Camps in France

Scope and content

The collection contains among others:
Prisoner lists, transport lists, newspaper articles, various directories of Jews living in France who were later deported, individual reports on arrests and shootings, deportation lists, correspondence, telegrams, lists of deceased prisoners, lists of survivors, cemetery lists.

History of the camps in France (Drancy, Gurs):
With the defeat of the French Army in June 1940 the entire area of Northern France fell under the occupation of the German Wehrmacht. In Drancy, a suburb north-east of Paris, they seized in that same month a building complex to be used for detaining prisoners of war. Originally constructed as a residential complex, the modern, horseshoe-shaped construction served as a police barracks. With the arrest of several thousand Jewish men in Paris in August 1941, Drancy gradually became one of the central assembly camps where tens of thousands of Jews from France would later pass through. Until July 1943 the camp was run by the Paris Police Prefect, whereby from the very start it was subject to being monitored by the Jew Department of the Gestapo. For the organisation and guarding of the camp, members of the French Police and Gendarmerie were installed. These remained responsible for the outer guard, even after the SS assumed control of the camp as of July 1943. Based on the model of National Socialist concentration camps in 1941 the Gendarmerie created a “prisoner self-administration” composed for the most part of French prisoners. They were responsible for maintaining the internal order and regulations of the camp as of July 1943. In the often hopelessly overcrowded camp catastrophic living conditions dominated. In addition to the crowdedness and the utterly inadequate sanitary facilities, the inmates had to struggle most often with the permanent shortage of food. In 1942 there was also the added threat of possible deportation. During the summer of 1942 the SS began to systematically deport Jews from France to die extermination sites in occupied Poland. The first transport to Auschwitz left France on 27 March. Half of those on board were Jewish prisoners who had been held captive in Drancy. Until 31 July 1944 a total of some 65,000 people from Drancy were deported to the extermination camps. Of these, only 2,000 survived. On 17 August 1944, one day before Paris was liberated by the Allies, the German occupiers deserted the camp, taking with them 51 Jewish hostages, who were then deported to Buchenwald. 1,518 internees remained behind in Drancy; on 19 August they were placed under the care of the International Red Cross.
Source: Karnagel, Gioial-Olivia: Drancy, in: Lexikon des Holocaust, ed. by Wolfgang Benz, München 2002, p. 54 and http://www.memorialmuseums.org/denkmaeler/view/90/Nationale-Gedenkstätte-Durchgangslager-Drancy [Latest access: 2012-07-30].

Camp Gurs, in southwestern France, was created by the French Ministry of the Interior, headed by Socialist Marx Dormoy, in Gurs in April 1939 as an assembly camp for soldiers who fled the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). These were able for the most part to leave the camp by May 1940. After the start of the “Western Campaign” of the German Wehrmacht in the same month, and the advance of German troops in France, new internments took place. The French government now held thousands of “undesirables” captive in Gurs, primarily refugees escaping the German Reich and Austria. In October 1940, with the support of the Vichy government, which was dependent on Germany, the German authorities deported virtually all the Jews in Baden and the Palatinate to the interior of France: trains of the French Railways brought 6,500 of them to Gurs. During this same time, approx. 4,300 people from other camps were also transferred to Gurs. On 1 January 1941 there were 11,825 persons in the camp, 11,255 of whom were Jews. The catastrophic hygienic conditions and the poor supply of food ultimately led to the death of approx. 1,100 prisoners. The first deportations followed in August 1942. Of the approx. 20,000 persons in total who were imprisoned in the camp from October 1940 until November 1943, over 3,900 Jewish prisoners were deported in 1942/43 directly to the “East” via Drancy; some 14,000 experienced Gurs as a stop on the way to being deported. After Gurs was liberated in the summer of 1944 it became an internment camp for German prisoners of war and for French collaborators. The final dissolution of the camp followed on 31 December 1945.
Source: Wetzel, Juliane: Gurs, in: Lexikon des Holocaust, ed. by Wolfgang Benz, München 2002, p. 94 and http://www.memorialmuseums.org/denkmaeler/view/56/Nationale-Gedenkstätte-Gurs [Latest access 2012-08-01]. For a general history of the camps in France see: Distel, Barbara: Frankreich. In: Benz, Wolfgang / Distel, Barbara (Ed.): Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, Bd. 9: Arbeitserziehungslager, Ghettos, Jungendschutzlager, Polizeihaftlager, Sonderlager, Zigeunerlager, Zwangsarbeitslager, München 2009, pp. 273-291.