Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp

Beaune-la-Rolande camp was initially built in 1939 to receive future German prisoners of war (POWs), it was converted after the Fall of France into a German camp to hold French POWs before their transfer to camps in Germany. Beaune-la-Rolande and the neighbouring Pithiviers camp, with which it was closely associated, were two sites of Frontstalag 152 an internment camp founded by the Wehrmacht on 20 July 1940.^[6] Both camps were greatly overpopulated holding about 13,000 prisoners each according to an inspection by a German commander. A review by a French humanitarian organisation found 14,000 held in Beaune-la-Rolande many suffering from dysentery, the French authority confirmed, in late 1940, that the detainees, many of them colonial troops from Morocco and Algeria, were on the brink of starvation. In addition to prisoners of war, both Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers also held French political prisoners.^[7] Frontstalag 152 was disbanded on 21 March 1941.^[6]

Following a request by the Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich (MBF) (German Military Command in France) to intern all foreign Jews in application of the 1940 anti-Jewish legislation, the camp became an internment centre for foreign-born Parisian Jews. The first prisoners to arrive in May 1941 were 1,552 foreign and stateless Jews, mainly Polish men from the Paris area, victims of the Green ticket roundup.^[8]

In May 1942, SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker ordered German authorities across France to take over operations of the camps from the French, prisoners were not allowed to leave the camp or to perform labour and deportations began. A thousand Parisian Jews, mostly women and children, were transferred to Beaune-la-Rolande on 20 July 1942, following the Vel d’Hiv roundup. ^[8] As August 1942 began, 1,500 children remained in Beaune-la-Rolande (as well as in Pithiviers^[9]) after their parents were deported to Auschwitz. On 19, 22 and 25 August the children were sent to Drancy before being deported to Auschwitz where they were sent to the gas chambers and murdered.^[10] In September 1942 the camp reverted to French control and became an internment facility for non-Jewish communist prisoners.^[5]

The camp was closed on 4 August 1943 by S.S. Sturmbannführer Alois Brunner, then commander of Drancy concentration camp, and his deputy Ernst Brückler, under direct orders from Heinrich Himmler.^[11]

The camp was administered by the prefectural office of the Loiret but frequently inspected by representatives of the German occupying authorities.^[12] Inmates were housed in 19 barracks and guarded by French gendarmes under Nazi oversight.^[13] At the end of 1941, these consisted of four officers, 80 gendarmes, 43 customs officers and 22 auxiliary guards, totalling 120 men.^[14]

The prisoners performed forced labour within the camp's workshops and garden, and outside at the farms and plants in the surrounding villages. Beaune-la-Rolande was closely associated with the Pithiviers camp, located 18 kilometres (11 miles) away.^[5] Between 20 July and 23 August 1941, 313 of Beaune-la-Rolande's 2,000 prisoners managed to escape custody, usually from worksites outside the camp, 85 for the last week of July alone, this represented more than 15% of the total population of the camp and had been helped, according to the authorities, by the negligence of the French gendarmes.^[15]

Two convoys left Beaune-la-Rolande for Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942.^[16]

• Convoy 5 of 28 June 1942 (1,038 deportees) 1.034 men and 34 women^[17]
• Convoy 15 of 5 August 1942 (1,014 deportees) 425 men and 589 women^[18]

• René Blum, founder of the Ballet de l'Opéra at Monte Carlo, was interned in the camp.^[19]
• The Austrian-born French composer Ralph Erwin died while being held in the camp.^[20]
• Polish artist Zber was imprisoned in the camp, where he completed some of his paintings, before his deportation to Auschwitz.^[21]

 

In 1965, a stele was constructed at the site in memory of the Jewish internees, on 14 may 1989, a larger monument in black marble with a list of victims and a gold star of David etched out on its summit was added.^[22] On the stele, is inscribed the following phrase:^[23]

Que cette pierre témoigne de la souffrance des hommes
May this stone bear witness to the suffering of men

In 1994, a commemorative plaque was affixed to the façade of the old train station by the Association des Fils et des Filles des déportés juifs de France (Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees of France).^[24]

In 2008, the remains of barrack No. 4, one of the buildings where prisoners slept, were dismantled and reassembled in Orléans, in the courtyard of the Musée-Mémorial des enfants du Vel 'd'Hiv’.^[24]

• Sarah's Key, a 2010 French film taking place during and after the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup based on a novel by Tatiana de Rosnay.^[22]
• The Round Up, a 2010 French film about the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup and the events surrounding it.^[25]
• Illusions perdues 1941-1942. Fragments d’une vie en sursis. A 2011 French documentary about the victims of the Beaune-la-Rolande camp.^[26]
• Beaune-la-Rolande, a 2003 book by Cécile Wajsbrot.^[27]
• After the Roundup, escape and Survival in Hitler's France, a 2017 biography book by Joseph Weismann that inspired the movie The Round Up.^[28]
• La petite fille du Vel' d'Hiv, a 1991 book by Annette Muller.^[29]

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Beaune-la-Rolande transit camp.

• The Holocaust in France
• Holocaust train
• Green ticket roundup
• Vel' d'Hiv Roundup

• Chazin-Bennahum, J. (2011). Rene Blum and The Ballets Russes: In Search of a Lost Life. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-983047-3.
• Cullin, M.; Gruber, P.; Gruber, P.D.; Orpheus Trust (Vienna, Austria) (2008). Douce France: Musik-Exil in Frankreich 1933-1945 - Musiciens en exil en France 1933-1945. Böhlau. ISBN 978-3-205-77773-1.
• de Rosnay, T. (2007). Sarah's Key. St. Martin's Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4299-8521-5.
• Denis Peschanski (2002). La France des camps: l'internement, 1938-1946 (in French). Gallimard. ISBN 978-2-07-073138-1.
• Megargee, G.P.; White, J. (2018). USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany: Volume III:. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-02386-5.
• Megargee, G.P.; Hecker, M. (2022). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-06091-4.
• Muller, A. (2014). La petite fille du Vel d'Hiv. Le Livre de poche. Jeunesse (in French). Librairie générale française. ISBN 978-2-01-002373-6.
• Novodorsqui-Deniau, M.; Hazan, K. (2006). Pithiviers-Auschwitz, 17 juillet 1942, 6H 15: convoi 6, camp de Pithiviers et Beaune-la-Rolande (in French). Cercil. ISBN 978-2-9507561-6-9.
• Poznanski, R.; Bracher, N.; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2001). Jews in France During World War II. Brandeis University Press. ISBN 978-1-58465-144-4.
• Wajsbrot, C. (2003). Beaune-la-Rolande. Zulma. ISBN 978-2-84304-266-9.
• Walter, B.J.T.L.; Laqueur, W.; Baumel-Schwartz, J.T. (2001). The Holocaust Encyclopedia. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-13811-5.
• Weismann, J.; Kutner, R. (2017). After the Roundup: Escape and Survival in Hitler's France. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-02704-7.
• Wieviorka, A. (2000). Les biens des internés des camps de Drancy, Pithiviers et Beaune-la-Rolande (in French). Documentation française. ISBN 978-2-11-004548-5.

• "A Orléans, le Musée Mémorial des enfants du Vel d'Hiv fête ses 10 ans avec de nouveaux projets". France Bleu (in French). 2021-01-28. Retrieved 2021-07-08.
• "Illusions perdues, 1941-1942". FilmsDocumentaires.com (in French).
• "Le camp d'internement". Ville de Beaune-la-Rolande (in French). 2019-04-06. Archived from the original on 2022-10-04. Retrieved 2021-07-10.
• Rutkowski, Adam (1982). "Beaune-la-Rolande internment v (Loiret) (May 14, 1941 - July 12, 1943)". Le Monde Juif (in French). Vol. 106, no. 2. pp. 39–74.
• Solly, Meilan (2018-12-28). "Museum to Be Built at Site of Nazi-Occupied France's First Concentration Camp". Smithsonian Magazine.
• Tartaglione, Nancy (2009-11-04). "Alain Goldman mounts French Holocaust epic with Gaumont". Screen.