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St. Cyprien
« La retirada »

Facing the massive influx of Spanish republican refugees fleeing Franco's Spain, France endured a migratory problem without precedent. Around 453,000 Spaniards crossed the border escorted by the mobile guard over a period of 4 consecutive days between February 4th and 9th 1939. The French authorities were caught short, and quickly had to find a solution to "house" these refugees. A first camp was hastily opened in Argeles but its capacity was insufficient. The camps of Bacares, Rivesaltes Agde, Bram and St Cyprien opened one after the other.
On the beach of St Cyprien refugees set up tents surrounded by horses, goats and cows that they had brought with them. Only the injured lived in the huts which construction had begun on February 4th. The first refugees (around 200 republican soldiers who arrived at the end of January) set up barbed wire in the Aygual*.
Already in 1939 the camp was described as a concentration camp, although the term did not have the same meaning as in 1942.
The camp was made up of thirteen sectors, separated from one another by lines of barbed wire. Each sector measured 300 meters by 500 and consisted of 28 huts measuring from 75m2 to 125m2. There were 75 men per barrack and the camp therefore had a theoretical capacity of 27,300 men.

On May 10th 1940, Germany invaded Belgium. The Belgian police then embarked on a massive wave of arrests of Jewish refugees originating from Reich territories. The refugees were taken from their apartments at dawn and instructed to take 48 hours worth of supplies. Those who were arrested in the street did not have the chance to return home to collect what was necessary for the journey to the camps in the South of France.
Although it was not at all worrying from a political perspective, the refugees deported from Belgium, in spite of the right to asylum, were treated by the police and the population as suspect Germans, as spies belonging to the 5th column*.
At the Franco-Belgian border the French constabulary took over and the journey from Brussels or Antwerp to St Cyprien took 18 days. In the transit camps, the prisoners were stripped of the few personal belongings they had managed to take with them.
According to sources, 5,000 to 8,000 Jewish refugees from the Reich ended up in St Cyprien following the arrests. Rabbi Kappel, a French military chaplain, reported 8,000 refugees aged from 16 to 62 in a letter dated September 16th 1940 to the Great Rabbi in France. The most commonly accepted figure is around 7,500 refugees, mostly Jews coming from Belgium.
The Kundt* commission passed through St Cyprien at the end of July 1940 and counted the internees according to nationality. They established a total of 5,065 people of whom the majority was German (2,675) and ex-Austrians (989).
A speech for the Toulouse Coordination committee presented jointly by various French charitable organizations, the JOINT and the HICEM, spoke of 6,000 men at St Cyprien with an average age of over 40, with the dominant age range being 25-48. The organizations also spoke of 14 men aged less than 17, 16 men older than 65 and a man aged 83.
Social backgrounds were very diverse. There were a lot of academics, judges, doctors, artisans and businessmen. Only 500 internees had the financial means to support themselves whilst the others were dependent on official or private aid.
In July 1940 St Cyprien was one of the most highly populated camps in the Southern zone.

Were you at St Cyprien?

Although sources vary as to the number of internees at St Cyprien camp they were nevertheless unanimous on its living conditions.
A Memorandum written on September 20th 1940 by former members of the Assistance Committees for Jewish Refugees from Brussels and Antwerp* explains the deplorable sanitary conditions in the camp:
Firstly, the geographical location of St Cyprien camp could not have been worse chosen. The sandy soil of a region subject to great climatic variation could never be suitable ground for a housing zone.
The huts are made of planks of light wood with corrugated roofing and do not insulate against the wind, the frequent sandstorms and the cold. There is no floor, no bed, no mattress, not even a straw-mattress. The internees sleep on a small layer of hay on the floor. There are no windows, lighting, heating and these emergency shelters are true dens of microbes and infectious diseases carried by rats, bugs, lice and other vermin that also live in the camp.

There is only one water tank for the whole camp, for which a bacteriological examination carried out in summer 1940 showed that the water was contaminated and therefore unusable. Nonetheless this is the water that is used in the kitchen to prepare the food and to clean the cauldrons used for this purpose. The cauldrons were already rusty and the food is contaminated with grime and grit because they have no lid.
The walls, the tables and work surfaces of the kitchen are made of wood that is damp and rotten, meaning the kitchen is also infested with worms.
The internees only have one container for food: only old tinned food cans, and only since 1940 have the least impoverished of the internees been able to buy cutlery and crockery.
The latrines are frequently only metal buckets without a lid placed between the huts with the rare exception of a few wooden lavatories that are in no way more hygienic. The only disinfectant is the occasional use of potash chlorine.
Epidemics arising from malnutrition and terrible hygiene are breaking out and they affect a fifth to a quarter of the population. Stomach infections, loss of blood and considerable weakening of the internees are common, but this problem is classified as �not dangerous� by the military authorities who register only �some deaths�.

Again during the summer of 1940 a serious epidemic of typhoid fever broke out and each day there were deaths, with the epidemic claiming hundreds of lives. At St Louis Hospital in Perpignan alone there were 40 deaths and 160 cases of illness. The first question asked by doctors to arrivals was �are you from St Cyprien?�
There were also cases of malaria, jaundice and trachoma*.

St Cyprien�s liquidation

If the authors of the memorandum concede that the creation of the camps was a necessary measure given the refugee�s situation, they nonetheless clearly state that internees at St Cyprien should be transferred to other camps and that �in no way should it be to a camp similar to St Cyprien. This would amount to the systematic and certain extermination of its inhabitants.�
All the reports cited recommend that falling short of freeing the inhabitants of St Cyprien, they should at least be transferred to other camps where living conditions were more acceptable. The aid organizations� campaign for the France�s southern camps internees� emigration only enabled a small minority to leave the country legally. The majority of people who managed to emigrate often crossed the borders clandestinely, into Switzerland or Spain on the purpose of reaching Portugal.
With these catastrophic sanitary conditions came the deep despair of the interned population. Firstly because St Cyrpien was a camp for men and because women transported from Belgium were interned at Gurs. The result was broken families who did not always have the luck to find their spouse alive once they were freed.
Some women who were freed from Gurs went to St Cypien village as they had nowhere else to go and some even moved into empty huts in the camp. The promiscuity between the women and many men, whether they were Jewish internees, Spanish refugees or the camp guards, often led to dangerous and morally unacceptable situations for the authorities, who nonetheless took no preventative action.

Refugees spoke of their suffering to Rabbi Kappel during his visit in September 1940. They suffered for not knowing why they were interned given that the armistice was in place. The fact that they did not know when they might be liberated increased their anxiety. In September 1940, Vichy enforced segregation measures for foreigners and decided that there would no longer be liberations with the exception of the minority holding entry visas for a neutral country, providing they also obtained exit visas.
Refugees who had been granted liberation also came to be re-interned. In this way Cha�m Silberstein, who had been arrested in Anvers, interned at St Cyprien and escaped, was stopped by the police in Perpignan on August 26th, and arrested for not holding an entry visa and was held in detention before being judged at Perpignan court house. He stayed in prison until his judgment on September 11th.

The judgment:

�There are several other defendants at this hearing accused of the same crime as Silberstein Cha�m, who confirm as he does to having been arrested by the Belgian police in Brussels or in Anvers, and to have been almost immediately transported to France by truck at the time of the imminent invasion of Belgium by the German army.
The concordance of these various statements and the air of sincerity of their authors makes the court inclined to believe that Silberstein Cha�m is not lying as to his means of entry into France, but there is still doubt as to whether he clandestinely crossed the border.
Silberstein Cha�m can be reproached for failing to think to regularize his situation in France by applying for an identity card on his arrival at St Cyprien, or at least within the officially prescribed period.
He admits to having left the camp without obtaining the requisite prior authorization.
It is appropriate to disqualify the events from the cause as the deliberation on the case of Silberstein Cha�m relates only to the crime specified in article 3 of the law of May 2nd 1938.
The penalty to be applied:
The act with which the defendant is accused is less serious than the voluntary and clandestine entrance across the border, and given the documents produced by Silberstein Cha�m it does not seem that he is a dangerous individual, and that finally the judicial sanction will not prevent the camp authorities at St Cyprien from punishing Silberstein Cha�m�s escape if they see fit.
It therefore seems just and sufficient in view of article 1 of the decree of June 24th 1939 to condemn Silbertein Cha�m to a sentence of 2 weeks imprisonment and 100 francs fine.�

We cannot confirm whether Cha�m Silberstein, having already been imprisoned for longer than two weeks before his judgment had to serve his sentence again, but what is certain is that he was transferred from St Cyprien to Gurs in October 1940 and then interned in the Milles camp (Bouche du Rhone) in April 1941 whilst waiting to immigrate to the United States..

A report on the situation of the camp of September 11th 1940 states that beyond the impossibility of leaving St Cyprien, it seemed materially impossible to see an improvment in its conditions of living.

On October 4th 1940 St Cyprien camp closed and the internees were transferred to Gurs.
In the search section, a list of 3858 men who were transferred from St Cyprien to Gurs is accessable. These lists were drawn up on October 4th and 7th 1940 by Lieutenant Colonel Leclerc, who was commander of the Saint Cyprien camp, and were addressed to the Prefect of the Eastern Pyrenees in Perpignan.