Saliers Camp Memorial

Mémorial du camp de Saliers

Near the city of Arles, a sculpture and a memorial stone commemorate one of the two internment camps for Sinti and Roma that were set up in southern France under the Vichy regime: the Saliers internment camp. Between 1942 and 1944, almost 700 Sinti and Roma were detained there under inhumane conditions.

History

After France surrendered to the German Wehrmacht in June 1940, France was divided into two zones: the »zone occupée« (»occupied zone«) in the north and the unoccupied »zone libre« (»free zone«) in the south, which was administered by the Vichy regime.

The persecution of Sinti and Roma in France began with their expulsion from Alsace, which had been annexed by the German Reich, to the »zone libre«, where the French authorities arrested them and sent them to internment camps originally intended for Republican refugees from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

As a result of criticism from foreign newspapers on the treatment of Sinti and Roma by the French authorities, the Vichy government decided in March 1942 to set up a »show camp« for the internment of Sinti and Roma in Saliers, a village not far from Arles in Camargue. The location was not chosen randomly: Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a holy site where Sinti and Roma go on pilgrimage to honour their patron saint, Saint Sarah (or »Sara the Black«), is located nearby. Architect Jacques van Migom was commissioned to design the camp, which he modelled on a traditional Camargue village for propaganda purposes while showing little regard to the actual suitability of the huts for habitation. The camp was formally opened on June 15, 1942, although its construction had not been fully completed yet. Therefore, the first prisoners who arrived in July 1942 from the Rivesaltes camp were used as forced labourers to finalise the construction works.

Despite the takeover of the »zone sud« (»south zone«) by the Germans in November 1942, the Saliers camp remained under French administration. Between July 1942 and August 1944, several hundred Sinti and Roma were detained there. The prisoners were subjected to extremely difficult living conditions: they had no access to heating, running water and sewage disposal and suffered from cold, malnutrition and disease. On August 17, 1944, the camp was hit by an Allied air raid. 211 prisoners took advantage of this opportunity to escape. A few days later, the camp was cleared and officially closed on October 15, 1944.

Saliers, 1942, Barrack in the Saliers camp, CD 13 / Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, cote 142 W 76

Saliers, 1942, Map of the Saliers camp, CD 13 / Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, cote 142 W 76

Victims

Almost 700 Sinti and Roma were detained in the Saliers internment camp between June 1942 and August 1944. Between 30 and 40 percent of them were children. A total of 227 children were forcibly separated from their parents and placed in public welfare institutions in Arles and Marseille to be »re-educated«. 25 prisoners, including 6 children, died as a result of the inhumane living conditions in the camp.

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 World War II, the Saliers internment camp was used as a set for the film »The Wages of Fear« by French director Henri-Georges Clouzot and subsequently demolished in 1952.

For a long time, the persecution of Sinti and Roma remained a neglected topic in France. In 1997, during a remembrance ceremony for the victims of the deportation, then-President Jacques Chirac made a reference to the Sinti and Roma victims of Nazi persecution for the first time. However, it took until October 2010 for a law proposal to be presented to the National Assembly stating the official recognition of the genocide of the Sinti and Roma and setting its official commemoration on April 5. Moreover, in 2013, then-President François Hollande acknowledged the responsibility of the French state in the internment of Sinti and Roma from 1940 until 1946.

On February 2, 2006, a sculpture by Arles-based sculptor Jean-Claude Guerri was unveiled at the former site of the Saliers camp. It bears the following inscription, which became controversial due to its choice of words: »Saliers gypsy camp [in French »camp de gitans«]. June 1942 to August 1944. 700 nomads were detained here under the authority of the Vichy regime.« In 2015, an additional memorial stone was placed next to the sculpture with a complementary text on the history of the camp.

Saliers, 2024, View of the Memorial for Saliers Camp, Thomas Klinkenberg

Saliers, 2024, Information plaque on the memorial stone for the Saliers Camp, Thomas Klinkenberg, public domain

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times.

Contact

filsfillesinternescampsaliers@gmail.com

+33 6 18 31 98 48

13123 Arles, France

Saliers, 2024, Former location of the Saliers Camp, Thomas Klinkenberg, public domain

Saliers, 1942, View of the Saliers camp, CD 13 / Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, cote 142 W 76

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