Rivesaltes
The Rivesaltes camp
was established as a military facility in
1936 in the Pyrenees-Orientales area near France’s border with Spain.
It served as a camp for those displaced during
the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s, and
later as a prison for refugees on the losing
side of that conflict.
The Vichy regime created special camps to
roundup Jews and “undesirable refugees.” Rivesaltes
was perhaps the most active transit camp.
The first internees arrived there on January
7, 1941. When it reached its peak population
that year, Rivesaltes had 8,000 prisoners,
an estimated 3,000 of whom were children
(who were separated from their mothers).
Thousands of Jews were shipped from Rivesaltes
to Auschwitz. During one three-month period
in 1942, nine convoys carried 2,313 Jews
to Auschwitz.
The camp was closed in November 1942 and
the approximately 1,000 internees remaining
were sent to Gurs, with the exception of
the gypsies, who were deported to the Camp
of Saliers.
After World
War II, Rivesaltes was used
as a prisoner of war camp for captured Germans.
Later it was a camp for Algerians who fought
against the French in the Algerian War.
In May 2006, it was announced
that a memorial marking the role of France’s
Vichy government in shipping Jews and others
to Nazi death
camps would be created at Rivesaltes.
This will be the first official Holocaust memorial
in Southern France, the stronghold of the
collaborationist Vichy government.
Sources: Jacqueline Trescott, “France
to Shine a Light on Its Notorious Camp,” Washington
Post, (May 2, 2006); French internement camps in 1939-1944; The
Holocaust Chronicle, p. 204; Edward Victor |