Camp des Milles
The Camp des Milles was a French internment camp, opened in September 1939, in a former tile factory near the village of Les Milles, part of the commune of Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône).
[edit] 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, Leon 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, Franz Waxman, François Willi Wendt and Robert Liebknecht.[1] [2] [3]
Between 1941 and 1942 Le Camp des Milles was used as a transit camp for Jews, mainly men. Women were at the Centre Bompard in Marseille, while they waited for their visas and anthorisations 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.
Since 1993, the sites serves as a World War II memorial.
In 1995 a movie titled 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.
[edit] References
- ^ Jean-Marc Chouraqui, Gilles Dorival, Colette Zytnicki, Enjeux d'Histoire, Jeux de Mémoire: les Usages du Passé Juif, Maisonneuve & Larose, 2006, p. 548 [1]
- ^ Histoire du camp - L’internement
- ^ Memoire juive
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Camp des Milles |
- Website about the Camp des Milles
- The artists of the Camp des Milles (in French)
- Personal website about the camp (in French)
- Webpage about the camp (in French)
