Gradually, the Joffre camp became a place of internment for families of gypsies, Jews and Spanish refugees. The zone libre ("free zone"), in which the Pyrénées-Orientales was included, came under the administration of the Vichy government.
After the signing of the armistice, France was split into two. In 1939, at the start of World War II, the camp became a military transit base, and in 1940 a refuge for Spanish refugees fleeing from Francoist Spain. The military camp was then run in parallel with the civilian camps. On December 10, 1940, the Ministry of Defense set aside 600 acres (2.4 km 2) south of the camp to house people expelled from Germany. This decision was never fully put into action, although a small influx of Catalan refugees was held there in 1939. įollowing the Retirada (the exodus of about half a million refugees from Spain to France in early 1939 during the Spanish Civil War), the French government decided to use Camp Joffre to intern more than 15,000 Catalan refugees. The camp was named "Camp Joffre" after General Joseph Joffre, the commander-in-chief of the French army during World War I. Four-fifths of the camp was situated within the commune of Rivesaltes and one-fifth within the commune of Salses. The military camp was built in 1938, a few miles from Perpignan. At the same time, southern France became a major haven for Jewish refugees attempting to flee to neutral countries, whether legally or illegally.Ĭommemorative stele for survivors of the Spanish Civil War It was originally intended to be used as a military base. In 1935, the commune of Rivesaltes, situated on a rail route 40 km from the Spanish border, was considered a strategic position for the French army, which took over 612 hectares between Rivesaltes and Salses, 5 km from the city of Rivesaltes, to construct a camp. Since 2015, the site has been the Mémorial du Camp de Rivesaltes, a museum and memorial documenting the history of the site.
Serge Klarsfeld described the camp as the Drancy of the Southern Zone. Between August 11 and October 20, 1942, 2,313 foreign Jews, including 209 children were transferred from Rivesaltes via the Drancy internment camp to the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz, where they were murdered.
The Camp de Rivesaltes, also known as Camp Joffre, was an internment and transit camp in the commune of Rivesaltes in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales of the French Southern Zone during World War Two.
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