Mémorial du Camp de Rivesaltes

The Mémorial du Camp de Rivesaltes (Rivesaltes Camp Memorial) commemorates the former Camp de Rivesaltes, an internment camp outside Perpignan. The site was one of numerous internment camps constructed by French authorities in 1939 in response to the refugee crisis of the Retirada, in which hundreds of thousands of Spanish Republican soldiers and civilians, fleeing the fall of Catalonia and the advance of Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces as the Spanish Civil War came to an end, crossed the border into France. Rivesaltes, also known as “Camp Joffre” for Marshall Joseph Joffre, a native of Rivesaltes, housed thousands of Spanish Republican refugees and members of the International Brigades alongside other camps in the region; many returned to Spain over the following months, while some remained in France in internment and labour programs.

With France’s entry into the Second World War, internal security laws allowed for the internment of suspicious figures including political exiles, and Rivesaltes continued as an internment camp. Following French defeat, German occupation, and the establishment of the Vichy Regime, Rivesaltes remained in use as an internment camp for political prisoners and, beginning in 1942, approximately 5000 Jewish and Roma internees rounded up by French authorities. Known as the Drancy of the South, Rivesaltes was a significant transit hub for deportation, and for the Holocaust. It is estimated that between 1939 and 1942 Rivesaltes saw 17 000 internees of whom 53% were Spanish Republicans and Internationals, 40% were Jewish, and 7% were Roma.

In November 1942, the camp was fully emptied by German authorities and was employed as a military barracks for German occupation troops until the region was liberated in 1944; it then served as a prisoner-of-war camp and an internment camp for suspected collaborated until 1948. From 1962 to 1964, the site was again employed during the Algerian War of Independence: initially as an internment camp for members of the Algerian National Liberation Front, and later as an accommodation centre for native-Algerian French Army auxiliaries, the Harki, who had chosen to leave Algeria for France with their families; ultimately, the camp saw the transit of 21 000 Harki and their families. Sections of the camp were employed as barracks in the following decades: for approximately 800 French Guinean soldiers and their families from 1964 to 1966, and for a military administration centre for illegal migrants from 1986 to 2007. Rivesaltes formally closed in 2007, ending its almost 70-year history of internment. 

The current-day site preserves large portions the camp buildings and fences, and contains a permanent exhibit, “Indésirables” (The Undesirables) on the history of the camp and its internees, deportees, and residents. The exhibit connects these specific groups to the broader context of the conflicts which sent them to Rivesaltes; the exhibition includes physical artifacts from the camp and its inhabitants, recorded testimonies, and a series of short films.