On 8 November 1941, a detention camp (camp d’internement de nomades) with a regional focus was established in Montreuil-Bellay, a small town in the south of the Maine-et-Loire department in the German-occupied zone of France. Its opening was part of a comprehensive reorganisation of the camps in France, which was sought by the German authorities in order to prevent internees of different origins from living together in one place and to reduce the number of personnel required to guard them. With a total of 2 000 internees, Montreuil-Bellay was one of the camps in occupied France where the largest numbers of Sinti and Roma were held.
The Camp
In order to take advantage of existing infrastructure, the camp was installed in a former French military complex, the construction of which had been interrupted by the armistice on 22 June 1940 and which had subsequently been converted into a Frontstalag (camp for prisoners of war) by the German occupation authorities. The internees were forced to live in barracks unsuitable for residential purposes, whose wooden frameworks were clad with fibre cement panels. Buildings with concrete foundations were used for a kitchen, dining rooms, a school and a chapel. The cellar of a former farmhouse served as a prison. The camp was cordoned off with a double barbed wire fence; there were two watchtowers on each side. The camp was administered directly by the prefecture of the Maine-et-Loire department. The administrative and housekeeping staff, no more than a dozen people, were under the supervision of a director.
The Prisoners
By the time the camp was closed on 16 January 1945, almost 2 000 people had been interned under the supervision of the French gendarmerie and civilian guards. Over 90 per cent of the internees were families who had been transferred to Montreuil-Bellay from camps in the north-west of France. They came from the camps La Morellerie in the department of Indre-et-Loire, Coray in the department of Finistère, Montsûrs in the department of Mayenne, Mulsanne in the department of Sarthe, Barenton in the department of Manche and Poitiers in the department of Vienne, the closure of which had been decided between autumn 1941 and winter 1943. Individual admissions were less frequent. The highest number of internees was reached in August 1942 with 1 086 people. From this point onwards, the number of people fell steadily and was around 500 in January 1945.
The families labelled as ‘nomades’ made up more than three quarters of the internees. 91 per cent of them were French nationals. There were also several families of showmen, most of whom were released in the summer of 1942 at the latest, as well as some convicts, prostitutes, people with no fixed abode and people who lived ‘in the manner of nomads’ and had been committed by the prefects.
Living Conditions
Having already passed through one, two or three camps before being transferred to Montreuil-Bellay, the internees were destitute on arrival and had few personal belongings. The living conditions were very difficult because of the poor supplies and facilities: lack of food led to malnutrition, there were no stoves, firewood or blankets in the barracks, and there were no clothes or shoes to change into. The hygienic conditions can also be described as miserable, as sanitary facilities were practically non-existent. Survivors’ testimonies always emphasise the suffering caused by the cold, hunger and lack of hygiene. In their distress, the families often used the wood from the barrack floors or even their own wooden shoes to light a warm fire. The Franciscan nuns—they were ‘Missionaries of Mary’ (Soeurs Franciscaines Missionnaires de Marie)—who lived with the internees from January 1942, tried to at least improve the lives of the children with the help of the Red Cross. They set up a nursery and organised the distribution of food.
The French state legitimised the internment of the ‘nomades’ as a ‘socialisation’ of these population groups. This goal was to be achieved through religious education, school attendance for the children and labour for the adults, which is why a chapel, a school and a workshop for making camouflage nets were set up in the camp. The adults could also be used for the work required to run the camp or recruited by the occupation authorities for earthworks on an airfield near Saumur or for the needs of neighbouring industrial companies.
The conditions of internment weakened the internees, already tested by previous internments. Some 120 deaths were recorded between November 1941 and January 1945. Mortality peaked between September 1942 and February 1943 (67 deaths). Improved food conditions in winter 1943 sharply reduced mortality. The dead were buried in the Montreuil-Bellay municipal cemetery. Only under police escort were family members allowed to accompany them to their final resting place.
Escape, Release, Deportation
There were two ways to leave the camp: escape or release. Escapes were rare, and rarely successful. Those who escaped were quickly arrested again by the forces of law and order, as they were identified as ‘nomads’ by the local population.
The conditions attached to release were numerous: in addition to proof of accommodation and work, authorisations had to be obtained from the French and German authorities. Despite these stringent conditions, more than 1,000 people managed to be released. However, those affected were subject to the decree of 6 April 1940, which stipulated enforced residence (assignation a residence) at a fixed location. The ban on leaving one’s place of residence was disregarded in some cases, as those affected sought to be close to other family members in order to improve their survival conditions.
For eleven families, the escape from the Montreuil-Bellay camp ended tragically. They ended up in the Pas-de-Calais department, which was subordinate to the Military Commander for Belgium and Northern France. During the round-ups that took place there from October to December 1943, they were imprisoned and finally deported on transport Z from the SS transit camp in Mechelen to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp on 15 January 1944.
Closure
On 16 January 1945, the Montreuil-Bellay camp was closed to ‘nomades’ in order to intern inmates from Alsace-Lorraine and Germany who had been held in the Natzweiler-Struthof camp (Alsace). 300 ‘nomades’ were transferred to the Jargeau camp (Loiret), around 50 to Les Alliers (Charente), and almost 200 were released.
After 1945
From 1946, the camp facilities were sold and the land returned to its previous owners. Only the foundations of the buildings and remains of the staircases remained. The area where the internees had been housed disappeared completely and the history of the camp was forgotten until it was rediscovered in 1983 thanks to the pioneering work of historian Jacques Sigot (1940–2024). The perseverance of Sigot, survivor Jean-Louis Bauer (1930–2007) and Jean Richard (born 1941), whose relatives had been interned in the camp, as well as private donations, led to the erection of a memorial stone on a plot of land on the site in 1988. Since 1990, a memorial service has been held every last Saturday in April.
In 2010, the town of Montreuil-Bellay acquired a hectare of land on which the main remains of the camp were located. In 2012, the site was added to the list of historical monuments by the French Ministry of Culture, which ensured its preservation and the recognition of the history of the internment of ‘nomades’ by the authorities.
On 29 October 2016, a national commemoration ceremony was held in Montreuil-Bellay, at which the then President of the French Republic, François Hollande (born 1954), acknowledged for the first time France’s responsibility for the suffering inflicted on Sinti and Roma during World War II. The commemorative monument ‘Instant nomade’, created by ceramic artist Armelle Benoît (born 1961), was unveiled at the commemoration ceremony.
Since 2016, the Thouars-based Centre Régional ‘Résistance & Liberté’ has carried out extensive research in the department’s archives. It has led to the identification of the names of 1 850 people interned in Montreuil-Bellay and the reconstruction of their individual lives. A memorial with a permanent exhibition dedicated to the history of the internment of the Sinti and Roma is currently being built at the historic site on the initiative of the town of Montreuil-Bellay and in association with Centre Régional ‘Résistance & Liberté’.
