Aspres Concentration Camp — Consuelo

Abstract

In April 1942 the police came to round up all the Spanish refugees and we were sent to a concentration camp. An order had gone out from the French government that all the Spaniards who had no fixed work should be interned. We were put on a train and taken only seven or eight miles to the south of Lus-la-Croix-Haute to a camp in the department of the Hautes Alpes. It was next to the main Grenoble-Marseille road, about a mile from the village of Aspres. There were 260 to 290 of us there and we were put into four big buildings which had been a cement works: the cement, which was manufactured in a quarry up in the mountains was brought down there to be put in sacks. The shed we lived in was built of stone, had a concrete floor and was about thirty yards long. Inside it had been divided up with wooden planking into little rooms and there was another floor built above all in wood. But there were gaps between the boards so that you could hear everything going on and when people swept upstairs all the dirt fell down through the cracks. My mother and I had a little cubicle with two iron beds and mattresses of straw or leaves and a sleeping bag and army blankets for cover.