In January 1941, Spanish Republican families began arriving at the Rivesaltes Camp. Some of them had already endlessly passed from one camp to another between 1939 and 1944. The internment of entire families, previously silenced, re-emerges here in memories and in history. While the men were forced to join groups of foreign workers established by the Vichy regime, the women and children were kept confined in this unhospitable place— freezing cold in winter and unbearably hot in summer—where overcrowding, squalor and hunger reigned; where death was always on the prowl, especially for children, despite help from humanitarian organisations, which were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task.
Twelve accounts from five women and seven men, born between 1924 and 1939, bring to life this universe of internment and arbitrariness. The accounts are presented, contextualised and put in perspective by Geneviève Dreyfus-Armand, an expert historian on these exiles.