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Origin and history

Camp Joffre, known as "Rivesaltes camp", was founded in 1935 as a 600-hectare military training centre on horseback between Rivesaltes and Salses-le-Château. Originally designed for the training of troops, it became in 1939 a transit place for Spanish refugees fleeing Francoism, then a camp internment under the Vichy regime (1941-1942), hosting up to 21,000 detainees, mainly Jews, Spaniards, Gypsies and political opponents. The families were separated, and the precarious living conditions were partially mitigated by associations such as the Cimade or the Red Cross.

During the Second World War, the camp also served as a base for German troops (1942-1944), then as a supervised residence centre for purification after the Liberation. From 1962 to 1977, it became a transit camp for the Harki and their families, with nearly 22,000 people passing through its facilities. The last families left in 1977. Between 1986 and 2007, the site will house an administrative detention centre for illegal immigrants, criticized for his conditions of detention.

Today, the Rivesaltes camp is a major memorial site, marked by the inauguration in 2015 of the Rivesaltes Camp Memorial. This memorial, designed by architect Rudy Ricciotti, pays tribute to the various internees and deportees, while preserving islet F, which has been a historic monument since 2000. Commemorative steles recall the fate of deported Jews, Spanish Republicans, Harkis and German prisoners of war, making this site a symbol of 20th-century human drama.

The camp was also a place for humanitarian action, with the presence of associations such as the Cimade, which helped interned children, organized escapes and influenced screening commissions to save lives. The camp archives, partially saved after a scandal in 1997, bear witness to its role in French history, from the internment of "undesirables" to the management of postcolonial migration.

The diversity of people who have passed through Rivesaltes — Spanish refugees, Jews, Gypsies, Harkis, prisoners of war — makes it a mirror of the political and social crises of contemporary France. Its classification as a historical monument and the creation of the memorial underline its importance in the preservation of collective memory, while questioning the mechanisms of exclusion and state repression.

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