Campo do Tarrafal

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Portal of the Campo do Tarrafal

The Campo do Tarrafal (also Colónia Penal do Tarrafal , today also Museu do Tarrafal ) was a Portuguese concentration camp near the town of the same name, Tarrafal on the island of Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands . It was unofficially known as "Campo da morte lenta - camp of slow death".

The concentration camp or secret service prison in Tarrafal

In the years 1936–1954, at the time of the Salazar dictatorship , a concentration camp (" campo de concentração do Tarrafal ") was set up near the town of the same name, Tarrafal . The first prisoners arrived at the Tarrafal camp on October 29, 1936. A total of around 340 prisoners were imprisoned here in the 17 years of the first phase of the camp's existence. These were mainly sailors of the Organização Revolucionário da Armada , who had participated in a revolt on September 8, 1936 , as well as members of the international brigades that had fought in the Spanish Civil War. Republicans, members of the opposition , all members of the Secretariat of the Portuguese Communist Party and other members of the opposition to the Salazar regime were also held prisoner.

32 prisoners died during their imprisonment, including in 1940 Mário Castelhano , leader of the CGT trade union and editor-in-chief of the anarcho-syndicalist daily A Batalha , and in 1942 the Communist Party General Secretary Bento António Gonçalves . The prisoners were tortured in a number of ways. The determined and declared intention of the camp management and the camp doctor was to "let the prisoners die" through inhumane conditions, withheld medical treatment, malnutrition and torture. Untreated severe forms of malaria were the most common cause of death. The prisoners' attempts to escape failed.

The detention conditions of the prisoners as well as the behavior of the guards were similar to those in the German concentration camps . After the Battle of Stalingrad , the brutality of the camp management decreased somewhat and after the end of National Socialism the situation relaxed so much that only two prisoners died from 1945 until the camp was closed on January 26, 1954. Most of the prisoners had also been transferred to mainland Portugal or pardoned until the closure .

From 1938 João da Silva was head of the concentration camp. Da Silva visited the German concentration camps beforehand , and officers were trained in the Dachau concentration camp . The guards consisted of 25 members of the Portuguese secret police PVDE (from 1945 PIDE ), as well as a battalion of over 75 Angolan auxiliary guards and a few Cape Verdeans .

In connection with the escalating Portuguese colonial wars in the years 1961–1974, a second phase of use of the camp followed, which has now been renamed Campo de Trabalho de Chão Bom (English: Labor Camp of Chão Bom). Members of the anti-colonial independence movements from Cape Verde , Guinea-Bissau and Angola were held in custody from 1966, mostly without a court judgment, “preventively” or in “protective custody” by order of the PIDE .

After the Carnation Revolution on April 25, 1974, the camp administration refused to open the camp, in the hope of a political reversal in Portugal. On May 1, 1974, the population of the island of Santiago freed the prisoners in a large demonstration. The camp was then used as a political prison for the new rulers until it was completely closed on July 19, 1975.

In the 1990s and 2000s in particular, the prison was restored and turned into a museum, also with Portuguese help. On January 20, 2016, the Museu do Tarrafal was reopened in the presence of the Cape Verdean Prime Minister José Maria Neves and the Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa .

Web links

Commons : Campo do Tarrafal  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See e.g. E.g .: José Manuel Soares Tavares: O campo de concentração do Tarrafal (1936–1954): a origem eo quotidiano . Edições Colibri, 2007.
  2. ↑ Jürgen Schäfer: "You came to die here": Almost unknown: The Portuguese concentration camp Tarrafal from 1936 to 1954 on Cape Verde . In: Junge Welt , October 19, 2005.
  3. ↑ a b Entry on Colónia Penal do Tarrafal / Museu do Tarrafal (under Cronologia ) in the Portuguese list of monuments SIPA, accessed on June 18, 2017
  4. ↑ Cristina Morais: Tarrafal, de Campo de Concentração a Museu da Resistência: Surgimento da Colónia Penal . noticias.sapo.cv, October 31, 2011, accessed December 26, 2012.

Coordinates: 15 ° 15 ′ 51.7 "  N , 23 ° 44 ′ 38.7"  W.