During the German occupation of France and Belgium, the Loos-lez-Lille prison, located in the town of Loos, southwest of Lille in northern France, was a transit camp for Sinti and Roma who were later deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. The Oberfeldkommandantur 670 in Lille was mainly responsible for the raids that led to their incarceration in the prison.
The town of Loos took its name from a Cistercian monastery founded in the 12th century. The monastery was sold after the French Revolution and converted into a prison called Loos-lez-Lille in 1817. In 1906, a new building was added to the complex, consisting of a rotunda with four wings.
After the German occupation and the armistice of 22 June 1940, the French departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais were incorporated into the territory of Belgium and placed under the control of the German military commander for Belgium and northern France; they were known as the ‘zone rattachée’. Heinrich Niehoff (1897–1946), who was commander of Oberfeldkommandantur 670 until January 1943, was mainly responsible for the prison. Part of the facility was confiscated to create a separate ‘German quarter’, which was inaccessible to French personnel. In this part of the prison, ‘enemies of the Reich’, opposition members, resistance fighters, hostages, Jews and ‘Gypsies’ were imprisoned and interrogated so that they could be transferred to other prisons or camps if necessary.
Oberfeldkommandantur 670 in Lille
During the round-ups of Sinti and Roma in autumn 1943 carried out in preparation for deportation Auschwitz-Birkenau, Georg Bertram (1882–1953) headed the Oberfeldkommandantur 670 in Lille. As Oberfeldkommandant, he had de facto legislative, executive and judicial powers in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais departments and could command the Feldgendarmerie, which carried out the arrests, and the Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP), which collected the information. Both were subordinate to the Wehrmacht. In addition, there was the counter-espionage service and the Abwehr, which was replaced by the Security Service (SD) from summer 1942.
In Lille, the Feldgendarmerie was based on Boulevard de la Liberté and the GFP on Rue Tenremonde. Both authorities had executive powers. The Abwehr, later Sipo-SD, was located near Lille, in La Madeleine, initially at 14 Avenue du Jardin-Botanique and later at 20 Rue François-de-Badts. All arrests in the two northern departments were the responsibility of the Feldgendarmerie on the ground. It acted as the ‘armed branch’ of the security police (Sipo-SD). Furthermore, over the course of the war, full co-operation developed between the GFP and the Feldgendarmerie on the one hand and the gendarmerie brigades and French police forces on the other.
It was these structures and the men of the Wehrmacht who carried out most of the repression against the ‘enemies of the Reich’ in the ‘zone rattachée’ from 1940 until the summer of 1944. The prisoner identity cards of the Sinti and Roma who had been committed to Buchenwald concentration camp via Auschwitz-Birkenau bore the note: ‘Committed by SD Brussels’.
The Arrests in Autumn 1943
In the district of Lille, where the largest raids took place in the autumn of 1943, Roubaix Feldgendarmerie instructed the city’s central police station to bring all ‘Gypsies’ to them. In Roubaix, people were to be arrested in four different places at the same time, deploying the local knowledge of the city police. Co-operation with the French police during the arrests also proved a good way to save manpower. 63 arrestees were initially taken to the headquarters of the Feldgendarmerie, 4 rue du Manège, in Roubaix. The prefect of the Nord department, who had initially been excluded from the German decisions at the beginning of the war, was informed of this. The French police were also deployed in some districts, such as Douai, and the local French authorities in Avesnes-sur-Helpe.
At least 140 Sinti and Roma were arrested in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais between October and December 1943 and removed to Loos-lez-Lille prison. The people arrested in Pas-de-Calais first passed through the prisons of Arras and Béthune before being taken to Loos-lez-Lille. The Sinti and Roma arrested in the Nord were sent directly to prison. They were housed in the remains of the Cistercian abbey buildings. Before their onward transport, the GFP in Lille established the identity of the detainees in Rue Tenremonde and conducted interviews.
The Sinti and Roma were then taken on lorries to the ‘SS transit camp’ in the Dossin barracks in Mechelen, where they were registered between 5 November and 9 December. It is not possible to say for certain whether this was the day of arrival, as the entries were sometimes backdated. On 15 January 1944, they were deported on ‘Transport Z’ to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
