Le Camp des Familles: The Nomads de Rivesaltes

By Ellen Turner Hall

Who were the nomads of Rivesaltes? Nomads  is used as a generic term to  refer to such diverse groups as the  French Manouches and Yenish of Alsace, the  Sinti  of Germany, Spanish and Catalan Gypsies,  the Travellers of the  central west and the Roma of central Europe. Over 1300 individuals from these groups were  confined at the  Camp of Rivesaltes between January 1941  and  November   1942.

 

Why? The question  was posed  by Friedel Bohny-Reiter,   who  has left us a photographic record of the  those imprisoned in the camp where she worked as a nurse.

The latest exhibition at the Rivesaltes Memorial  responds to that question in three ways. First, by  gathering scientific information  to document the who, the what, the where and the why.  Dispossessed, marginalised and persecuted by the  Nazi regime, the nomads were  submitted to pseudo-scientific tests  with the objective of proving their racial inferiority.

Secondly, by  devoting a book  to individual   prisoners, each person’s story  serves as  an antidote to nameless, faceless statistics. (You can read about Elise Weiss from Alsace who escaped from the camp with her children, or Jean Sargera born in the camp in 1942 and photographed in his mother’s arm in the poster for the exhibition.)

The final response is  the work of three artists,  each interpreting their nomadic heritage  in a different way.  Marina Rosselle’s work  is the most poetic,  depicting  a world of fragility and tenderness – innocent grasses  grow from the suffering of the people buried under the earth.

Because theirs is an oral culture,  written records  are sparse.

Thanks to this exhibition, the nomads’ story is  finally being told.

Millions of immigrants to Europe  are  living  a similar fate today.

We will be judged as a society on how well we treat them.


Le Camp des Familles runs from 15 March  2024 to 14 Feb 2025.

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Comments


  1. So important to remember the terrible things done to vulnerable minorities
    I shall certainly attend the exhibition

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