Mémorial de l'internement et de la déportation, Compiègne - France - The Holocaust on Waymarking.com

[FR] La publication, en 2008, de la première étude historique réalisée sur le camp d'internement de Royallieu, a enfin permis d'établir et de faire connaître son histoire. Jusqu'ici peu connu, ce camp fut pourtant l'un des plus importants rouages du système totalitaire et génocidaire sur le sol français.

Plus de 54 000 Juifs, résistants, militants syndicaux et politiques, civils raflés, y ont été internés. 50 000 d'entre eux ont été déportés dans les camps de concentration et d'extermination d'Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen, Neuengamme. Le Frontstalag 122 s'est caractérisé notamment par l'internement et la déportation des « politiques » et personnalités « otages » : communistes, syndicalistes, résistants et civils[1]. Le « camp C », ou le camp juif, tenu au secret, était déjà, vu les conditions d'internement qui y régnaient, un lieu d'extermination par la faim et la maladie.

Un Mémorial de l'internement et de la déportation a pu être créé dans les trois bâtiments conservés du site. Il a été inauguré et ouvert au public le samedi 23 février 2008.

(wikipedia)

[EN] In February, 2008, a memorial was opened on the site of the former Royallieu internment camp. As a place of history, it is a reminder of events, setting them within the context of the Second World War and the Nazi policies of repression and extermination. As a place of remembrance, it pays homage to all those who were detained there before being deported to Germany and Poland or shot as hostages.

In 1939, the Royallieu barracks near Compiègne in the Oise département was used as a military hospital before being converted by the Germans in June 1940 into a camp where they brought French and British prisoners of war.

In 1941, they turned it into a " permanent concentration camp for active enemy individuals" under the official name of Frontstalag 122, which became a "German police detention camp" by virtue of decree on the 30th December 1941. Resistance fighters, political and unionist militants, Jews, civilians arrested in raids and foreigners etc. - more than 45,000 of them would pass through there before being deported to Nazi concentration and extermination camps.

It was from the camp at Royallieu that the very first deportation train was to leave French soil on the 27th March 1942. It took over a thousand Jews to Auschwitz, as did the next one on the 5th June. A third convoy, consisting mostly of communist and unionist hostages, left Compiègne on the 6th July. Royallieu was thus to become a transit camp for detainees, for the most part political and resistance fighters, prior to their deportation.

It is to all these people that the internment and deportation memorial is dedicated. This has been built on part of the former camp by the town of Compiègne in partnership with the Remembrance of the Deportation Foundation, the Defence Department (Directorate of Memory, Heritage and Archives, SGA/DMPA), the Regional Council of Picardy, the General Council of the Oise, the Heritage Foundation and the Caisse des dépôts et consignations (a government body in charge of investing and lending public money). The historian and filmmaker Christian Delage created the journey through history. The architect and scenographer Jean-Jacques Raynaud designed the setting. The result is solemn, due as much to the materials used - glass, concrete and stone - as to the way the floors and walls in the three preserved buildings that remain out of the original twenty-five have been stripped back to their initial condition, and the use of sounds and images to set the scene. Opposite the entrance stands a wall to guide visitors towards the reception hall. Made up of a series of glass pillars bearing the names of all the deportees and internees of the camp at Royallieu identified to date, its purpose is to give the internees back their identities. It is through these names that visitors are introduced to the site. Around the buildings is what is today a garden of remembrance, as well as an exhibition area: plans of the internment camp, group photographs of the guards and written and recorded accounts accompany visitors as they retrace the history of the site.

(www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr)

Physical Address: Camp de Royallieu 2 bis, rue des Martyrs de la liberté Compiègne, France 60200 Date Dedicated: 02/23/2008 Supporting Website: [Web Link] Fee/Donation: Admission Fee €3.00 Memorial Type: Museum

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