Vichy Concentration Camps: Rivesaltes (France, 1940-44)


Figure 1.--The AP destributed five photographs of internment camps in Vichy France to U.S. newspapers. We do not know how the photographs were obtained. The captions provided very little information. Here the caption read only, "Interned children: This group of children is at the Rivesaltes Camp for internees in France." There was no explanation of who the children were or wehy they were being interned. The photograph was dated May 7, 1941.

The Camp de Rivesaltes was also known as Camp Joffre. It was opened as a French military camp in the commune of Rivesaltes in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales in the South of France. The camp was also used to detain civil populations several times between 1939 and 2007. It was to accomodate Catalan refufees from Franco's victory in Spain, but only a few Spanish refufgees were housed here. After the German invasion (May-June 1940). the Germans began deporting Jews to France. The decesion to murder Jews had not yet been taken. German Jews in Western Landen (Baden, the Saar, and the Palatinate), including some of the oldest German Jewish families, were deported in October 1940 to camps in the French Pyrenees (Gurs, Noé, Récébédou, and Rivesaltes). The death rate was very high because there were not even the most basic facilities. The camps were run by Vichy not German authorities. Once the German deat camps in Polabd were operational, the GErmans began deporting Jews from Western Europe. The Vichy authorities complied with German instructions. The first target was foreign Jews. The French transferred 2,251 Jews, including 110 children, from Rivesaltes via the Drancy internment camp to Auschwitz, where most were gassed upon arrival (August-October 1942).






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Created: 8:03 AM 1/5/2013
Last updated: 8:03 AM 1/5/2013