Mémorial de l’Internement et de la Déportation

The Mémorial de l’Internement et de la Déportation (Memorial of Internment and Deportation) in Compiègne is located on the site of the former Camp de Royallieu, an internment, transit, and deportation camp employed by German occupation authorities from June 1941 to August 1944. First constructed as a military barracks by the French Army in 1913, the site was repurposed following the occupation of France. Initially employed by German forces as a prisoner of war camp, it became a transit and deportation site as part of the network transporting prisoners to concentration and death camps in Germany and Poland. From 1941 to 1944, approximately 54 000 individuals in total were interned at Royallieu while approximately 50 000 were deported: these included captured members of French Resistance groups, political and union leaders and other civilians caught in raids and roundups, and both French and foreign Jews and other groups targeted for extermination in the Holocaust.

Between 1942 and 1944, numerous rail convoys destined for either death or concentration camps in Germany and Poland originated from or included internees from Royallieu. The organization Anonymes, Justes et Persécutés Durant la Période Nazie dans les Communes de France (AJPN) (Anonymous, Righteous, and Persecuted in French Communes During the Nazi Period) records a total of 54 convoys departing from Royallieu: five in 1942, 22 in 1943, and 27 in 1944. Convoy No. 1, the first Jewish deportation and extermination convoy to leave France for Auschwitz, departed Bourget near Paris and collected 1 112 internees at Royallieu on March 27, 1942. Convoys for concentration camps departed Royallieu for Mauthausen, Revensbruck, and Buchenwald.

Following the German evacuation of France and the end of the Second World War, the site was occupied by the French armed forces for several decades. It was employed as a training centre for the French Air Force during the 1950s and 1960s and then housed the 58th Transmissions Regiment and the 51st Transmissions Regiment in the 1970s and 1980s. On February 23, 2008, the site was formally inaugurated as a Memorial of Internment and Deportation in memory of the Camp de Royallieu.

Of the original buildings dating from 1913, three remain: these have been restored to a condition similar to their use from 1941 to 1944, and used to display the history of the camp and its inhabitants. Information is presented through written displays as well as audiovisual components including video projectors and audio recordings. Primary source material includes both documents dating from the camp’s operation and audio and video interviews and testimonies recorded from surviving internees and deportees. The memorial’s Wall of Names lists all those who are identified as having been interned at Royallieu.          

As part of commemoration in Compiègne, the city’s train station includes an additional memorial: two train carriages from the period, employed in the deportations, are placed alongside the tracks on the Quai des Déportés.