The president of the Languedoc-Roussillon, Damien Alary, accompanied by the key players in the project, presented at the Assemblée Nationale today the emotionally charged Mémorial du Camp de Rivesaltes.

The camp was used as a detention centre during successive conflicts in the 20th century; among others: Spanish republicans refugees in 1939, Jewish prisoners under Vichy France, and the Harkis, Algerian volunteers who found themselves on the wrong side of the peace pact in 1962.

Musée mémorial du camp d’internement de Rivesaltes – under construction in February 2015

These groups were successively ‘housed’ in the barracks in a windswept tract in the Pyrénées Orientales in southern France. All in all, more than 50,000 people were concerned, including 10,000 members of the Jewish community among whom 2313 were subsequently sent to Auschwitz …read on

[France Today • March 4, 2015]