Camp detainees included prominent intellectuals such as Lion Feuchtwanger (journalist and writer), Max Ernst (Surrealist artist), Otto Meyerhof (Nobel Prize winner for Medicine in 1933). Intellectuals were really active in the camp; they created many works of art and were the example of stamina.
38 different nations were represented in the camp because it was the closest camp to Marseille, which was the last place from where one could legally escape through the sea port.
In 1942, because Maréchal Pétain’s policy was in favor of collaboration, the Vichy regime agreed to the deportation of people defined as foreigners. It concerned 10,000 people of Jewish origin. Within two months, the Camp des Milles supplied the occupying forces with about 2,000 Jews who were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau (via Drancy and Rivesaltes transit camps). In December 1942, the camp was controlled by Germans, who decided to store their weapons there. After liberation the place was returned to its previous owners; they resumed industrial activity in 1947 and the entire dark period of the camp and memory of the Shoah faded into oblivion. It was only in the ‘80s in France that the memory of the Shoah emerged. Concerning the memory of what happened in the Camp des Milles, Magdalena Wolak said that, “thanks to many associations and the current president […] Alain Chouraqui, the long and strenuous process of the reconstruction of the historical narrative of the camp started.” The Camp des Milles memorial site finally opened to the public in 2012.
The permanent exhibition and the memorial were conceived around two main ideas: present the witnesses’ accounts and prevent such events from happening again in the future. It is composed of three parts: the historic exhibition, the account of the place and reflection.
Regarding the historic exhibition, Mrs. Wolak explained that it shows how the interwar period led to the creation of active radical movements and it allows visitors to learn about regional, national and European history. Talking about the exhibition layout, she added: “Such a definition of the project allows for the perception of history which is not seen as a collection of unconnected events but as a chain of interrelated occurrences, which allow for the development of a specific process. That is why the presented dates changed into causes or results. The transition between the three periods of the story of the camp is the continual dialogue between individual and community, and also the presentation of the attitudes of victims, perpetrators, passive witnesses and those who assisted the victims. The analysis of individual histories allows us to see the connection between the evolution of situations which are inevitable and those which, in fact, can be resisted. It also presents the attitudes of those who were the authors of the criminal systems. For example, Maurice de Rodellec du Porzic, the Chief of Police of Marseille, was really zealous and cruel in the organization of transports from Camp des Milles.”
Concerning the account of the place, Mrs. Wolak explained that visitors can see traces of the past left by the deported: “Wall drawings or notes on the wall, short letters written in pencil on the wall, left in the hope that somebody might read them.” Visitors also see the difficult sanitary conditions in which prisoners were kept. The visiting route leads people through places of key importance for the historical narrative: “the furnace which was changed into a cabaret and, on the second floor, the window through which many Jewish women jumped to avoid deportation.”
The last element concerns reflection. Visitors are invited to think about the “present elements which are threats to democracy, the analysis of how the path towards tragedy was shaped and they are made vigilant in their everyday life.” In this part, the museum presents common points between genocides that occurred in the 20th century, such as the genocide of Armenians, the extermination of the Roma nation and the one perpetrated against the Tutsi in Rwanda. “The reflection wing concentrates on collective and individual mechanisms which led to extermination. […]
We have the interdisciplinary scientific achievements and visitors learn the reconstruction of the path leading to mass murder.” The entire purpose of the reflection part is to make every visitor aware of the escalating violence that might be created by social and economic destabilization, as well as the rejection of others, but it also underlines the fact that everyone can actually act and do something. “The reflection area is not only a call for vigilance, but also a call for an active counteraction of dangerous mechanisms which are possible at all stages.