Internment camp in Argelès-sur-Mer

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Argelès-sur-Mer beach , the place where the Argelès internment camp was established

The internment camp Argelès-sur-Mer was a camp in southern France for the internment of the remaining members of the People's Army of the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War (Ejército Popular de la República, EPR) and of civilian republican refugees from Catalonia .

Location and other built camps

The camp built in February 1939 was located directly on the Mediterranean coast in the immediate vicinity of the city of Argelès-sur-Mer , now Argelès-Plage. More than 100,000 Spanish refugees were interned in the camp. It was the first in a series of internment camps for these refugees. It followed: Le Barcarès, Saint-Cyprien , Camp de Gurs , Camp de Rivesaltes , Le Vernet and Septfonds .

Historical classification

With the fall of Barcelona on January 26, 1939 and Girona on February 5, 1939, more than half a million refugees fled to the French border. This was the only way to escape from the advancing troops of Franco . Due to international pressure on the French government, Prime Minister Édouard Daladier allowed the fugitives to enter France from February 5. As a result, hundreds of thousands of refugees and the remains of the Republican government and the 130th Brigade of the Spanish Republican People's Army poured into France via the border crossings in La Jonquera and Portbou , mostly on foot.

Internment camp in southern France after the end of the Spanish Civil War, 1939
Memorial stone for the republican refugees who crossed the border at Portbou in February 1939, between Portbou and Cerbère

By February 15, 1939, according to official information, 353,107 people had fled to the French department Pyrénées-Orientales , where around 230,000 people lived at the time. According to a report by the French government (Informe Valière) of March 9, 1939, the number of refugees even reached 440,000. Among the refugees were 170,000 women, children and the elderly, 220,000 soldiers and militiamen , 40,000 invalids and 10,000 wounded. The French government decided to intern the refugees about 35 km from the Spanish border on the beaches of the city of Argelès-sur-Mer .

description

The area was fenced in with barbed wire and guarded by the French army and some gendarmes . The living conditions of the refugees in the Argelès-sur-Mer internment camp were poor. The barracks built by the inmates themselves were made of wood and canvas. Aid supplies from organizations such as the Red Cross were not enough to take care of the refugees, and the food had to be cooked with salt water from the Mediterranean.

Many died of starvation or diseases such as typhus , dysentery and scabies . Pregnant women and small children also suffered in particular. One of the very few who helped here was the Swiss Elisabeth Eidenbenz , who with the help of the Red Cross, donations and many volunteers set up a maternity home in nearby Elne , which was a refuge for many persecuted women, including Jewish, until almost the end of the Second World War and became children.

End of camp

Six months after the establishment of the Argelès-sur-Mer internment camp, World War II broke out. During the German campaign in the west , many of the internees left the camp in June 1940, most of them remaining in France. Some fought in the French army against the Axis powers or joined the Resistance . 7,300 internees who were taken prisoner in Germany were mainly imprisoned in Mauthausen and Gusen .

Others decided to return to Spain and believe the promise of amnesty for those who had not committed violent crimes. Many of these returnees were executed or sent to Franco's concentration camps on their return to their hometowns . Refugees who remained in France, especially leading politicians from the Spanish Republic, were extradited to Spain by Vichy France or the Gestapo and executed there - as in the case of Lluís Companys . Research mentions 13,000 “Red Spaniards” who were picked up by Hitler's troops after the occupation of France and made their way to German concentration camps, where no fewer than 10,000 of them are said to have died - 7,000 of them in the Mauthausen concentration camp alone . In this context, the interbrigadist block in the Dachau concentration camp is known . After the surrender, German Jews were also interned here. The camp was closed in October 1941. The facilities continued to be used by the Vichy regime as a paramilitary youth camp (Chantiers de la jeunesse française).

In the 1960s, the barracks, rebuilt but still looking uniform (lined up in three parallel lines), served as holiday homes for the urban residents of the hinterland; they were also rented to holiday guests.

Aftermath

Memorial stone in Argelès

In 2010 Felip Solé made the film Camp d'Argelès about the living conditions in the internment camp . In 1999 the municipality of Argelès-sur-Mer erected a memorial to the refugees on the beach.

Famous internees

literature

  • Jaime Espinar: Argelés-sur-mer: campo de concentración para Españoles . Editorial Elite, Caracas 1940.
  • Denis Fernandez Recatala: The camps pour les republicains espagnols . In: Le Monde diplomatique , February 1999, p. 24.
  • Francisco Pons: Barbelés à Argelès et autour d'autres camps . L'Harmattan, Paris 1993, ISBN 2-7384-1875-9 .
  • Collectif: Répression. Camps d'internment en France pendant la 2 e guerre mondiale. Aspects of the phenomenon of concentration. Jean Monnet-Université , Center d'histoire régionale. St. Étienne 1982 (Bulletin des Center, numéro spéciale). Without ISBN. Readable online in Google Book Search (French).
  • Denis Peschanski: Les Camps d'internement en France (1938-1946) . Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris 2000 PDF .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hell on the beach / “un infern sobre la sorra”, the French internment camps of Argelès and Saint-Cyprien 1939–1940 on floerken.de. with picture and text of the memorial stone with German translation (accessed May 2013)
  2. ↑ So to the writer of these lines, who at the time had no knowledge of the property's past, while on vacation with his parents
  3. ↑ Description of Camp d'Argelès on www.cinemovies.fr ( Memento of the original from March 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (French) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cinemovies.fr
  4. ↑ Description of Camp d'Argelès on www.kalimago.com (French)

Coordinates: 42 ° 34 ′ 0 ″  N , 3 ° 2 ′ 35 ″  E