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Origin and history

The Judes Camp Memorial in Septfonds pays tribute to an internment camp established in February 1939 to host Spanish refugees fleeing the civil war. Located 5 km from Caussade, in the Tarn-et-Garonne, this camp was originally designed to relieve congestion in the Pyrénées-Orientales, hosting up to 16,000 Spaniards in March 1939. The local authorities, fearing tensions, deployed more than 1,000 guards and chose the isolated Borredon station to avoid contact with the population.

Between March 1939 and February 1940, the camp became a place of cultural and political organization for Spanish internees, with theatres, orchestras and workshops. The government encouraged their economic integration by hiring them as agricultural workers or transferring them to industrial camps. From March 1940, the site served as a demobilization centre for foreign volunteers, including Poles, before being reused by the Vichy regime to intern Jews and opponents.

From January 1941 to July 1942, the camp became a triage centre for "overnumbered foreigners", and then a gathering place before deportation. In August 1942, 84 Jews from the 302nd Foreign Workers Group (G.T.E.) were sent to Auschwitz via Drancy. Two weeks later, 211 Jews in Tarn-et-Garonne suffered the same fate. After the Liberation, the camp was used to detain collaborators (1944-1945), then prisoners until its final closure in July 1946.

Today, only a few remains remain, including a water reservoir and a protected parcel since 2011. A memorial, erected in 1996, perpetuates the memory of the internees. In 2018, a controversial project to extend a pig farm near the site sparked citizen mobilization, highlighting the challenges of preserving this historic site.

The camp at Septfonds illustrates the repressive policies of France between 1939 and 1946, moving from the reception of Spanish refugees to collaboration with the Nazi occupier and then to post-liberation cleansing. Its history reflects the contradictions of an era marked by the exclusion, resistance and trauma of the Second World War.

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