Rivesaltes Memorial — Joffre Camp

Mémorial du Camp de Rivesaltes

The Rivesaltes military camp was established in the Département Pyrénées-Orientales in 1938. It served, among others, as an internment camp of the Vichy Regime. Spanish civil war refugees, Sinti and Roma, political opponents and Jews were held here - a total of about 20,000 people. In 1942, 2,500 Jewish prisoners were deported from Rivesaltes to the Drancy transit camp or directly to Auschwitz.

History

The Joffre military camp, named after general Joseph Joffre who was commander-in-chief of the French Army during the First World War, was established in 1938. Here, soldiers were to be trained for deployment abroad and adapt to the climate - Rivesaltes is about 50 km north of the Spanish border on a barren plateau which is exposed to severe winds.
At first, refugees from the Spanish civil war, of whom tens of thousands had come to Southern France at the end of 1939, were interned at Joffre Camp. After the German Wehrmacht defeated the French army in June 1940, Rivesaltes lay in the unoccupied part of France which was administered by the Vichy government, a close ally of Germany. In January 1941, the Vichy regime opened the »Centre d'Hébergement de Rivesaltes« (Rivesaltes Accommodation Centre) on the camp premises for interning Sinti and Roma, political opponents and Jews, including many Jewish deportees from Baden and the Palatinate, who had been deported to the Gurs camp in October 1940. In May 1941, there were 9,500 prisoners of 16 nationalities at Rivesaltes. The harsh climate, the terrible sanitary conditions and the constant undernourishment the prisoners were subjected to claimed many lives. In August 1942, the Vichy authorities converted Rivesaltes into a regional collection camp, from which Jews were deported in nine transports to the Drancy transit camp near Paris or directly to the Auschwitz extermination camp.

Rivesaltes, 1942, Internees at the camp, Fonds Auguste Bohny

Rivesaltes, 2009, Stele to the deported Jews, MMCR/CGPO

Victims

Among the prisoners of the Rivesaltes camp were Spanish Republican refugees; they were deployed in labour details alongside other prisoners. The Vichy regime also held political opponents, Sinti and Roma, and Jews at Rivesaltes. The harsh climate and the terrible sanitary conditions led to many deaths. From summer until autumn 1942, Rivesaltes served as the central transit camp in Southern France for the deportation of about 2,500 Jewish men, women and children to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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

After the liberation of Southern France in the summer of 1944, German and Italian prisoners of war as well as French collaborators were held in parts of the military camp Rivesaltes. Already in 1962, it accommodated Algerians who had fought on the side of the French in the Algerian civil war and were forced to flee after the country gained independence. This camp was gradually dismantled until 1972. Between 1986 and 2007, two barracks were used as a camp for illegal immigrants pending deportation. Today, the camp is still property of the French military forces.
In 1997, plans of tearing down the remains of the camp were announced, as a result of which a citizens' initiative submitted a petition for the preservation of the premises - the petition was signed by 1,000 people, including Auschwitz survivor and former President of the European Parliament Simone Veil, and writer Claude Simon. A part of the former camp premises, Îlot F (42 of 600 hectares total), was purchased from the French military and placed under monumental protection in 2000. That same year, the development of a memorial museum was begun. Architect Rudy Ricciotti won the tender for the design of the memorial; the subterranean information centre he designed was finished in 2015. Beside a spacious permanent exhibition the building houses facilities for research and education.
Five stelea already commemorate the different groups which were held at Rivesaltes: one stele, initiated by Serge Klarsfeld in 1984, recalls the deportation of Jewish internees from Rivesaltes, either via transit camps or directly to Auschwitz. A second stele honours the Spanish refugees at the camp, a third is dedicated to the imprisoned Sinti and Roma. The fourth stone commemorates the refugees from Algeria, the so-called Harkis. After relocation of the camp for illegal immigrants, a stele was erected for its inmates also.

Rivesaltes, 1942, Children at the camp, Fonds Auguste Bohny

Rivesaltes, 2009, Stele to the Sinti and Roma, MMCR/CGPO

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition, temporary exhibitions, guided tours

Open

April to October daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.,
November to March Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.,
Closed January 1, May 1, November 1 and December 25

Contact

http://www.memorialcamprivesaltes.eu/

info@memorialcamprivesaltes.fr

+33 (0)468 08 39 70

Avenue Christian Bourquin 66600 Salses-le-Château
92300 Rivesaltes

Rivesaltes, undated, Aerial view of »Îlot F« section of the former camp before the museum was built, MMCR/CGPO, Nicole Bergé

Rivesaltes, 2015, View of the permanent exhibition, Mémorial du Camp de Rivesaltes, Kevin Dolmaire

Rivesaltes, 2015, Exterior detail of the new museum building, Mémorial du Camp de Rivesaltes, Kevin Dolmaire

Rivesaltes, 2015, The new museum building underneath the ground level, Mémorial du Camp de Rivesaltes, Kevin Dolmaire

Rivesaltes, undated, Ruins of former barracks, MMCR/CGPO

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