The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

The Rieucros internment and disciplinary camp was located just outside Mende (Lozère Département), which is nearly 203 kilometers (126 miles) northwest of Marseille and 193 kilometers (120 miles) northeast of Toulouse. The camp operated from January 21, 1939, until February 13, 1942. The French government originally established the site as one of numerous detention camps to control unwanted foreigners. In 1940, Rieucros became an important “disciplinary camp” (camp disciplinaire) for political detainees; by October 1941 the inmate population consisted exclusively of female “undesirables,” many of whom were interned there with their children. Most inmates were foreign nationals, although French citizens were detained there as well.

The Rieucros camp was fenced in, and it extended along one side of the main road from Mende. Inmates were housed in 14 wooden barracks with a total capacity of about 600. A Mademoiselle Vallot served as camp administrator, and several local women worked as guards. Camp staff occupied two brick buildings inside the camp compound.¹ The original inmate population consisted mostly of refugees from the Spanish Civil War. In addition to Spaniards, at least 62 members of the International Brigade (Interbrigade) were registered at Rieucros as of March 7, 1939. The nature of the camp began to change by October 18, 1939, when several dozen women of German and other nationalities were transferred there by special train from the La Petite Roquette prison in Paris. The women were incarcerated as enemy aliens immediately after the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.² Among them were leftist activists and Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. The number of inmates rose from about 100 in October to 250 in December 1939. By May 1940, no fewer than 425 women of 20 nationalities were registered at the site.

The camp’s administrative structure and inmate population changed again after the Franco-German Armistice of June 22, 1940. On October 4, 1940, the Vichy government assigned the administration of so-called disciplinary camps to the departmental prefects. They answered to the Inspector General of the Camps (Inspecteur Général des Camps, IGC) of the Interior Ministry and used policemen to guard such sites.³ The Kundt Commission, a Franco-German commission, inspected the camp on August 4, 1940, and the number of Germans interned at the site increased quickly thereafter. Many of the German inmates testified after the war that their daily life was marked by fear of extradition to Nazi Germany. A significant number of inmates were able to avoid that fate by securing emigration permits.⁴ In the first half of 1940, about a dozen inmates left Rieucros each month for a women’s transit camp at the Hôtel Bompard in Marseille. From there, they emigrated to various foreign countries. By September 1940, the number of inmates decreased from 553, including 24 children, to 405, including 9 children.⁵

During this period, many male inmates were released or assigned to forced labor details. In October 1941, the French authorities transferred all remaining male inmates to the penal camp [End Page 211] at Le Vernet d’Ariège. The Rieucros camp now functioned as a “camp répressif ” or disciplinary camp exclusively for women who were deemed subversive primarily because of their leftist political allegiances.⁶ Official camp statistics reveal that the average occupancy for 1941 was 80 Spanish women, 70 Polish women, 50 German women, and 40 French women. By the end of the year the number of French inmates began to increase steadily. Eighty-eight French women, 56 Polish women, 45 Spanish women, and 23 German women were among the inmates registered at the camp in January 1942.

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Female prisoners carry containers of food along a road in the Rieucros disciplinary camp, 1939–1942.

USHMM WS #82629, COURTESY OF THE BUNDESARCHIV.

As a result of the high concentration of artists and activists among the inmates, daily camp life was marked by extensive artistic activities and vigorous political activism. Notable inmates included the Russian writer Ida Mett, the German actress Steffie Spira-Ruschin, the Swiss photographer Gertrude Duby-Blom, and well-known antifascists or Resistance figures such as Dora Schaul and Cläre Quast. Famous escapees from Rieucros include the Italian political activist Ernesto Bonomini, who escaped from the camp in April 1939, and the Czech writer Lenka Reinerová. Several of those interned at Rieucros as children rose to prominence after the war. These included the writer Michael del Castillo and the mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, both of whom were interned at Rieucros as young boys alongside their mothers.

Three hundred forty-six inmates, including 320 women and 26 children, were still registered at the site when the Vichy authorities closed the camp on February 13, 1942. The remaining inmates were transferred to the camp at Brens (Tarn Département, Midi-Pyrénées). For several of the Jewish inmates, Rieucros thus became a way station to extermination camps in Eastern Europe.⁷