On 7 April, the CIVS visited the Camp de Rivesaltes Memorial, the site of the main internment camp in the south of France between 1941 and 1942.

Although the period of internment and deportation of Jewish populations has received particular attention from Commission representatives – nine convoys left Rivesaltes between August and November 1942, sending 2,300 Jews to extermination camps – it should be noted that this camp, originally intended as a military camp, also housed Spanish Republicans, gypsies, collaborators and prisoners of war between 1944 and 1948, Harkis and their families between 1962 and 1964, and Guinean, Madagascan and North Vietnamese infantrymen in 1966. It is thus these thirty years of our history, as well as that of the forced displacement of populations, that the Memorial, inaugurated by the Prime Minister on 16 October, represents. Given its role as a place of memory, transmission and education, the Memorial is supported by the DILCRA. During the visit, the CIVS representatives were able to speak with Agnès Sajaloli, Director of the Memorial.

For more information on the Camp de Rivesaltes Memorial See also the section of the CIVS website dedicated to places of memory