The internment of the Nomads, a French story (1940-1946)

This exhibition was presented from November 14, 2018 to March 17, 2019 at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris.

The surveillance of 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, itinerant merchants, so-called "bohemian", fairground or nomadic families gradually arouse disapproval and mistrust.

The stigmatisation of these populations by public authorities has its roots in the second half of the 19th century. The economic crisis of the 1880s, industrialization and urbanization upset the structures and economies of rural worlds and transform the way we look at itinerant families. Xenophobic speeches on the insecurity of rural areas compare French itinerant families to asocial and stateless vagrants, carriers of diseases, spying and looting in the countryside. These statements find a wide echo in the press and a powerful political relay: in 1884, a law allows mayors to oppose the parking of itinerants on the territory of their commune.

On March 20, 1895, a first empirical census of all the "nomads, bohemians, vagabonds" living in France is organized by the government. The report of the extra-parliamentary commission following the census gives the number of "25,000 nomadic gangs travelling in trailers" on French territory.

In 1907, when the security issue was at the centre of public debates, the French government created the regional mobile police brigades which were placed under the authority of the Sûreté générale. At the same time, parliamentarians seized on the issue and drafted a bill to establish regulations for mobile professions. The term 'Nomad' is used in parliamentary debates to repress a lifestyle associated with vagrancy and crime.

The anthropometric notebook and the control papers

The individual anthropometric identity booklet is mandatory from 13 years old. It includes a precise description of the bearer: face and profile photographs, fingerprints and body measurements. Its main objective is to identify the nomadic individual by setting on paper their civil status and the biometric data allowing their identification. This document must be stamped at each entry and exit from the territory of a commune by the gendarmerie, the police or the mayor and thus allows to know all the movements made.

The issuance of an anthropometric notebook entailed the production of a duplicate individual record kept in the prefectures and in the files at the General Security, at the Ministry of the Interior. The legislation requires in parallel the wearing of a collective notebook for which the head of the family is responsible. This document indicates the family ties of the family group, the reports, photographs and fingerprints of children from 2 to 13 years old and must note the references to births, marriages and deaths.

The surveillance and identification of Nomads thus take on a collective, hereditary and transgenerational dimension. It is indeed the family, as a whole, that is targeted by the public authorities: children born to parents holding an anthropometric notebook remain affiliated with the "nomads" category and cannot leave it without the authorization of the prefectural services.

The law of July 16, 1912: the establishment of a nomad regime

The law of 16 July 1912 on 'the exercise of itinerant professions and the circulation of nomads' creates three categories of itinerants by combining criteria of domicile, nationality and profession. The regulation of itinerant professions establishes stable statuses (ambulants, fairground workers, nomads) for individuals who in reality practice intermittent mobility and freezes these people into administrative categories from which it is very difficult to leave. This population is placed under the control of the Ministry of the Interior.

Nomads in the interwar period

In the aftermath of the First World War, the daily life of the Nomads was subjected to a special regime of exclusion. The law of 1912 led to numerous restrictions and forced the holders of the carnets to maintain daily relations with the administration, the police and the gendarmerie.

In the 1920s, many municipalities issued decrees limiting parking for the Nomads to 48 hours: prohibition signs multiplied throughout the territory. The police authorities are trying to compile departmental files and a national file to record the presence of all Nomads in France.

In August 1939, the head of the Nomad service at the General Security mentions 36,000 Nomad 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 Zigeuner (1933-1940) before the occupation of France

An integral part of German societies since the end of the Middle Ages, the Zigeuner (Gypsies) arouse, at the end of the 19th century, the hostility of public authorities and their presence is perceived as a «plague». After the arrival to power of the Nazis in January 1933, the persecution of the Zigeuner is part of a racialecoordinated policy. All the family groups identified in this category are interned in camps on the outskirts of large cities, under police surveillance, set up at the initiative of municipal authorities, such as in Frankfurt, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Hanover or Fribourg. On 8 December 1938, Heinrich Himmler, head of the German police, issued a decree aimed at "combating the gypsy scourge" by ordering the registration of all Zigeuner living in Germany and classifying them according to criteria established by the Research Institute for Racial Hygiene, directed by Doctor Robert Ritter

The house arrest

From the entry into war of France in September 1939, the Nomads suffer the consequences of the "state of siege".

In October, the military authorities prohibit by order the movement of nomadic and forain families in several sensitive departments and recommend house arrest or refoulement to the interior of the territory. All the bearers of the anthropometric carnet and the foreigner identity carnet are threatened by these measures.

On 6 April 1940, a decree-law of the President of the Republic, Albert Lebrun, extended the ban on the movement of Nomads throughout the entire metropolitan territory for the duration of the war.

In the eyes of the government, itinerants constitute a threat to national security and are potential spies in the enemy’s pay that must be neutralized by preventive action. The choice of the municipality of assignment often elicits complaints and protests from the local populations.

Immobilized in a small area, nomadic families can no longer practice their different professions based on mobility, nor sell their services or goods to local customers. The Nomads assigned to reside quickly face economic difficulties.

The internment of Nomads

Internment in the occupied zone: a German decision applied by the French authorities

On 4 October 1940, the German military administration instructed the prefects of the occupied zone to organize the internment of the Zigeuner in camps taken over by the French authorities.

The archives show discrepancies and confusions in the translation of the term Zigeuner. The prefects publish prefectural orders instructing the gendarmerie to arrest the Nomads in their department who are already under house arrest. But fairground families are sometimes explicitly targeted by the prefectures and are interned in the camps. Although the decision to commit the prisoner was a German initiative, the arrests of nomadic or foreigner 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 villages. The living conditions are very precarious: insalubrious housing, non-existent supplies, more or less close supervision of the gendarmerie. After the emergency, the families are transferred to larger and better organized camps. The families crowded into wooden or hard huts, surrounded by barbed wire, guarded by gendarmes, customs officers, sometimes colonial troops, obeying a director recruited from among soldiers on armistice leave or police officers, all under the authority of the prefect.

At the beginning of 1941, about 1,700 people were grouped in ten internment camps for nomads. In the east of France, camps were established from April 1941, such as at Arc-et-Senans (Doubs) and at Saint-Maurice-aux-Riches-Hommes (Yonne).

The internment of the Nomads in the free zone

For nomadic families moving in the free zone before the war, house arrest remains the norm. The vast majority of Nomad internees free come from Alsatian and Moselle areas. Expelled by the Germans in July 1940, these nomadic refugees, mostly of French nationality, are interned, like the deported 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: they are Lannemezan (Hautes-Pyrénées) and Saliers (Bouches-du-Rhône).

Deportations to Germany from France

During the war, the Nazi policy towards the Zigeuner radicalizes and leads to deportation and mass murder, particularly in the Reich, in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans. The number of victims of the Roma and Sinti genocide in Europe is estimated at more than 200,000 people. During the Occupation in France, these persecutions were not applied in the occupied area where the German authorities delegated to the French the implementation of internment. However, some nomads are experiencing deportation from the camp in Poitiers (Vienna) as part of a repression operation.

Convoy Z of January 15, 1944

North and Pas-de-Calais, 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 Auschwitz decree of 16 December 1942, which gave the signal for the mass deportation of all the Zigeuners present in the Reich, was extended on 29 March 1943 to the Gypsies of northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands. On 15 January 1944, convoy Z leaves from Mechelen for Auschwitz-Birkenau. It has 351 people identified as Zigeuner, of whom more than 75% are women and children under 15 years old. Among them, 145 French, 109 Belgians, 20 Norwegians and 18 Dutch. It is the only collective deportation convoy of this type bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau from the occupied countries of Western Europe, together with that of 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 dying place.

The exit from the camps: an unfinished liberation

The end of the Occupation regime and Liberation do not entail 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 before each case is individually studied.

The last internees leave the camp of Saint-Maurice-aux-Riches-Hommes (Yonne) on December 18, 1945, of Jargeau (Loiret) on December 31, 1945. The retention of the Nomads in the camps after the summer of 1944 responds to a dual logic explicitly formulated by the provisional government. On the one hand, the Nomads are still considered potential enemies within. The same argument that motivated the decision of 6 April 1940 is therefore repeated, thus justifying the extension of administrative detention. On the other hand, the French authorities consider the internment of nomads as a first step towards the settlement of families and then see the opportunity to end homelessness.

Upon their release, in 1946, the Minister of the Interior informed the prefects that the Nomads must always be assigned to residence. The last internee was released on 1 June 1946 from the Alliers camp, near Angoulême. All forms of control associated with the 1912 law and the anthropometric identity booklet resume 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 not received any compensation for these spoliations and no aid for leaving the camps. Some families are plunged into extreme poverty and again encounter the hostility of local populations.

After the war, a small number of former internees completed the formalities that allowed them to obtain the status of 'political internee', the only status allowing disability resulting from years of deprivation to be recognized and thus to receive a pension. Moreover, if nomads were interned in French camps, it is 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 is replaced on January 3, 1969 by that of the "Gens du voyage". Anthropometric notebooks give way to notebooks and circulation booklets. This new system, less restrictive, is just as discriminatory on a legal level. The Constitutional Council also belatedly acknowledges that the notebook is contrary to the principles of the Constitution. Several legal actions lead to the abolition of the traffic register in 2012.

On 27 January 2017, the 1969 law is completely repealed and the driving licences as well as the obligation to have a municipality of affiliation are abolished. Travelers integrate the common law, but their way of life is undermined by public policies that respect freedom of movement but restrict the possibility of parking and do not recognize caravan housing as housing. The fate reserved for the nomads during the Second World War only entered the French historiographic field at the end of the 1980s.

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