France had concentration and internment camps before and during the Second World War

There had been more than one concentration camp in the 20th Century in France, although the meaning of ‘concentration camp’ differs.

France used to refer to ‘concentration camps’ before the start of the Second World War.

They were run by the French state, however with no genocidal or extermination programme. French ‘concentration camps’ detained anti-Nazi Germany intellectuals, persecuted Jews, political refugees and refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), as well as spies or ‘unwelcome foreigners’.

“The term, which first appeared in 1899, was initially not considered to be particularly inhuman or cruel. 

“It was a technical and prosaic term to define the management method of hostile populations,” wrote Johann Chapoutot, a French historian and expert on Nazism, on Sciences Po’s Mass Violence and Resistance – Research Network encyclopaedia.

The Struthof camp at Natzwiller (Bas-Rhin) is known as France’s only concentration camp in the context of the Second World War. 

The camp was built and operated by German forces in annexed Alsace to exploit the nearby pink granite quarry. More than 50,000 people were detained, and between 17,000 and 22,000 were killed.

It operated about 70 sub-camps, called Außenkommandos, in both annexed Alsace and Moselle, and one camp, the Thil camp (Meurthe-et-Moselle), in occupied France. 

However, the French government ran several camps before the Second World War. ‘Concentration camp’ was the default term, as historian Jean-Claude Farcy wrote in his book Les camps de concentration français de la première guerre mondiale (1914-1918) (June 1999; Economica Anthropos).

The most famous of them was located on Île Longue, a peninsula in Finistère that is now used as one of France’s submarine bases. 

In 1914, 68 barracks housed up to 2,200 prisoners from Austria-Hungary and Germany, including people from annexed Alsace.

Even ‘camp’ is too strong a word, Mr Farcy wrote. Many prisoners were detained in abandoned monasteries such as those in Guérande, Vire, La Ferté-Macé and Pontmain; former military forts, such as those on Ile d’Yeu and Noirmoutier; high schools such as those in Vendée and Fleury-en-Bière; or factories such as the Teinturerie Jouguet near Saint-Brieuc.

Their functioning is similar to ‘camp d’internement’, although they continued to be called ‘concentration camps’.

The Vichy regime (1940–1944) ran several internment camps, detaining members of the so-called “Anti-France”, comprising Jews, foreigners, communists and Freemasons. 

They were used as antechambers for Nazi German concentration camps. France had more than 200 of these camps between 1938 and 1946, in which 600,000 people were interned.

“Internment camps are places where anyone detained by administrative order (usually by a prefect), rather than as part of a judicial procedure, is held,” said historian Denis Peschanski, who wrote a book on internment camps in France from 1938 to 1946.