Pithiviers internment camp

Pithiviers internment camp during the Holocaust was a transit camp for Jewish deportees in Pithiviers (Loiret department; roughly south of Paris and and north-west of Beaune-la-Rolande.) in Occupied France during the Second World War. Children were separated there from their parents; the adults were processed and deported to concentration camps farther away, usually Auschwitz. This was the fate of the novelist Irène Némirovsky.

The buildings were destroyed during the 1950s for material reasons, not without the agreement of the memorial associations. Only the Infirmary, currently located at 2 rue de Pontournois, has been preserved, to serve as a home. The guard post, at the entrance to the camp, was in the center of what is now Square Max-Jacob, 50 rue de l'Ancien camp, and next to it, a stone monument was erected to honor the accounts of the survivors, and to identify the importance of the location. The internment camp reached from the guard post to the current athletics stadium, which is set back from 14 rue Gabriel-Lelong.

History

Pithiviers internment camp was the first concentration camp in Vichy France designed to imprison Jews during the Holocaust. (Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp opened on March 22, 1933 in Germany).

Initially an abandoned train station, the prison camp was created at the start of World War II with the purpose of holding French prisoners of war. (Joseph Darnand, founder and leader of the French Militia, taken prisoner of war on June 19, 1940, was interned at the Pithiviers camp before escaping in August 1940).

Following the Law on the status of Jews (law of October 3, 1940) which enabled the internment of Jews, the purpose of the Pithiviers internment camp expanded to include Jewish refugees, then German prisoners of war. Jews detained in Pithiviers were mostly Polish expatriates living in the Paris Prefecture. Children were separated there from their parents; the adults were processed and deported to concentration camps farther away. Inmates were guarded by Vichy officials acting under Nazi supervision and housed across 19 barracks. Pithiviers also held various administrative buildings, including an infirmary and canteen, and a large vegetable garden. Prisoners were forced to work both inside the camp, namely in its workshops and garden, and in outside farms and plants found in the surrounding villages.

The Pithiviers camp was evacuated at the end of September 1942 and transformed into a detention camp for political prisoners until August 1944.

In 2018, France’s national rail company, SNCF, announced the allocation $2.3 million toward construction of a new museum expected to open in 2020 at the one-time camp site. With SNCF’s logistical support, some 16,000 Jews were sent to be murdered in death camps from Pithiviers station and the neighboring camp of Beaune-la-Rolande in eight transports between 1941 and 1943. SNCF made plans to work in conjunction with CRIF, an umbrella group representing French Jewish communities, to restore the dilapidated Pithiviers rail station to its wartime appearance. Educational materials, including an exhibition center detailing the internment of Europe’s Jews and study rooms for visitors and school children, will be housed within the station-turned-museum. (No information on the status of this museum is found at this time)

A "Memorial of the deportation of the Pithivier and Beaune la Rolande camps" is located at Square Max Jacob, 45300 Pithiviers, France.

Deportation of Jews

From September 1940, under German orders, French authorities identified and maintained lists of Jews and violently plundered their belongings. Shortly thereafter, the Vichy regime publicly proclaimed the Law on the status of Jews (law of October 3, 1940) which enforced the internment of Jews. Theodor Dannecker, representative of Adolf Eichmann

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