The internment of the Nomads, a French history (1940-1946)
This exhibition was presented from 14 November 2018 to 17 March 2019 at the Shoah Memorial 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" families, or supposedly nomadic or fairground dwellers, are gradually provoking disapproval and mistrust.
The stigmatization 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 discourses on the insecurity of rural areas equate French itinerant families with asocial and stateless vagabonds, carriers of diseases, spies and loot 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 the itinerants on the territory of their commune.
On 20 March 1895, a first empirical enumeration of all the "nomads, bohemians, vagabonds" living in France was organized by the government. The report of the extra-parliamentary commission following the census gives the number of "25,000 nomadic gangs traveling in trailers" on French territory.
In 1907, at a time when the security issue was occupying public debates, the French government created regional mobile police brigades which were placed under the authority of the General Security. At the same time, parliamentarians took up the issue and drafted a bill to establish regulations for itinerant professions. The term "Nomad" is used in parliamentary debates to suppress a lifestyle associated with vagrancy and crime.
The anthropometric logbook and the inspection 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 recording 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, police or the mayor and thus allows to know all the movements made.
The issuance of an anthropometric logbook entailed the production of a separate record in duplicate kept in the prefectures and in the files at General Security, at the Ministry of the Interior. The legislation requires, in parallel, the wearing of a collective carnet for which the head of the family is responsible. This document indicates the kinship of the family group, the reports, photographs, and fingerprints of children aged 2 to 13 years, and must record records of 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 the anthropometric log remain affiliated with the "nomadic" category and cannot leave without authorization from 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 movement of nomads" created three categories of itinerants by combining criteria of domicile, nationality and profession. The regulation of itinerant professions establishes stable statuses (itinerant, fairground, nomadic) for individuals who in reality practice intermittent mobility and locks these people into administrative categories from which it is very difficult to leave. This population is under the control of the Ministry of the Interior.
Nomads in the interwar period
After the First World War, the daily life of the Nomads was subjected to a special regime of exclusion. The 1912 law imposed many restrictions and forced the holders of the notebooks to maintain daily relations with the administration, the police and the gendarmerie.
In the 1920s, many municipalities issued decrees limiting parking for Nomads to 48 hours: prohibition signs multiplied throughout the territory. The police authorities are making efforts to establish departmental and national files to record the presence of all Nomads in France.
In August 1939, the head of the Nomad service at General Security mentioned 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 Zigeuners (1933-1940) before the occupation of France
An integral part of German society since the end of the Middle Ages, the Zigeuner (Gypsies) arouse, at the end of the 19th century, the hostility of the public authorities and their presence is perceived as a "plague". After the Nazis came to power in January 1933, the persecution of the Zigeuner was part of a racialecoordented policy. All family groups identified under this category are interned in camps on the outskirts of large cities, under police surveillance, created 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 force, issued a decree "to combat the scourge of gypsies" by ordering the registration of all Zigeuner living in Germany and classifying them according to the criteria established by the Research Institute for Racial Hygiene, directed 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 an order prohibiting the movement of nomadic and foreigner families in several sensitive departments and recommended that they be placed under house arrest or returned to the interior. All holders of the anthropometric logbook and the identification logbook 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 are a threat to national security and potential spies in the pay of the enemy that must be neutralized by preventive action. The choice of the municipality of assignment often elicits complaints and protests from local populations.
Immobilized in a small area, nomadic families can no longer practice their various professions based on mobility, nor sell their services or goods to local customers. The Nomads assigned to reside soon began to face economic difficulties.
The internment of the Nomads
Internment in occupied zones: a German decision implemented 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 Zigeuners in camps taken over by the French authorities.
The archives show discrepancies and confusion in the translation of the term Zigeuner. The prefects issue 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 interned in the camps. Although the decision of internment was a German initiative, the arrests of nomadic or foreigner families were 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. Living conditions are very precarious: insalubrious housing, no supplies, more or less close supervision of the gendarmerie. After the emergency, 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 eastern France, camps were established from April 1941, such as at Arc-et-Senans (Doubs) and Saint-Maurice-aux-Riches-Hommes (Yonne).
The internment of the Nomads in the free zone
For nomadic families moving to the free zone before the war, house arrest remains the norm. The vast majority of Nomads who were interned and released from Enzone came from areas in Alsace and Moselle. Expelled by the Germans in July 1940, these nomadic refugees, mostly of French nationality, were interned, like 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 Zigeuner radicalized and led to deportation and mass murder, especially in the Reich, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The number of victims of the genocide of Roma and Sinti in Europe is estimated at more than 200,000 people. During the occupation of 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 deported from the camp of Poitiers (Vienne) as part of a repression operation.
Convoy Z of January 15, 1944
The Nord and the Pas-de-Calais, attached to the German Military High Command in Brussels, are in a different situation from the rest of France. 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 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 left Mechelen for Auschwitz-Birkenau. There are 351 people identified as Zigeuner, more than 75% of whom are women and children under the age of 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, along 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.
Leaving the camps: an unfinished liberation
The end of the occupation regime and liberation do not bring an end to internment for the Nomads.
In August 1944, however, the provisional government of the French Republic ordered the release of all prisoners, without distinction, held on the basis of a 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 examined individually.
The last internees left the camp of Saint-Maurice-aux-Riches-Hommes (Yonne) on 18 December 1945, and Jargeau (Loiret) on 31 December 1945. The maintenance of the Nomads in the camps after the summer of 1944 responds to a double logic explicitly formulated by the provisional government. For one thing, 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 sedentarization of families and then see an opportunity to end homelessness.
Upon their release in 1946, the Minister of the Interior informed the prefects that the Nomads must still be placed under house arrest. 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 book resumed under successive governments without any change until 1969.
Assessment: 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. Money and property will never be returned. They have not received any compensation for these dispossessions or any assistance when 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 access the status of "political internee", the only status allowing for recognition of disability resulting from years of deprivation and thus to receive a pension. Moreover, if the Nomads were interned in French camps, it was not because of their political activities but because, in the eyes of the German authorities, they belonged 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 "Gens du voyage". The anthropometric notebooks give way to the notebooks and circulation booklets. This new, less restrictive system is just as discriminatory from a legal point of view. The Constitutional Council recognizes belatedly that the notebook is contrary to the principles of the Constitution. Several legal actions lead to the abolition of the traffic log in 2012.
On 27 January 2017, the 1969 law was fully repealed and driving licences as well as the obligation to have a municipality of affiliation were abolished. Travelers integrate common law, but their way of life is undermined by public policies that respect the freedom to move 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 historiographical field at the end of the 1980s.
learn more
