Memorial Site

At the end of July 1940, the German police force, which was a part of the German SS, installed in Belgium. The following month the decision was made to install an Auffanglager in Breendonk to take in the prisoners of the police force. On September 20, 1940 the first prisoners were brought to the Fort. It wasn’t until after January 1941 that the number of prisoners would exceed 100.

Franco’s army supporting the coup d’état steadily advanced, causing a constant exile of Republicans running away both from the bombings and the violent repression carried out by the army in the areas they were gradually occupying.  The defeat of Barcelona, taking place on January 26th, 1939, was the main trigger to the massive exile towards the French border, known as la Retirada (the Retreat).

At the last stage of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), General Franco’s coup army concluded the occupation of Catalonia on February 10th, 1939. Seeing the Francoist advance, over 450,000 Spanish republicans fled during the winter across the border into French territory. That massive exile was known as la Retirada (the Retreat). A few months before in France, precisely on November the 12th 1938, the government of Édouard Daladier approved a Decree-Law allowing the internment of “undesirable foreigners” under permanent surveillance.

The Gonars concentration camp was located in the town of Gonars, in the province of Udine in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, in the northeast of Italy, near the border with modern-day Slovenia. The region has been a hub for much interaction and exchange between the two cultures for centuries. Although technically on Italian soil, the area was and is a blend of both ethnic Italians and ethnic Slavs as a result of its vicinity to a historically contested border.

In order to crush partisan resistance in Ljubljana, Fascist Italy carried out raids beginning in February 1942 and the majority of arrested civilians were sent to Rab (or Arbe in Italian), the largest concentration camp in Italian-occupied territory. Established in July 1942, the camp held 10,000-15,000 people until it was disbanded in September 1943. Rab was notorious for having the worst sanitary and living conditions of all the Fascist camps. At its peak, Rab held as many as 15,000 internees. As early as 1953, a memorial was set up at the camp’s former site/cemetery.

Doftana was a Romanian prison, sometimes referred to as "the Romanian Bastille".

The Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance (Romanian: Memorialul Victimelor Comunismului şi al Rezistenţei) in Romania consists of the Sighet Museum (often confused with the Memorial) and the International Centre for Studies into Communism. The Centre was founded in 1993 by 

The Pitești Prison (Romanian: Închisoarea Pitești) was a penal facility in Pitești, Romania, which was best remembered for the reeducation experiment (also known as Experimentul Pitești – the "Pitești Experiment" or Fenomenul Pitești – the "Pitești Phenomenon") whi

The mission of Memorial Democràtic is the recovery, commemoration and promotion of democratic memory in Catalonia (1931-1980). This historical period encompasses the Second Republic, the Civil War, the Franco dictatorship and the transition to democracy. The Democratic Memorial emphasizes the recovery of victims' memory for ideological, conscientious, religious or social reasons, as well as the repression perpetrated by the Franco dictatorship on individuals and groups (including language and Catalan culture), exile and deportation.

The “Espais de la Batalla de l’Ebre” (Ebro Battle Spaces) are a set of cultural assets linked to the recovery of the historical memory of one of the most transcendental events of the Spanish Civil War. Formed by a combination of interpretation centres and historical spaces, this asset is managed by the “Consorci Memorial dels Espais de la Batalla de l'Ebre” (Comebe) (Memorial of the Spaces of the Battle of the Ebro Consortium)