Our father was interned in this former tile factory where, he reported, conditions were, in certain respects, worse (if that was possible) than they had been at the Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany.

Camp Les Milles
Camp Les Milles near Aix en Provence, France.
Father is held at this horrid former tile factory.

Matters were made worse by the red brick dust which covered everything. In July 1940, after the surrender of France to Germany and the German occupation of half of the country, the French Parliament voted all powers over to the 84-year old World War I hero, Marshall Philippe Pétain.

Les MillesIn October 1940, the Germans unilaterally shipped the total Jewish population of several southern German provinces to France, where they were interned in these same makeshift camps at Gurs, Les Milles and Rivesaltes close to the Pyrenees where they had previously held, in equally primitive conditions, the vanquished patriots of the fratricidal Spanish Civil War between the International Legion—on the side of the Republic—and the fascists of the "Caudillo" Francisco Franco.

Postwar eyewitness reports confirmed that, considering the number of detainees, these camps were totally unorganized—without adequate food, bedding, sanitary facilities or drinking water. A great number of the older folk died in the first few weeks while those survivors, including several thousand Spanish Republicans,  who had not found a way to either escape or be released were deported, starting in the fall of 1942, to the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.