Camp Vernet

Le Vernet Internment Camp, or Camp du Vernet, was a concentration camp¹ in Le Vernet, Ariège, near Pamiers, in the French Pyrenees. It was built in 1918 as a barracks, but after World War I it was used as an internment camp for prisoners of war. From February 1939 to June 1944, it was used:

• first as an internment camp (concentration camp), first for Republican refugees (soldiers, their families, opponents of the Franco regime) fleeing Spain after Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War: in particular some 12,000 refugees, including soldiers of the Durruti Column² and others of the International Brigades;
• then, as of May–June 1940, under the Vichy government during German occupation in the Second World War. Starting in 1940, apart from the prisoners coming from the Spanish Civil War, the Vichy government used it to house prisoners considered suspect or dangerous to the government, including members of the resistance and opponents of the Hitler, Mussolini and Pétain regimes;³
• then, from 1942 until June 1944, it was used as a holding camp for Jewish families awaiting deportation to other camps. The last transport out of the camp in June 1944 took the prisoners to Dachau concentration camp.

History

The Camp du Vernet was originally built in June 1918 to house French colonial troops serving in World War I but when hostilities ceased it was used to hold German and Austrian prisoners of war.⁴

Between the wars, it served as a military depot. Towards the end of the , in February 1939 in what was called (the withdrawal), it was put to a new use until September 1939 as a reception camp for Republicans fleeing from 's armies after the collapse of the . The camp held Republicans the French authorities deemed "a danger to public safety". At this time, it held mainly former soldiers from the Republican , the and 150 members, segregated in an area named "the leper colony". The camp covered an area of about 50 hectares, divided into three sections and surrounded by barbed wire fences.