The internment of the Nomads, a French history (1940-1946)
This exhibition was presented from 14 November 2018 to 17 March 2019 at the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris.
Monitoring the Nomads at the turn of the century
Yet integrated into regional and cross-border economic circuits for several centuries, the movements of itinerant and seasonal workers, street traders, so-called «bohemian» families, nomads or reputed nomads are gradually causing reprobation and distrust.
The stigmatization of these populations by public authorities dates back to the second half of the 19th century. The economic crisis of the 1880s, industrialization and urbanization are disrupting the structures and economies of rural worlds and transforming the way we look at mobile families. The xenophobic discourse on the insecurity of rural areas equates French itinerant families with asocial and stateless vagabonds, carriers of diseases, spying and plundering the countryside. These statements found a wide echo in the press and a powerful political relay: in 1884, a law allowed mayors to oppose the parking of itinerants on the territory of their municipality.
On 20 March 1895, the government organized a first empirical census of all nomads, bohemians and vagabonds living in France. The report of the extra-parliamentary committee following the census gives the number of “25,000 nomads in bands travelling by caravans” on French territory.
In 1907, at a time when the security question was being debated publicly, the French government created the regional mobile police brigades, which were placed under the authority of the Sûreté générale. At the same time, parliamentarians are taking up the issue and drafting a bill to establish regulations for itinerant occupations. The term “nomad” is used in parliamentary debates to repress a lifestyle associated with vagrancy and crime.
The anthropometric book and control papers
The individual anthropometric identity book is mandatory from 13 years. It includes a precise description of the wearer: face and profile photographs, fingerprints and body measurements. Its main objective is to identify the nomadic individual by establishing on paper his civil status and biometric data allowing his identification. This document must be endorsed at each entry and exit from the territory of a municipality by the gendarmerie, police or the mayor and thus allows to know all the movements made.
The issue of an anthropometric notebook involved the production of a personal record in duplicate kept in the prefectures and in the files at the General Security, at the Ministry of the Interior. The legislation also requires the holder to carry a collective book for which the head of the family is responsible. This document indicates the kinship of the family group, reports, photographs and fingerprints of children from 2 to 13 years old and should note the records of births, marriages and deaths.
The monitoring and identification of nomads thus takes on a collective, hereditary and transgenerational dimension. It is the family, as a whole, that is targeted by the public authorities: children born to parents who carry the anthropometric notebook remain affiliated with the category "nomads" and cannot leave without the authorization of the prefectural services.
The law of 16 July 1912: the establishment of a regime of nomads
The law of 16 July 1912 on «the exercise of itinerant professions and the movement of nomads» creates three categories of itinerants by combining criteria of domicile, nationality and profession. The regulation of itinerant occupations fixes stable status (ambulants, foragers, nomads) to individuals who actually practice intermittent mobility and freezes these people in administrative categories from which it is very difficult to get out. This population is under the control of the Ministry of the Interior.
Nomads in the inter-war period
In the aftermath of the First World War, the daily life of the nomads is subject to a special regime of exclusion. The 1912 law imposes numerous restrictions and obliges the holders of the carnets to maintain daily relations with the administration, the police and the gendarmerie.
In the 1920s, many municipalities issued orders limiting the parking of nomads to 48 hours: prohibition signs multiplied throughout the territory. The police authorities are trying to establish departmental files and a national file to record the presence of all nomads in France.
In August 1939, the head of the Nomads Service at the General Security Agency referred to 36,000 Nomads files and a “floating population” of 150,000 people.
On the eve of the Second World War, under the influence of specific policies adopted in Europe, French lawyers and police experts suggest the adoption of more radical measures aimed at eliminating or dissolving this population. The possibility of creating “concentration camps” is explicitly mentioned.
German policy towards the Zigeuners (1933-1940) before the occupation of France
An integral part of German societies since the late Middle Ages, the Zigeuner (Tsiganes) arouse, at the end of the 19th century, hostility from the public authorities and their presence is perceived as a «scourge». After the Nazis came to power in January 1933, the persecution of Zigeuners was part of a racially-organized policy. All the family groups identified under this category are interned in camps on the edge of major cities, under police supervision, created at the initiative of municipal authorities, such as in Frankfurt, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Hanover or Freiburg. On 8 December 1938, Heinrich Himmler, head of the German police, promulgates a decree to «combat the scourge of the Gypsy» ordering the registration of all Gypsies living in Germany and classifying them according to the criteria established by the Research Institute for Racial Hygiene, headed by Dr Robert Ritter
House arrest
As soon as France entered the war in September 1939, the Nomads suffered the consequences of the «state of siege».
In October, the military authorities issued a decree prohibiting the movement of nomadic and travelling families in several sensitive departments and recommending house arrest or refoulement within the territory. All bearers of the anthropometric and travel identity book are threatened by these measures.
On 6 April 1940, a decree-law of the President of the Republic, Albert Lebrun, extends the ban on nomads throughout the metropolitan territory for the duration of the war.
The government believes that travellers pose a threat to national security and are potential spies on the enemy’s payroll, which must be neutralized through preventive action. The choice of the commune of assignment often gives rise to complaints and protests from local populations.
As a result, the nomadic families can no longer practice their various occupations based on mobility, nor sell their services or goods to local customers. The nomads assigned to residencesquickly found economic difficulties.
The internment of nomads
Internment in the occupied zone: a German decision implemented by the French authorities
On 4 October 1940, the German military administration charged the prefects of the occupied area to organize the internment of Zigeuners in camps taken over by the French authorities.
The archives show differences and confusions in the translation of the term Zigeuner. The prefects issue prefectural orders ordering the gendarmerie to arrest the nomads who are in their department and already under house arrest. But travelling families are sometimes explicitly targeted by the prefectures and are interned in camps. Although the internment decision was a German initiative, the arrests of nomadic or travelling families are carried out by the French police and gendarmerie forces. At first, the Nomads are gathered in heterogeneous places: a quarry, an abandoned castle, a disused factory, a cinema, often away from the towns. Living conditions are very precarious: unhealthy habitat, no supply, more or less close supervision of the gendarmerie. After the emergency, families are transferred to larger and better organised camps. Families are crammed into wooden or hard-wall barracks, surrounded by barbed wire, guarded by gendarmes, customs officers, sometimes colonial troops, obeying a director recruited from soldiers on armistice leave or police, all placed under the authority of the prefect.
At the beginning of 1941, about 1,700 people were grouped together in ten internment camps for Nomads. In eastern France, camps were established from April 1941, as at Arc-et-Senans (Doubs) and Saint-Maurice-aux-Riches-Hommes (Yonne).
The internment of nomads in a free zone
For nomadic families moving in the pre-war free zone, house arrest remains the norm. The vast majority of Nomads interned free enzone come from the Alsatian and Mosellan areas. Expelled by the Germans in July 1940, these nomadic refugees, mostly of French nationality, are interned, as are the expelled Jewish families and thousands of foreigners fleeing the German advance. The only two camps reserved for nomads in the free zone were created by the Vichy regime: Lannemezan (Hautes-Pyrénées) and Saliers (Bouches-du-Rhône).
Deportations to Germany from France
During the war, the Nazi policy towards the Zigeuners becomes radicalized and leads to mass deportation and murder, especially in the Reich, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The number of victims of the Roma and Sinti genocide in Europe is estimated at over 200,000. During the Occupation in France, these persecutions are not applied in the occupied zone where the German authorities delegate to the French the implementation of internment. However, some nomads know the deportation from the camp of Poitiers (Vienna) as part of a repression operation.
The Z convoy of 15 January 1944
The north and the Pas-de-Calais, which are attached to the German military high command in Brussels, have a different situation from the rest of France. The so-called «gypsy» families are neither under house arrest nor interned. But the decree of Auschwitz of 16 December 1942, which signals the mass deportation of all Zigeuners present in the Reich, is extended on 29 March 1943 to the Gypsies of northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands. On 15 January 1944, the Z convoy left Mechelen for Auschwitz-Birkenau. There are 351 people identified as Zigeuner, of which more than 75% are women and children under 15. Among them, 145 French, 109 Belgians, 20 Norwegians and 18 Dutch. It is the only collective deportation convoy of this type to Auschwitz-Birkenau from the occupied countries of Western Europe with that from Westerbork (Netherlands) which left on 19 May 1944. The deportees of convoy Z are interned in Birkenau, in the only section of the camp intended for families, the Zigeunerlager, which turns into a real moroir.
The exit from camps: an unfinished release
The end of the occupation regime and the liberation do not mean the end of internment for the nomads.
In August 1944, the provisional government of the French Republic ordered the release of all prisoners, without distinction, detained by German decision. But in November, the Minister of the Interior, Adrien Tixier, brings some nuances by sending a circular to the regional commissioners of the Republic, where he specifies that the nomads will not be released until each case is studied individually.
The last internees leave the camp of Saint-Maurice-aux-Riches-Hommes (Yonne) on 18 December 1945, from Jargeau (Loiret) on 31 December 1945. The retention of the nomads in the camps after the summer of 1944 responds to a double logic explicitly formulated by the provisional government. On the one hand, Nomads are always considered as potential inner enemies. The same argument that motivated the decision of 6 April 1940 is therefore taken up, thus justifying the prolongation of administrative detention. On the other hand, the French authorities consider the internment of Nomads as a first step towards the sedentary nature of families and see an opportunity to put an end to homelessness.
When they were released in 1946, the Minister of the Interior informed the prefects that the nomads must always be under house arrest. The last internee is released on 1 June 1946 from the Alliers camp, near Angoulême. All forms of control associated with the 1912 law and the anthropometric identity book are resumed under successive governments without any modification until 1969.
Balance sheet: abandonment, survival, discrimination
From 1940 to 1946, nearly 6,700 people were interned in France because they were identified as Nomads by the French authorities. During the arrests, the Nomads lost everything: horses, trailers, fairground stands and sometimes expensive work tools. The money and property will never be returned. They have received no compensation for these spoliations and no assistance to get out of the camps. Some families are plunged into extreme poverty and again face the hostility of local populations.
After the war, a small number of former internees completed the formalities that allowed them to gain the status of “political internee”, the only status that would allow them to have their disability recognized as a result of years of deprivation and thus receive a pension. Moreover, if nomads were interned in French camps, it was not because of their political activities but because they belonged, in the eyes of the German authorities, to a group designated according to the principles of racial discrimination.
The regime of the nomads was replaced on 3 January 1969 by that of the «travellers». The anthropometric books give way to circulation books and booklets. This new, less restrictive system is equally discriminatory in legal terms. The Constitutional Council has also belatedly acknowledged that the book is contrary to the principles of the Constitution. Several legal actions led to the removal of the carnet de circulation in 2012.
On 27 January 2017, the 1969 law was completely repealed and the circulation permits as well as the obligation to have a municipality of affiliation were abolished. Travellers are part of the common law, but their way of life is undermined by public policies that respect freedom of movement but restrict parking and do not recognize caravan housing as a dwelling. The fate of the nomads during the Second World War did not enter the field of French historiography until the late 1980s.
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