The Camp of Vernet 1918-1944: the Silent History of the South of France

By Aine Ray, 4th Year History and French

Interning 30,000-40,000 people of over 50 different nationalities in unimaginable conditions of overpopulation, the Camp of Vernet was named the South of France’s Nazi concentration camp. As one of France’s most repressive concentration camps, this article aims to explore role of Vernet historically, as well as its legacy as a 21st century memory site for victims of fascism.

Originally built in 1918 to house colonial troops, Vernet emerged as a site of cruelty in the wake of ‘La Retirada’, where 500,000 Spaniards fled to Southern France to escape Franco’s fascist rule. 12,000 Spanish republicans were detained in the camp’s 19 dilapidated barracks. During the early years of World War Two, Vichy France remained relatively safe from fascist reign, acting as a convenient escape route for anti-fascist refugees and offering asylum to many stateless Jews.  

However, after 1942, as Nazi Germany’s grip over Europe grew, the detainment of Jews rapidly increased. Thousands of Jews were interned in ‘transit camps’ like Vernet and then deported to Nazi concentration camps like Djelfa (Algeria), Aurigny (Channel Islands), Auschwitz (Poland) and Dachau (Germany). The camp also held thousands of anti-fascist refugees who were deemed ‘dangerous and undesirable foreigners’.[1] On the 30th of June 1944, the camp was vacated and the remaining 403 people were transported on a two-month journey to Dachau via Toulouse on what is now known as ‘le train fantôme’, or the ghost train.

 During the post-war period, the glorious narrative of the Resistance in the South of France triumphed over the sinister reality. The history of fascist collaboration was  pushed into the shadows of national history, being replaced with silence and shame surrounding this collaboration. In the case of Camp Vernet, the last standing barracks were demolished in the 1970s, leaving only farmland as a testament to Vichy France’s crimes. Eventually, in 1995 the French prime minister Jacques Chirac formally acknowledged the state's role in the deportation of thousands of people to concentration camps.

Not wanting this history to fall back into post-war silence, the Camp of Vernet has dedicated many resources to contribute to the ‘never forget' movement. During my year abroad in the South of France, I took a journey to the camp. The site of memory is split into three distinct aspects: the memorial, the cemetery, and the museum. Immediately stepping off the train I was met with the memorial, a reconstructed train carriage representing the camp’s role in mass deportations. Placards are strategically positioned to grab the attention of passengers passing through Vernet D’Ariège on their morning commute to Toulouse. About a 20-minute walk from this memorial, a small cemetery sits aside from the busy main road. There lie 153 graves honouring the lives of people from 54 different nationalities.  

The museum is located in the small hamlet of ‘Le Vernet’, a 30-minute trek through the farmland where the concentration camp once stood. I knocked on the door of the town hall and was given a set of keys to let myself into the museum. I flicked on the lights and stood at the entrance of a room overflowing with information. Hidden in the dpeths of the French countryside, the museum at Vernet boasts a bustling archive of the atrocities of Vichy France.

The Memorial of Antifascist fighters at Vernet

 The Camp of Vernet promotes the preservation of collective memory through a delicate balance between education and commemoration. However, the project at Vernet raises some concerns about sites of memory as a method of memorialisation. The most obvious is accessibility, as many concentration camps are situated in remote regions of the countryside. This camp, tucked away in rural Occitania, is rather unsurprisingly unknown to the majority of the population. Moreover, when we consider the representation of concentration camps in the 21st century, we normally think of Auschwitz and the conservation of barracks, gas chambers and train lines. This offers the visitor a visual confrontation with the past, allowing us to walk the same paths of detained Nazi victims. Historical visibility is therefore harder to achieve in the case of Vernet with a lack of preservation of the physical elements of the camp. This hinders direct engagement and raises concerns about the site’s future in the face of public forgetting.

 The Camp of Vernet stands as a vital reminder of the international legacy of fascist collaboration in the South of France. In the 21st century, the history of Nazism’s crimes goes further and further back into the past whilst current debates of temporal distance and collective forgetting increase in relevancy. This particular camp faces even more challenges of geographical isolation and lack of tangible remains. It raises the questions: What is the future role of these individual sites of memory which stood as facilitators for mass genocide? How can we guarantee a long-term public commitment in order to preserve its historical and present-day significance?

[1] Original french: ‘Camp répressif pour étrangers indésirable, dangereux pour la Défense Nationale’