overview
The Rivesaltes Camp Memorial :
the institutionalisation of a memoir
Nicolas Lebourg Historian , specialist in the history of Camp of Rivesaltes Céline Sala-Pons Director of the Memorial of the Camp of Rivesaltes
In 2015 , the Rivesaltes Camp Memorial [ MCR in French ] was inaugurated in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of France , several kilometres form the Franco-Spanish border . This inauguration marked the patient construction of the memorial process of a camp that had been omitted from the collective memory for a long time . This camp was originally a military camp , built in 1939 for the colonial troops from Senegal , Madagascar and Indochina . However , from 1939 to 2007 Spanish refugees fleeing the Franco regime , foreign Jews , French gypsies , prisoners of war from the Axis countries , collaborators , colonial auxiliary soldiers from the French army and civilians fleeing postcolonial nations , illegal immigrants … were grouped together and detained there . Although the MCR today stands as a pilot site of the most recent policies on remembrance , its construction was complex , from absolute oblivion to the citizens ’ movement claiming it , to its eventual establishment .
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Observing Memories Issue 7