•
Aincourt, in
Seine-et-Oise, was the first internment camp in the Northern Zone. It was opened on 5 October 1940, and quickly filled with members of the
French Communist Party (PCF) •
Les Alliers, near
Angoulême, in
Charente •
Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans (Saline royale d'Arc-et-Senans) in the
Doubs, used for Gypsies •
Avrillé-les-Ponceaux in
Indre-et-Loire, camp of the Morellerie for Gypsies •
Le Barcarès in the
Roussillon •
Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp at
Beaune-la-Rolande in the
Loiret •
Bourg-Lastic in the
Puy de Dôme, a former military camp where Jews were detained (
André Glucksmann was detained there for four years). The camp was used to intern
Harkis in the 1960s and
Kurdish refugees from Iraq in the 1980s (see below). •
Bram in the
Aude (1939–1940) •
Brens in the
Tarn, near
Gaillac (1939–1940) •
Choisel, in
Chateaubriant in
Brittany, in
Loire-Atlantique (1941–1942) •
Camp of Royallieu in
Compiègne,
Picardy (June 1941 to August 1944). It was used to intern the Jewish detainees arrested during the January 1943
Marseille roundup.
Robert Desnos (1900–1945) and the famous French Resistance member
Jean Moulin (1899–1943) transited through this camp. •
Coudrecieux in the
Sarthe, was used to intern
Romanis. •
Douadic in the
Indre department •
Drancy internment camp: On 20 August 1941, French police conducted raids throughout the 11th
arrondissement (district) of Paris and arrested more than 4,000 Jews, mainly foreign or stateless Jews. French authorities interned these Jews in Drancy, marking its official opening. French police enclosed a police barrack with barbed-wire fencing and provided
Gendarmerie to guard the camp. Drancy fell under the command of the
Gestapo Office of Jewish Affairs in France and German SS Captain
Theodor Dannecker. Five subcamps of Drancy were located throughout Paris (three of which were the Austerlitz, Lévitan and Bassano camps) •
Fort-Barraux in the department of
Isère. It had already been used as a prison during the
French Revolution;
Antoine Barnave was imprisoned there. •
Gurs internment camp in the
Pyrénées-Atlantiques, created in 1939 for the Spanish refugees. During the
Phony War, the Third Republic used it to intern "
indésirables", that is Germans who were found in France, without regard to ethnicity or political orientation, as foreign citizens of an enemy power. Among them stands out a significant number of
German Jews who had fled the very
Nazi regime; citizens of countries who were in the orbit of the Reich, like
Austria,
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,
Slovak Republic,
Fascist Italy, or
Poland; French activists of the
left (
trade unionists,
socialists,
anarchists, and especially, communists), following the proscription of the
Parti Communiste Français (PCF) by Daladier after the
German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact; the first of these arrived 21 June 1940, and the majority were relocated in other camps before the end of the year. In Gurs were also interned during this period:
anti-militarists, representatives of the French extreme right who sympathized with the Nazi regime, ordinary prisoners evacuated from prisons in the north of the country ahead of the German advance, common criminals awaiting trial. Then, under Vichy, Camp Gurs was used to detain foreign Jews, German Jews deported by the SS from southern Germany, persons who had illegally crossed the border of the zone occupied by the Germans, Spaniards fleeing
Francoist Spain, Spaniards coming from other camps that had been condemned for being uninhabitable or due to their scarce contingent,
stateless persons, people involved in prostitution, homosexuals, Romani people and indigents. •
Jargeau, near
Orléans, used for the internment of Romani people •
Lalande in the
Yonne, •
Linas-
Montlhéry in the
Seine-et-Oise for Romani people •
Marolles in the
Loir-et-Cher •
Masseube in the
Gers •
Les Mazures in the
Ardennes department, where a
Judenlager was opened from July 1942 to January 1944 • The
Merignac internment camp in the
Gironde. This is where
Maurice Papon had Jews of the
Bordeaux region interned before going to Drancy. Among others,
Robert Aron was detained there. •
Meslay-du-Maine, in
Mayenne department (1939–1940) (
Leon Askin held here 1939) •
Camp des Milles near
Aix-en-Provence in the
Bouches-du-Rhône, which was the largest internment camp in the southeast of France. 2,500 Jews were deported from there following the
August 1942 raids. Novelist
Lion Feuchtwanger,
Surrealist artists
Hans Bellmer and
Max Ernst were among the most famous inmates detained in this concentration camp. •
Montceau-les-Mines •
Natzweiler-Struthof a German-run concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller (German Natzweiler) •
Nexon in the
Haute-Vienne •
Noé -
Mauzac in the
Haute-Garonne •
Montreuil-Bellay in the
Maine-et-Loire, created to intern Romani people •
Les Tourelles in Paris •
Pithiviers transit camp in
Pithiviers. Jewish novelist
Irène Némirovsky (1903–1942) was interned there. •
Poitiers in the
Vienne department to intern Romani people •
Port-Louis, in
Morbihan, in the fort •
Recebedou, in
Haute-Garonne, in the suburbs of
Toulouse •
Camp of Rieucros in
Lozère (the mathematician
Alexander Grothendieck was interned there) • The
Camp de Rivesaltes, in the
Pyrénées Orientales, "The Drancy of the zone sud"; From October 1940, the Fort held only female prisoners (resistance members and hostages), who were jailed, executed or redirected to the Nazi concentration camps outside France. At the time of the Liberation in August 1944, many abandoned corpses were found in the
Fort's yard. •
Saint-Cyprien in the
Pyrénées-Orientales. 90,000 Spanish refugees were interned there in March 1939, and it was officially closed on 19 December 1940 for "sanitary reasons", its occupants transferred to the
Camp of Gurs. •
Saint-Maurice-aux-Riches-Hommes in the
Yonne, for Gypsies •
Saint-Paul d'Eyjeaux in the
Haute-Vienne •
Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe. Located near Toulouse, this transit camp was set up after the beginning of the
Phony War. It was to house "individuals representing a danger to national security" - mostly militant communists. In June 1940, with the first German attacks on the Soviet Union, people with Russian citizenship were interned there. Later, foreign Jews who had been living in hiding in the south of France and were rounded up in the summer of 1942 were also sent to the camp. The inmates, especially the communists, organized many cultural activities, a "little university", in which each one contributed their knowledge for the collective good. From the summer of 1942 to the closing of the camp in August 1944, most of its inmates were deported to camps in Eastern Europe, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. •
Saliers concentration camp near
Arles in the
Bouches-du-Rhône, interned Romani people •
Schirmeck in
Alsace in the part not annexed by the Third Reich •
Septfonds •
Thil in
Meurthe-et-Moselle •
Le Vernet Internment Camp in the
Ariège which concentrated 12,000 Spanish refugees as early as 1939. It was used later on for the internment of the harkis. •
Vittel in the
Vosges department, where US or British citizens were interned •
Voves in the
Eure-et-Loir •
Woippy in the department of
Moselle, created in 1943.
Camps under foreign authorities The Nazis also opened
Struthof in Alsace (in the part annexed by the Reich). The United States military police also possessed legal authority over the camp in
Septèmes-les-Vallons, in the
Bouches-du-Rhône. •
Vittel,
Frontstalag 121 was located in requisitioned hotels in this
spa near
Epinal in the
Vosges department. Most of the British families and single women were transferred here from Saint-Denis and Besançon. In early 1942, women over sixty, men over seventy-five and children under sixteen were released. The overall population was thus reduced to about 2,400. The inmates included a number of North-American families and women. Although not architecturally conceived as an internment camp, the (Winter Velodrome) in Paris was used during the
July 1942 Roundup. Most internment camps, however, were not conceived as such. •
Abadla, Algeria •
Ain el Ourak, Algeria •
Bedeau camp, Algeria •
Bechar, Algeria •
Berguent • Bogari •
Bouarfa, Morocco •
Djefa •
Kénadsa, Algeria •
Meridja, Algeria •
Missour, Morocco •
Tendrara, Morocco
The liberation German prisoners of war Camps were also used after the
liberation to intern German prisoners. In
Rennes, after
General Patton's
United States Third Army liberated the city on 4 August 1944, about 50,000 German prisoners were kept in four camps in a city of 100,000 inhabitants at the time. In the
Camp de Rivesaltes, the German prisoners worked extensively in the reconstruction of
Pyrénées-Orientales, between May 1945 and 1946, 412 German prisoners of war died in the camp. == After World War II ==