History The camp was first used to intern Germans and ex-Austrians living in the
Marseille area, and by June 1940, some 3,500 artists and intellectuals were detained there. Inmates included men of letters such as
Fritz Brugel,
Lion Feuchtwanger, William Herzog,
Alfred Kantorowicz,
Golo Mann,
Walter Hasenclever, scientists such as
Nobel Prize laureate
Otto Fritz Meyerhof, as well as musicians and painters such as
Erich Itor Kahn,
Hans Bellmer,
Max Ernst,
Hermann Henry Gowa,
Gustave Herlich,
Max Lingner,
Ferdinand Springer,
Franz Meyer,
Jan Meyerowitz, Peter Lipman-Wulf,
François Willi Wendt and
Robert Liebknecht. Between 1941 and 1942 Le Camp des Milles was used as a transit camp for Jews, mainly men. Women were held at the Centre Bompard in Marseille, while they waited for their visas and authorisations to emigrate. As emigration became impossible, Les Milles became one of the
centres de rassemblement before deportation. About 2,000 of the inmates were shipped off to the
Drancy internment camp on the way to
Auschwitz. After the war, the site was briefly re-opened in 1946 as a factory.
Memorial in Camp des Milles Since 1993, the site has served as a
World War II memorial. The "Fondation du camp des Milles: mémoire et éducation" (Foundation of the Camp des Milles: Memory and Education) is directed by Alain Chouraqui, a researcher at the
French National Centre for Scientific Research. On September 10, 2012, seventy years after the last train left from Les Milles to the
Auschwitz concentration camp, the memorial was inaugurated by
French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.
Elie Wiesel,
Simone Veil and
Serge Klarsfeld visited and praised the memorial. The Memorial also includes the sculpture, "
They will never be forgotten: Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, and Marceline Kogan" by Hal Goldberg.
Film In 1995, a movie entitled
Les Milles commemorating this camp and the events that took place in this camp at the time of the Armistice in June 1940 was made. ==UNESCO Chair==