CAMP OF A THOUSAND MEMORIAL SITE

The only major French internment and deportation camp still intact, the Les Milles camp has been a Museum of History and Human Sciences since 2012, an innovative place for history and reflection. A historical heritage in two senses of the word, since it was also a tile factory that contributed to the region's industrial boom. At the end of 1939, the building was requisitioned by the Third Republic to house people from enemy countries, including great artists such as Max Ernst (many of whom continued to create), intellectuals, scientists (including two Nobel Prize winners) and journalists who had taken refuge in France.

In 1940, the Vichy government turned it into a transit camp, where some thirty different nationalities lived side by side in extremely difficult conditions. Thousands of so-called "undesirables" overcrowded the camp.

In the summer of 1942, Pétain handed over to the Nazis the Jews presented as "foreigners" from the unoccupied zone, including the children they had not claimed. The Les Milles camp became a deportation camp for 2,000 Jewish men, women and children, who were transferred to Auschwitz, where a programmed death awaited them.

The exhibition is divided into three parts. The first is devoted to the history of these tragic events. The second, full of emotion, is devoted to a 15,000m2 tour of the internment sites. Testimonies, videos and documents complete the tour. We discover, intact, the traces left by the internees, notably the large murals covering the walls of the guards' refectory.
The third part focuses on civic reflection, in an attempt to understand the human mechanisms that can lead to mass crimes, based on an analysis of the Holocaust, but also of the Armenian and Rwandan genocides, and above all in today's society. This part of the exhibition questions our individual and collective functioning, raises awareness and shows the diversity of possible forms of resistance. The visit concludes with the national exhibition on deported Jewish children in France, curated by Serge Klarsfeld, and the Allée des Justes, leading to the wagon of remembrance on the tracks leading to Auschwitz.

The Site-mémorial is a place of remembrance and education in citizenship, with an interactive and educational museographical tour, workshops and conferences, a museum for the whole family.