Concentration Camp

 Desolate!

That would be the best description of the concentration camp memorial in Rivesaltes, France. It has been called the Sahara of the South because of the summer heat and winds.

In 1941 it was changed from a military camp to where thousands of refugees fleeing Franco were stashed. Held there were 7,000 Jews imprisoned by the Vichy: 2,400 were deported to Drancy and Auschwitz for extermination.

German prisoners of war were also kept there.

And finally 20,000 harkis, French Algerians who supported the French prior to Algerian independence took their turn behind the wires.

The conditions were at best horrible. Hunger, cold in winter, heat in summer, illnesses, were common.

The camp was closed in late 1964. It was reopened in late 2015 as a memorial to the harsh reality and cruelties. An underground bunker has movies, photos, artifacts, list of names, copies of documents,

putting faces to stories of those that lived through it.

It was nice to leave the camp thinking, it's over. It won't happen again. But it is happening in many places all over the world as people flee war, natural catastrophes, poverty, criminality. 

There was one document that struck me describing the removal of some of the prisoners from Rivesaltes to another camp. It cautioned that parents and children should be kept together, a direct contradiction to the recent U.S. policy on the Mexican border that left kids in cages not knowing where their parents were.

That humans could do this to other humans left us with a feeling of disgust of the capabilities of our species.