Le Vernet (internment camp)

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Model of the camp
Service letter from the Le Vernet internment camp
Internment camp in southern France after the end of the Spanish Civil War, 1939

Le Vernet was a warehouse on National Road 20 between le Vernet and Saverdun in the French Pyrenees from 1918 to 1920 and from 1939 to 1945 .

history

Erected in 1918 for Senegalese colonial troops , it was converted for Austrian and German prisoners from the First World War and later used as a military depot.

When the Catalonia Front collapsed in the Spanish Civil War in February 1939 , the Republican troops withdrew to France. 12,000 soldiers, many of them from the Durruti division , were interned in Le Vernet by the end of September 1939. At the beginning of the Second World War , foreigners and French who were classified as hostile were brought to Le Vernet from October 1939: German and French communists, Italians, foreign Jews, Alsatians, Lorraine , Belarusians , Bolsheviks and Belgian fascists. In his autobiography As Witness of Time , Arthur Koestler describes his internment in the camp in the chapter Scum of the earth . After the French surrender in June 1940, the camp belonged to Vichy France . The Kundt Commission met on August 17, 1940 here 3728 prisoners, among them (in their Nazi diction) "283 German nationals, mostly Jews."

After the German occupation of Vichy France in November 1942, a large number of Jews of all ages were imprisoned and extradited to Dachau until June 1944 .

The camp was divided into different quarters. Thus Quartier A criminal and B used for political internees. Various raids by the Gestapo took place in the latter under the Vichy government .

On February 26, 1941, the poor living conditions led to an uprising, which was suppressed and led to prison terms or the extradition of the (mostly communist) leaders.

In the winter of 1941/42, 800 people died of epidemics in the camp. On June 15, 1944, German troops occupied the camp, dissolved it and briefly filled it with their own prisoners or members of the Turkestan Legion , before it was finally closed shortly afterwards. In June 1944, around 40,000 people from 58 nations were interned in the camp.

From 1946 onwards, German prisoners of war who arrived in French ports on ships from the US prison camps were released by the Americans, but were immediately taken back into prison by the French authorities after their release. Because of the Indochina War , the Foreign Legion was promoted more intensively . The prisoners could also choose to work in agriculture. All prisoners were released by 1948.

In 1970 the last barracks in the camp disintegrated, but the cemetery and train station were preserved. Since 1992, Le Vernet National Monument has been representative of all internment camps in France ( le Mémorial National des Camps d'Internement en France ).

Known prisoners

literature

  • Bruno Frei : The men from Vernet. A factual report. Dietz, Berlin (GDR) 1950 (reprint: Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1980, ISBN 3-8067-0871-1 (series: Exilliteratur, 3))
  • Sibylle Hinze: Antifascists in Camp Le Vernet. Outline of the history of the Le Vernet concentration camp 1939 to 1944. Military publishing house of the GDR, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-327-00508-7
  • Arthur Koestler : Scum of the Earth. Jonathan Cape, London et al. 1941; German: scrap of earth. In: Arthur Koestler: As a witness of time. Scherz, Bern 1982, ISBN 3-502-18388-0 (unabridged edition: Fischer Taschenbuch , Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 3-596-16143-6 )
  • Gustav Regulator : The Ear of Malchus, Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1958, Sixth Book, pp. 435-480
  • Gilbert Badia: L'internement des Émigrés allemands et autrichiens en 1939. in: Jean Merley (ed.): Répression. Camps d'internement en France pendant la seconde guerre mondiale. Aspects of the phenomenon of concentration. Series: Bulletin du Center d'histoire régionale, numéro spéciale. Press Universitaires, University of Saint-Étienne 1983 a. ö. ISBN 2-900392-14-4 , pp. 83-93

Web links

Commons : Le Vernet (internment camp)  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Les Camps du Sud-Ouest de la France 1939-1944, Editions Privat, ISBN 2-7089-5375-3 , p.56
  2. ↑ Short biography on:  Baumgarten, Hans . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Coordinates: 43 ° 11 ′ 42 "  N , 1 ° 36 ′ 28"  E