Garaison Detention Center

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The Garaison internment camp was a French internment camp from 1914 to 1919 near Monléon-Magnoac in the Pyrenees , at the foot of the Pic du Midi mountain .

Location and history

The Marian Shrine of Notre-Dame de Garaison is a religious site of great importance to the Christians of the Diocese of Tarbes and Lourdes . The Notre-Dame de Garaison school was built near the site where the Virgin Mary appeared to the shepherdess Anglèze de Sagazan in the 16th century: the school was founded in 1841 by Father Peydessus.

As a result of the law on the separation of property between church and state, the priests had to leave the convent school Notre-Dame de Garaison in 1905. In 1914 an internment camp was set up on its premises, in which numerous German-Austrian and Ottoman families were interned who were on French territory at the time of the declaration of war. In 1923, former students bought the building back: the clergy and the school moved back there and the traces of the camp were covered as best as possible.

Internment camp

Far away from the front in Garaison, entire families, women and children were held prisoner in addition to conscript men. Even random holidaymakers from abroad were interned. Many of them had lived or were born in France for several years. There were various official names for the camp, including “concentration camp”, “agricultural colony” or “hostage camp”.

In Garaison, numerous civil nationals of those great powers that were at the time at war with France were interned. The camp opened on September 7, 1914 and closed in 1919, a few months after the Treaty of Versailles was signed . The aim was to prevent the conscripts from returning to their homeland and strengthening the enemy armies there. Women, children and men over 60 as well as unfit or disabled men were expelled from Switzerland from November 1914 . The camp administration estimated the number of prisoners on July 31, 1918 at 2,130 people. Among them were Albert Schweitzer and his wife in 1917 .

Two of the interned women, Gertrud Köbner and Helene Schaarschmidt, tell of their time in Garaison in their writings published in 1915 - immediately after their return to Germany. Photographers (Merzenich, Held, Thörmer ...) had documented their internment in pictures, at least initially when they were allowed to.

History projects

When projects were advertised on the occasion of the commemoration of the First World War, a team of teachers decided to research the history of the place with the students. This resulted in a collaboration with the University of Toulouse's Audiovisual College (ESAV) in 2014 ; In this context, Xavier Delagnes shot the documentary Loin de Verdun . The project Patrimoines nomades / nomadic inheritance (war heritage in the German / Austrian-French area, label Mission du Centenaire) of the research group CREG (Center de Recherches et d'Études Germaniques) of the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès was launched in 2015-2016.

literature

  • Cazals Rémy (ed.), Le dictionnaire et guide des témoins de la Grande Guerre sur le site du CRID 14-18 (Collectif de recherche international et de débat sur la guerre de 1914-1918): http: //www.crid1418. org / temoins /
  • Cubéro José, La Grande Guerre et l'arrière (1914–1919), Pau, éditions CAIRN, 2007, p. 227-250.
  • Cubéro José, Le camp de Garaison. Guerre et nationalités, 1914–1919, Pau, Cairn, 2017.
  • Farcy Jean-Claude, Les camps de concentration français de la première guerre mondiale, Paris, Anthropos historiques, 1995.
  • Köbner Gertrud, Schaarschmidt Helene, Récits de captivité. Garaison 1914, Inderwildi Hilda, Leclerc Hélène (eds.), Translated by Lucile Dreidemy, Hélène Floréa, Hilda Inderwildi, Pauline Landois, Hélène Leclerc, Alfred Prédhumeau, Toulouse, Le Pérégrinateur Éditeur, 2016, 70 pp.
  • Inderwildi Hilda, Leclerc Hélène, “Avant-propos”, in Gertrud Köbner and Helene Schaarschmidt, Récits de captivité. Garaison 1914, Toulouse, Le Pérégrinateur Éditeur, 2016, pp. 7–12.
  • Inderwildi Hilda, Leclerc Hélène, "Patrimoines nomades (nomadic inheritance)", in Mathilde Monge, Natalia Muchnik (ed.), Fragments d'exil. Temporalités, appartenances, revue Diasporas, n ° 31, 1/2018, pp. 133–140.
  • Leclerc Hélène (ed.), Le Sud-Ouest de la France et les Pyrénées dans la mémoire des pays de langue allemande au XXe siècle, Toulouse, Le Pérégrinateur Éditeur, 2018.
  • Leroy-Castillo Pascale, Guinle-Lorinet Sylvaine (ed.), Être prisonnier civil au camp de Garaison (Hautes-Pyrénées), 1914–1919. Carnet de photographies, Pau, Cairn, 2018.
  • Vimont Jean-Claude, "La population du camp d'internement de Garaison (Hautes-Pyrénées)", 1914-1919, in Corvisier André, Jacquart Jean (ed.), Les malheurs de la guerre II. De la guerre réglée à la guerre totale, Paris, Éditions du CTHS, 1997, pp. 93-108.
  • Vimont Jean-Claude, “Garaison, un camp de familles internées dans les Hautes-Pyrénées (1914-1919)”, Criminocorpus [On-line], Varia, June 8, 2012, URL: http://criminocorpus.revues.org / 1876  ; DOI: 10.4000 / criminocorpus.1876. [4.1.2019]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ German-French Day 2018 Loin de Verdun - PINDL private high school - Regensburg. Retrieved September 15, 2019 .

Coordinates: 43 ° 12 '22.7 "  N , 0 ° 30' 6.8"  E