“The Inferno or Hell of [Camp] Saint-Cyprien,” 1 1939–1940

Camp Saint-Cyprien was one of several beach camps ² situated in southern France along the Mediterranean Sea coast. The camp was located “north of the barracks of l’Aigal and in the direction of Saint-Nazaire” about 15 kilometers (9.32 miles) from Perpignan. ³ Initially opened in 1939, Saint-Cyprien’s purpose was to control ⁴ the vast number of refugees who were flooding into French Catalonia as a result of the Spanish Civil War. In a post-World War II report, the French government depicted Camp Saint-Cyprien as a place used for Spanish Civil War exiles and refugees who sought respite from Nazi oppression. ⁵ Yet the report neglects to mention the thousands of Jews who were interned at Saint-Cyprien after having been arrested and expelled from their countries of residence or asylum. Interestingly, the report fails to acknowledge specifically the thousands of Jews who were expelled from Belgium before Belgium’s capitulation to Germany on 18 May 1940, and later, those expelled from places such as Baden and Palatinate. ⁶ This and subsequent chapters show that the outcome for many of these Jewish people and Christians of Jewish ancestry was disease and death as a result of being imprisoned in squalid conditions in France rather than being able to immigrate as many had hoped. ⁷