1940, it was used to intern POWs. From March 1941 on, the French authorities held »gypsies«, vagrants and prostitutes at Jargeau. The camp was only dismantled in December 1945, over a year after the liberation of France.

Pithiviers, 1941, Overall view of the camp, Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S69236

Orléans, 2011, View of the exhibition, CERCIL

Victims

About 16,000 Jews, including over 4,000 children, were held at the Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers camps between 1941 and 1943, and 1944, respectively. The prisoners did not receive sufficient amounts of food and the barracks they were accommodated in were completely unfurnished. At first, internees could receive visitors and they were allowed to work in nearby factories. Already in autumn 1941, controls were sharpened and the camp was eventually sealed off in May 1942. On June 25 and 28, 1942, the first two transports bound for Auschwitz departed from the camps. In July 1942, 7,000 Jewish women and children were brought to Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers, having been previously held at the Parisian Vélodrome d'Hiver cycling arena. Due to the few provisions, a diphtheria epidemic soon broke out in Pithiviers. Initially, the SS only deported adults to Auschwitz; the abandoned children, many completely distraught, were deported to Auschwitz in separate transports a few weeks later.
The French authorities held 1,720 people at the Jargeau camp, also in the Département Loiret, between 1941 and December 31, 1945. 1,190 of them (including 700 children), were regarded as »gypsies«. The German Wehrmacht field command had demanded their internment. The second-largest prisoner group at Jargeau comprised over 300 prostitutes. Their arrest had too been ordered by the Orléans field command, which apparently wanted to prohibit uncontrolled prostitution. At least 44 women from the Jargeau camp were forced to work in Wehrmacht brothels. Also interned at the camp were 132 Frenchmen who refused to be deployed in forced labour service in the German Reich; after their internment, they were deported to Germany.

With the defeat of the French army in June 1940 the country came under German control. Northern France was governed by the German military administration, whilst the south was initially unoccupied. A government under German influence was established in the spa town of Vichy in the south of France. At the beginning of the Second World War, there were around 300,000 Jews living in France. The exact number is not known as there were no records of religious affiliation in France. The first anti-Jewish laws were passed in northern France at the end of 1940. The Jews were forced to register with the authorities, excluded from society and stripped of their possessions. These policies were followed by systematic arrests by the French police. Jews without a French passport were the main targets of the German SS and police as well as the French authorities. In an attempt to deter growing French resistance, the German military commander General Otto von Stülpnagel (1878–1948) started to have those not involved in the resistance shot and to have Jews in particular arrested. Those arrested were among the first to be deported to the death camps in occupied Poland from March 1942 onwards. A total of 75,000 people were deported to their deaths in the course of over seventy deportation operations. Most of the French Jews survived, mainly in hiding in the south of the country. Around 600,000 people died in France as a result of war and persecution, including 270,000 civilians. There continues to be little distinction drawn between the different groups of victims. However, since the late 1980s there has been increased research into the murder of patients of care homes and clinics. It is now estimated that around 50,000 people fell victim to these operations. Both northern and southern France experienced persecution, collaboration and resistance during the occupation. After the war, remembrance of both the campaign of the »Résistance« as an expression of French patriotism and the suffering associated with the »Déportation« provided a way of bridging the differences between the Gaullist conservatives and the Communists affiliated with Moscow. Consequently, many museums and memorial sites are dedicated to the resistance or remember the deportations, for example the »Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation« (Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation) in Paris, inaugurated in 1956, and the »Centre Européen du Résistant Déporté« (European Centre for Deported Resistance Fighters), which opened in 2005 at the memorial site at the former Natzweiler concentration camp. Since the early 1990s a number of sites of memory have been established, such as the Maison d’Izieu (Izieu Home) memorial near Lyon, which remembers the deportation of 44 Jewish children, the national memorial site at the former camp at Gurs as well as a memorial centre in Oradour sur Glane – a village destroyed by the SS in 1944. The central memorial site dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust is the »Mémorial de la Shoah« in the centre of Paris, which was opened in 2005. French presidents have since then acknowledged shared French responsibility for the Holocaust in France. The memorial site in Caen,commemorating the Normandy landings of 1944, was opened in 1988 and extended in 2002, is the most-visited memorial site outside Paris. The annual national commemorations marking the victory over Nazi Germany take place here. In addition, there are numerous regional museums in France, where the exhibitions focus on the themes of persecution, resistance and deportation.

Remembrance

The CERCIL (Full name: Centre d'étude et de recherche sur les camps d'internement du Loiret, English: Study and Research Centre on the Internment Camps in Loiret) was founded as an association in 1991. On January 27, 2011, former French president Jacques Chirac and former President of the European Parliament, Holocaust survivor Simone Veil, opened the »Memorial Museum to the Children of Vel d'Hiv«, which is part of CERCIL. It recalls the over 4,000 Jewish children who were concentrated at the Vélodrome d´Hiver cycling arena in Paris in July 1942, after which they were interned at either Pithiviers or Beaune-la-Rolande, and eventually deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp. Parts of the original barracks of the Beaune-la-Rolande camp have been reconstructed in the courtyard of the museum, which is located in a former kindergarten in the old town of Orléans. CERCIL covers over 1,000 m², of which 450 m² are accessible to the public. The museum was financed by, among others, the city of Orléans, the communities of Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande and Jargeau, the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, the Département Loiret, the French ministries of culture and defence as well as the city of Paris.

Beaune-la-Rolande, 1941, Prisoners at the camp, Bundesachiv, Bild 101I-250-0939-04A

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition, archive, events

Open

Tuesday 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., Wednesday to Friday and Sunday 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Saturday, Monday by appointment, group visits Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. by appointment

Contact

http://www.cercil.fr/

cercil@cercil.eu

+33 (0)2 384 203 91

45 rue du Bourdon-Blanc
F-45000 Orléans

Orléans, 2011, Memorial plaque in the courtyard, CERCIL

Orléans, 2011, Façade of the Memorial Museum to the Children of Vel d'Hiv, CERCIL

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