Memorial des Camps de la Mort

The Memorial des Camps de la Mort in Marseille is a Holocaust memorial and museum which commemorates the Nazi occupation of the city during World War Two between November 1942 and August 1944.

Memorial des Camps de la Mort history

During this time, the Jews of Marseille were transported out of the city and into concentration and extermination camps. The “Marseille roundup” was the systematic deportation of the Jews of Marseille in the Old Port between 22 and 24 January 1943 under the Vichy regime during the German occupation of France.

Assisted by the French police, directed by René Bousquet, the Germans organized a raid to arrest Jews. The police checked the identity documents of 40,000 people, and the operation sent 2,000 Jews first to Fréjus, then to the camp of Royallieu near Compiègne, in the Northern Zone of France, and then to Drancy internment camp, last stop before the extermination camps. The operation also encompassed the expulsion of an entire neighborhood (30,000 persons) before its destruction

The Memorial des Camps de la Mort was inaugurated in 1995 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps. It is therefore intended to retrace history and maintain the memory of the victims of Nazism.

Now called the “memorial of deportations”, the museum finally opened to the public on 20 December 2019 with a renewed museum tour, more focused on the uniquene history of Marseille during the Second World War.

Memorial des Camps de la Mort today

The Memorial des Camps de la Mort chronicles this tragic period of history, with moving testimony from concentration camp prisoners and witness accounts detailing the bombing and occupation of Marseille, the persecution of the Jews and the resistance movement. Photographs and information panels are also on display.

Getting to Memorial des Camps de la Mort

The address of the site is Avenue Vaudoyer Entre Lle Musem et L’église Saint-Laurent, Marseille, France. The memorial overlooks the port of Marseille.