Incarceration and Regime Change: European Prisons during and after the Second World War 9781785332661

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction: Incarceration and Regime Change
Chapter 1 ‘Gloomy Dungeons’: Provisional Prisons in Madrid in the Aftermath of the Spanish Civil War (1939–45)
Chapter 2 Paradoxical Outcomes? Incarceration, War and Regime Changes in Italy, 1943–54
Chapter 3 Life in the Frontstalags: Colonial Prisoners of War in Occupied France, 1940–42
Chapter 4 Containing ‘Potentially Subversive’ Subjects: The Internment of Supporters of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands Indies, 1940–46
Chapter 5 The Detention of Social Outsiders between Social Reform, Annihilation and Custody: The Municipal Workhouse and Prison of Berlin-Rummelsburg from Weimar Republic to GDR
Chapter 6 A Triumph for the Protectional Model? How Belgian Institutions for Delinquent Children Dealt with Young Collaborators (1944–50)
Chapter 7 The Ambiguities of Gendarmeries’ Relationship to Internment around World War II (Belgium, France, the Netherlands)
Afterword: An Essay on Space and Time
Index

Citation preview

Incarceration and Regime Change

Incarceration and Regime Change European Prisons during and after the Second World War

Edited by

Christian G De Vito, Ralf Futselaar and Helen Grevers

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2017 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2017 Christian G. De Vito, Ralf Futselaar and Helen Grevers This book has been realised with the support of the IAP ‘Justice & Populations’ (PVII/22), Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme – Belgian Science Policy Office. This book’s contributions were first developed – in preliminary form – as part of the NIAS/NIOD Exploratory Workshop ‘Internment, Incarceration and Detention. Captivation Histories in Europe around the First and Second World Wars’, held 3-4 November 2011 in Wassenaar, the Netherlands. Ralf Futselaar contributed to this book within the context of the research programme ‘Four Centuries of Labour Camps. War, Rehabilitation, Ethnicity’, which is financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: De Vito, Christian G., editor. | Futselaar, Ralf, 1976- editor. | Grevers, Helen, 1986- editor. Title: Incarceration and regime change : European prisons during and after the Second World War / edited by Christian G. De Vito, Ralf Futselaar, and Helen Grevers. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016022580 | ISBN 9781785332654 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Prisons—Europe—History—20th century. | Prison administration—Europe—History—20th century. | World War, 1939–1945— Prisoners and prisons, European. Classification: LCC HV9637 .I53 2017 | DDC 365/.9409044—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022580 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN 978-1-78533-265-4 hardback ISBN 978-1-78533-266-1 ebook

Contents

Introduction

Incarceration and Regime Change

1

Christian G De Vito, Ralf Futselaar and Helen Grevers Chapter 1

‘Gloomy Dungeons’: Provisional Prisons in Madrid in the Aftermath of the Spanish Civil War (1939–45)

15

Alicia Quintero Maqua Chapter 2

Paradoxical Outcomes? Incarceration, War and Regime Changes in Italy, 1943–54

33

Christian G De Vito Chapter 3

Life in the Frontstalags: Colonial Prisoners of War in Occupied France, 1940–42

53

Sarah Frank Chapter 4

Containing ‘Potentially Subversive’ Subjects: The Internment of Supporters of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands Indies, 1940–46

80

Esther Zwinkels Chapter 5

The Detention of Social Outsiders between Social Reform, Annihilation and Custody: The Municipal Workhouse and Prison of Berlin-Rummelsburg from Weimar Republic to GDR Thomas Irmer

110

vi

Contents

Chapter 6

A Triumph for the Protectional Model? How Belgian Institutions for Delinquent Children Dealt with Young Collaborators (1944–50)

127

Aurore François Chapter 7

The Ambiguities of Gendarmeries’ Relationship to Internment around World War II (Belgium, France, the Netherlands)

144

Jonas Campion Afterword

An Essay on Space and Time

164

Jane Caplan

Index

173

Introduction

Incarceration and Regime Change Christian G De Vito, Ralf Futselaar and Helen Grevers

I

n July 1944, the German SS began evacuating the Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch. During their last months in control of the site, 329 prisoners were shot, and many others were put on a transport to Germany. Many among the latter group would not survive.1 When the southern Netherlands fell into Allied hands in autumn of 1944, the former Nazi concentration camp became a Dutch internment camp, at its peak holding 6,000 German citizens and 6,000 Dutch collaborators. Today, the former camp area is largely taken up by a high-security prison. Sites of incarceration are often remarkably long-lived and often survive multiple regime changes. In the aftermath of liberation, the erstwhile concentration camp was a mess. Compared with the number of prisoners interned there, both supplies and (trained) staff were dramatically low. The disgruntled camp commander, a member of the former Dutch resistance, complained that the Nazis had organized camp life much better when they had been in charge.2 Apparently, the comparison did not strike him as strange or inappropriate; the camp had remained roughly the same, even though guards and prisoners, sometimes literally, had switched roles during the most recent regime change. The case of the Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch, moreover, is not at all exceptional. All over Europe, as

Notes for this chapter begin on page 12.

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the Nazi empire crumbled, sites of incarceration were changing hands rather than being dismantled. Over the last two decades, a small but interesting literature has emerged that focuses on the various forms of incarceration during and immediately after World War I and World War II.3 The detention of ethnic minorities, political prisoners, prisoners of war and displaced persons in periods of war is becoming more fully examined and much better understood. Wartime and postwar incarceration, which play an important role both in the public imagination of war and in the collective memories of various groups of contemporaries, have gained recognition as viable and valuable areas of historical research. For good reasons, the twentieth century has been termed ‘the century of the camps’.4 States expanded their control over society, and incarceration was a preferred means for exclusion, social engineering and covert execution. Especially in and around times of war, these changes led to massive increases in the numbers of people confined to prisons or prison-like institutions. This volume seeks to add to this small but growing field by investigating the impact of wartime regime change on the forms, objectives and experiences of incarceration. More specifically, the seven essays that follow explore not only the ways in which inmates, prisoners and internees were treated, but also how they were conceptualized; societies in these times of extreme instability constructed images of their inmates. These conceptualizations of prisoners developed amidst often conflicting policies, existing or newly introduced penal cultures and insecure jurisdictions. Through their shared focus on the places of incarceration, rather than on the practices of any particular regime, these chapters can reveal continuities that have escaped most, if not all, other publications in the field. Although political prisoners necessarily play a large role in all of these chapters, the chapters also aim to correct the overrepresentation of release and incarceration of various political prisoners in the literature, by highlighting the profound impact that regime changes had on non-political prisoners as well. Of course, that does not, and should not, detract from the inmates who were imprisoned because of their (real or ascribed) role in armed or political conflict. Yet we hope to focus on all captive men and women

Introduction

3

who experienced internment, imprisonment and detention. Prisoners, whether political or not, often went through multiple institutions and to an extent shaped them, just as they influenced the ways in which they themselves and their former places of confinement were represented and remembered after and during the transitional period.

A Note on Theory It is unbecoming to editors to hijack the empirical work of contributors to mount their theoretical or ideological hobby horses in their introduction, but in this case a few remarks are in order. The field of prison history is but a miniscule element in the vastness of modern historiography. That is to say, empirical studies into the history of incarceration are relatively rare. Because of the work of (especially) Michel Foucault, however, it has nevertheless become an important focal point of social and historical theory and debate. There likely is no other field in historical enquiry that is so top-heavy, where such grand, and sometimes grandiose, theories have been grounded on such a small empirical research tradition. When thinking about state power in particular, it seems modern historians cannot quite escape from prisons. The history of punishment has long been dominated by two conflicting master narratives: on the one hand, the aforementioned Foucauldian paradigm, centred on diffuse, and largely impersonal, social control and disciplinary ‘dispositives’, of which prisons were described as ‘laboratories’. In opposition to this stands a perhaps oversimplified version of Norbert Elias’ insight into the processes of ‘civilization’ and ‘collectivization’.5 Where the Foucauldian view sees prison history as the ever further encroachment of covert control, the Elias-inspired histories focus on the increasing humanism of prisons and the gradual strengthening of the status of the inmates. An important difference between the two traditions is their perspective on pace. In Foucault’s view, a dramatic change in practices of imprisonment took place within a few, relatively recent, decades, whereas Elias stresses a linear, longitudinal evolution in practices of punishment, best exemplified by a gradual tendency towards legalization of prisoners’ rights.

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In a recent essay, Pieter Spierenburg has shown that the supposed incompatibility of these perspectives may not in fact have been as great as they seemed in the 1970s and 1980s.6 For all their differences, in any case, these interpretations had two fundamental points in common. As far as their object is concerned, they addressed single institutions or types of institutions and viewed the history of punishment as a sequence of clear-cut shifts from one form to another – most famously, in Foucault’s narrative, from corporal punishment to the penitentiary. Methodologically they both largely prioritized theoretical insights over empirical research, leading to major discussions about the use of archival sources but painfully little actual use of those very resources. Similar to developments in the historiography of psychiatric institutions and knowledge,7 a growing number of scholars, starting from the 1990s and in different parts of the globe, convincingly questioned these approaches8 – or, more specifically, Foucault’s heritage, which had been by far the most influential perspective in the previous decades. Recent scholarship predominantly stresses the very limitations of the ability of the authorities to control their ‘subjects’, which is so central to Foucault’s work. These impersonal, even somewhat elusive, powers have always had tremendous difficulty implementing their more modest plans and laws. Moreover, the limitations of public control within institutions have been shown not to have been caused exclusively by incompetence, financial limitations and other such problems at the top of society but also by prisoners’ own agency. This new scholarship has tended to focus (almost) exclusively on empirical approaches. This may seem like a welcome breath of fresh air after theory-heavy earlier decades, but the unmistakable downside is that it has resulted in interpretative and thematic fragmentation. More important for the present volume, new historians of confinement, with few exceptions, have not questioned the traditional focus on single forms of punishment. Within this literature, therefore, prison studies largely remain dominant and separated from research on other forms of punishment and internment, be it concentration camps, gulag, galley service or the workhouses. This volume is designed to challenge these limitations, and it does so through two fundamental strategies. First, by focusing on periods of regime change, we have put ourselves in a privi-

Introduction

5

leged position to observe the entanglements among various forms of punishment and internment. It is especially in these periods of very rapid change that practices of, and ideas about, imprisonment become visible, because they are necessarily called into question. At the same time, we acknowledge that no linear, deterministic connection exists between regime changes and shifts in the forms of imprisonment. Rather, to put it in Charles Tilly’s terms, we view regime changes as a ‘recurrent causal mechanism’ that operates by ‘concatenating [various elements] differently, with different outcomes, depending on local circumstances’.9 In other words, periods of regime change facilitate the emergence of social conditions that, in turn and within specific contexts, promote changes in the interaction between different forms of punishment and control. Therefore we aim to use the impact of regime changes to show the entanglements among multiple forms of punishment, through case studies, thus acknowledging the importance of issues as diverse as prison overcrowding, economic interests, ideological and security priorities and prisoners’ agency. In this way, we also hope to demonstrate the necessary circularity between theoretical perspectives and empirical research. Secondly, the volume builds on Nikolaus Wachsmann’s groundbreaking research into the role played by the legal and prison systems in Nazi Germany10 and on the ‘new histories’ of the concentration camps that Wachsmann, together with Jane Caplan, has pioneered.11 Taken together, these studies reveal an important potential to transcend the usual focus on single institutions or types of institutions and to overcome the fragmentation among related subdisciplines. Along this line of thought, and by introducing the social-scientific concept of ‘transcarceration’ into historiography,12 we address the entangled histories of various forms of (legal and administrative) imprisonment, detention and internment as well as the ways their mutual connections marked both the functioning of each institution and convicts’ experience.

Wartime Incarceration The choice to address periods of regime change around World War II has allowed the researchers writing in this volume to con-

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nect directly to Wachsmann’s and Caplan’s studies. At the same time, the following chapters seek to further expand the scope of research in two fundamental ways. First, inspired by transitional justice history,13 they investigate changes that took place before, during and after military conflicts, while at the same time understanding ‘war’ as a complex of social, political, economic, cultural and military processes. Moreover, the contributors move beyond Wachsmann’s and Caplan’s focus on Nazi Germany to deal with case studies related to Western and Southern Europe and with the Netherlands Indies; and they implicitly suggest the possibility to expand the geographical and chronological scope further. Thomas Irmer shows the potential of a longer-term perspective by exploring the impact of multiple regime changes – the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Reich and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) – on a single site of detention, the municipal workhouse of Berlin-Rummelsburg. The chronological limits of World War II are likewise stretched in Alicia Quintero Maqua’s contribution. Her focus on post-civil-war Francoist Spain produces a truly innovative change of perspective and reveals the importance of multiple periodizations, i.e. periodizations that take into account the different paths followed by various countries, in order to understand the relationship between regime changes and imprisonment in a broader geographical scope. Christian G De Vito also offers a long-term perspective. A chronology covering the years from 1943 to 1954 allows him to address the impact of multiple regime changes on Italian prisons, covering the Fascist regime and the contemporary presence of the neo-Fascist regime in the North and the Allied Forces’ occupation in the South, as well as the democratic regime. Another way to extend research beyond studies that look at a singular type of punishment in a single political constellation is to look at more than one country. Jonas Campion’s chapter turns to France, Belgium and The Netherlands and proposes a comparative analysis of the gendarmeries’ relationship to internment in the time before, during and after Nazi occupation. His contribution is an excellent example of the ways in which regime change, in this case due to a foreign occupation, can call existing practices and institutional legitimacy into question. The same problem plays an important role in Sarah Frank’s essay, which explores the

Introduction

7

first three years of the Vichy regime in France, with a focus on the colonial prisoners of war (CPOWs), devoting special attention to their experience of imprisonment. Here colonial practices and social codes were confronted with both the ambitions and fears in the motherland. This perspective is reversed in Esther Zwinkels’ chapter, which focuses on the internment of members of the (Dutch) National Socialist Movement (NSB) in the Netherlands Indies during and after World War II. The regime change in the Netherlands affected the internment policy in the colony and was, initially, a victory of their comrades – but members of the NSB in the Netherlands Indies were just in the wrong part of the empire to enjoy it. In the complex power structures of colonial empires, regime change could have unexpected consequences. We will get back to this issue shortly. Finally, there is the question of the irregular prisoner. Periods of regime change almost without exception affect families rather than individuals, which rapidly change their position in the social order. Particularly the children of people connected to deposed regimes, but also children who become perpetrators of crimes under war-like circumstances, form an especially interesting and important group. Addressing the Belgian context, Aurore François chooses the period 1944–50 to address the way Belgian institutions for delinquent children dealt with young collaborators, and she discusses the coherence of this experience with the ‘protectional model’ embedded in the 1912 Child Protection Act. Incarceration during and around armed conflict has several distinctive functions. States use imprisonment in times of war, which in the modern era are by definition extraordinary times, because they feel acutely threatened by political, social and/or economical tensions. Individuals who represent these threats, as well as groups which are ex ante regarded as threatening (internal enemies), are isolated and imprisoned. In this way, states, or more fluid state-like authorities, hope to maintain public order and provide internal security. While incarceration thus provides a seemingly ideal solution to a difficult problem, authorities generally face two important challenges. In the first place, they need to provide public justification for incarceration by emphasizing both the threat posed by prisoners and the (cost-) effectiveness of

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keeping them locked up. Secondly, they need to provide an infrastructure (camps, prisons, transportation, nourishment, opportunities for forced labour) in which large numbers of people can be incarcerated. The former issue lies at the very centre of this book and is explicitly dealt with in the contributions by Maqua, Campion, Frank, Zwinkels and François: how were these prisoners conceptualized? And how was internment justified and defended? Extraordinary times, generations of politicians have emphasized, also require extraordinary legal measures. In times of crisis, governments try to increase their power and become ‘states of exception’.14 This makes it possible to suspend certain civil rights, such as due process or habeas corpus, in order to ensure safety. In contrast to the legal system in ‘normal’ times, an individual does not need to be guilty to be arrested. Political conviction or ethnic background, such as the famous case of American citizens of Japanese extraction after Pearl Harbor, can be sufficient reason for internment. When a state in times of war decides to use the measure of internment, the interned group does not have to commit a legal offense. On the contrary, the possible threat a group represents to the future internal order and security are grounds for internment. In times of regime change, when positive law is often absent or diffuse, this tendency becomes stronger. The second problem regards the way the state provides an infrastructure for mass incarceration.15 In such exceptional situations, the space available in existing prisons is rarely sufficient, and internment in forts, schools and barracks becomes inevitable. But most of all, large internment camps are set up. These camps, again, tend to outlive their political architects. In a significant number of cases, former Nazi Konzentrationslager (such as the Herzogenbusch case mentioned above) were later used for the incarceration of the enemies of the next regime.16 None of the regimes discussed in this book could make do with only one site of detention. In all cases presented here, sites were many and their locations spread out (albeit mostly peripheral) and sometimes impermanent. Together these sites formed a ‘web of detention’, and prisoners were often transported from one to another. In turn, as De Vito’s chapter shows for the prisons of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana, the need for this transportation of-

Introduction

9

ten conflicted with rapidly shifting military frontiers, shortage of any means of transport and mass bombings that destroyed penal facilities. At the same time, the deportation of prisoners across borders, motivated by the need to exploit their labour or aimed at their extermination, implied the organization of, among other things, complex systems of transportation and transit prisons and camps, as well as offices and personnel for the selection of prisoners. This situation most famously affected prisoners and internees deported to the Nazi concentration camps and prisons, but it applies also to the members of the Dutch NSB from the Netherlands Indies to Suriname, as Zwinkels’ chapter makes clear. As the above suggests, vast numbers of staff and guards are needed in times of mass incarceration, and that is exactly when the shortage of trained officers is most often felt. Sometimes soldiers were entrusted with this position, as especially Campion shows in his chapter. As the agents of public order, the gendarmes had a structural relationship to detention. From the late 1930s onwards, they were put in charge of internment camps for displaced persons. During the war, the gendarmes were involved in the incarceration of members of the resistance and escaped allied prisoners, and they continued their surveillance duties in prisons or camps where victims of racial persecution started to be detained. During the liberation, the gendarmes continued to guard these same places of detention, which were now crowded with individuals suspected of collaboration. These and other technicalities were not usually addressed after careful consideration and effective preparation. More typical was a high degree of improvisation, especially in internment camps that did not have the same facilities as prisons and had no experienced staff to provide information or training. How did prisoners experience detention and internment, and to what extent were they able to shape it? How did they conceptualize (see and judge) other (groups of) prisoners, and how did they relate to them? Maqua’s and Frank’s chapters are especially interesting regarding these issues. Maqua looks into the Spanish prison system in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, that is to say, the functioning of penal institutions in a society that had by that time become deeply divided. The fierce repression of the Francoist regime against its defeated enemies gave rise not only

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to an entirely new network of provisional prisons but also to a wholly new functional role for penitentiary institutions. Rather than merely punitive institutions, they became part of a much wider attempt on the part of the government, together with institutions such as the Catholic Church, to re-educate dissenting compatriots both inside and outside the prison system. As Sarah Frank demonstrates, however, wartime imprisonment can be a much more complicated matter when the ‘othering’ of the inmate is stronger. By looking at the experiences of colonial, predominantly North African, troops who had been made prisoners of war during the German attack on France and subsequently interned in camps inside Vichy France, she shows how different social divisions were acutely apparent in these camps – between colonial subjects and French citizens, between the Vichy government and the empire and also between different ethnic groups among colonial troops. Just as Vichy and Germany were identifying themselves through the colonial troops, colonial soldiers in the camp were in an excellent position to reflect on their role within the empire and their relationship with its new overlords. These approaches suggest that more questions could be asked. For instance, relocations of prisoners were common, but what was the effect of these multiple experiences? And how did prisoners see the differences between the various places of internment they went through? Needless to say, the ambition of this volume is as much to raise questions as to answer them.

Towards a New History of Imprisonment The time seems ripe for comparative, transnational and entangled studies regarding the impact of imprisonment.17 As Campion’s chapter suggests, a comparative approach might shed new light on allegedly ‘traditional’ issues such as the continuity or discontinuity in penal cultures and practices in the post-war period or the impact of the experience of political imprisonment on postwar prison reforms. Moreover, it is tempting to view all territories occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, notwithstanding legal, political and economic differences, as part of a single integrated system of internment, incarceration and detention and

Introduction

11

to study the impact that multiple regime changes had on it. This would entail the inclusion of case studies from both Western and Eastern Europe, and possibly also comparisons with areas within specific countries that were never occupied, previously liberated or were occupied by other countries. Finally, Frank’s and Zwinkels’ chapters in this volume show the importance of a twofold further expansion of the scope, to include, respectively, the experience of colonial prisoners and internment in the colonies. In addition to this, following the trends in new imperial histories and recent colonial and postcolonial studies, colonial imprisonment should be addressed in order to study its influence on the penal practices within the motherland and postcolonial states as well as intercolonial circulation of knowledge, personnel, prisoners and practices.18 Awareness of the relativity of national borders, and of the impact of mass transportation of prisoners in periods of war and regime changes, also points to the need for spatially aware perspectives. In addition to subnational and transnational case studies and a long-term approach to single institutions – as in Thomas Irmer’s chapter – further insights might stem from the study of circulation of knowledge, techniques, prisoners and staff, from regionally based research and prosopographical approaches.19 All in all, research on incarceration and regime change can benefit from global history approaches as well as from those of the new, promising subdiscipline of ‘carceral geography’,20 in turn contributing to its historical awareness. This is especially necessary with regard to the movement of prisoners. A gigantic undertaking for contemporary officials, and often the source of tremendous hardship for prisoners, mass transportation of prisoners remains a great unknown in the history of twentieth-century imprisonment, notwithstanding the growing attention that early modern and nineteenth-century convict transportation has attracted in the last decades.21 We contend that the chapters in this volume offer an insight in what could be fruitful inroads for expanding the theoretical framework for the history of imprisonment. A future agenda of research, as we see it, envisages more sophisticated methodological approaches to empirical research, as well as a widened geographical and temporal scope. We hope that this volume makes clear that an integrated study of incarceration, which brings together

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existing research traditions, will be of great value for our understanding of the meaning of incarceration during regime change. Christian G De Vito is Research Associate at the University of Leicester. He has published extensively on the social history of prison, convict labour and prisoners’ movements. His current research addresses convict circulation and convict labour in the Spanish empire (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and postindependence Latin America. Ralf Futselaar has published on the history of malnutrition, war-related mortality, war traumas, black markets, colonial soldiers, violent women, forced labour and imprisonment. He is currently a researcher at the NIOD: Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Amsterdam) and a lecturer at the Erasmus University (Rotterdam). He has previously worked at Kwansei Gakuin University and Utrecht University. Helen Grevers is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of History (Research Unit Social History after 1750) of Ghent University. She works on the research project ‘Collaborators, Justice and Society: A Social History of the Punishment of Collaboration in Belgium after WWII’, within the Interuniversity Attraction Pole ‘Justice & Populations: The Belgian Experience in International Perspective, 1795–2015’. Her PhD was published as ‘Van landverraders tot goede vaderlanders. De opsluiting van collaborateurs in Nederland en België, 1944–1950’ (Amsterdam, 2013).

Notes  1.

 2.  3.

M Meeuwenoord, ‘Mensen, macht en mentaliteiten achter prikkeldraad. Een historisch-sociologische studie van concentratiekamp Vught (1943–1944)’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2001), 344–47. H Grevers, Van landverraders tot goede vaderlanders. De opsluiting van collaborateurs in Nederland en België, 1944–1950 (Amsterdam: Balans, 2013), 86. E.g. P Panayi (ed.), Minorities in Wartime. National and Racial Groupings in Europe, North America and Australia during the Two World Wars (New York: Berg,

Introduction

 4.  5.

 6.  7.

 8.

 9. 10. 11. 12.

13

1993); N Genet-Rouffiac (ed.), Des prisonniers de guerre aux personnes capturées (Vincennes: Service historique de la Défense, 2010). J Kotek and P Rigoulot, Le siècle des camps. Détention, concentration, extermination. Cent ans de mal radical (Paris: Lattès, 2000). M Foucault, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975); N Elias, Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation (Basel: Verlag Haus zum Falken, 1939). For an example of an oversimplified version of Elias, see for example H Franke, Twee eeuwen gevangen. Misdaad en straf in Nederland. De geschiedenis van het gevangeniswezen in Nederland vanaf het einde van de achttiende eeuw – beschrijving van het gevangenisleven – het emancipatieproces van gevangenen – denkbeelden over misdaad en straf (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1990). P Spierenburg, ‘Punishment, Power and History. Foucault and Elias’, Social Science History 28(4) (2004), 607–36. See esp. J Sadowsky, Imperial Bedlam. Institutions of Madness in Colonial Southwest Nigeria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); R Porter and D Wright (eds), The Confinement of the Insane: International Perspectives, 1800– 1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); M Gijswijt-Hofstra, H Oosterhuis, J Vijselaar and H Freeman (eds), Psychiatric Cultures Compared: Psychiatry and Mental Health Care in the Twentieth Century: Comparisons and Approaches (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005); L Jackson, Surfacing Up. Psychiatry and Social Order in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1908–1968 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); RC Keller, Colonial Madness. Psychiatry in French North Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); W Ernst and T Mueller (eds), Transnational Psychiatries: Social and Cultural Histories of Psychiatry in Comparative Perspective, c. 1800–2000 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010). See, esp. RD Salvatore and C Aguirre (eds), The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America: Essays on Criminology, Prison Reform, and Social Control, 1830–1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996); N Morris and DJ Rothman (eds), The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); RD Salvatore, C Aguirre and GM Joseph (eds), Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society since Late Colonial Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); P Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010); F Bernault (ed.), Enfermement, prison et châtiments en Afrique du 19e siècle à nos jours (Paris: Karthala, 1999); F Bernault (ed.), A History of Prison and Confinement in Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003); F Dikötter and I Brown, Cultures of Confinement (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007); M Sen, Prisons in Colonial Bengal, 1838–1919 (Calcutta: Thema Books, 2007); M Gibson, ‘Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison’, The American Historical Review 116(4) (2011), 1040–63. C Tilly, Contention & Democracy in Europe, 1650–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 39. N Wachsmann, Hitler’s Prisons. Legal Terror in Nazi Germany (Yale: Yale University Press, 2004). J Caplan and N Wachsmann (eds), Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany. The New Histories (London: Routledge, 2010). W Wesley Johnson, ‘Transcarceration and Social Control Policy: The 1980s and Beyond’, Crime & Delinquency 42(1) (1996), 114–26.

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Christian G De Vito, Ralf Futselaar and Helen Grevers

13.

See esp. I Deák, JT Gross and T Judt (eds), The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); J Elster, Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); L May, After War Ends: A Philosophical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); N Wouters (ed.), Transitional Justice and Memory in Europe, 1945–2013 (Cambridge: Intersentia, 2014). G Agamben, States of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). A complementary aspect, not touched upon in this volume, regards the exploitation of prisoners for post-war rebuilding of infrastructures, especially under authoritarian regimes. For the Spanish case: F Mendiola Gonzalo, ‘Forced Labor, Public Policies, and Business Strategies during Franco’s Dictatorship: An Interim Report’, Enterprise & Society. International Journal of Business History 14(1) (2013), 182–213. For the continuity of the use of camps, see, e.g. D Peschanski, La France des camps. L’internement, 1938–1946 (Paris: Gallimard, 2002). On histoire croisée, see esp. M Werner and B Zimmermann, ‘Beyond Comparison: Histoire croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity’, History and Theory 45(2006), 30–50. For a recent survey on comparative and transnational history: H-G Haupt and J Kocka (eds), Comparative and Transnational History. Central European Approches and New Perspectives (New York: Berghahn, 2010). On the New Imperial Histories, see esp. A Lester, ‘Imperial Circuits and Networks: Geographies of the British Empire’, History Compass 4(1) (2006), 124–41; S Howe (ed.), The New Imperial Histories Reader (London: Routledge, 2009). F Iacovetta and W Mitchinson, On the Case: Explorations in Social History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998); AL Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). D Moran, N Gill and D Conlon (eds), Carceral Spaces. Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention (London: Ashgate, 2013); D Moran, Carceral Geography: Prisons, Power and Space (London: Ashgate, 2015). The literature on early modern and modern convict transportation is huge and continually expanding. For a few key titles, C Anderson, Convicts in the Indian Ocean: Transportation from South Asia to Mauritius, 1815–1853 (London: Basingstoke, 2000); A Brooke and D Brandon, Bound for Botany Bay: British Convict Voyages to Australia (Richmond: The National Archives, 2005); A Zysberg, Les galériens. Vies et destins de 60000 forçats sur les galères de France, 1680–1748 (Paris: Seuil, 1978); A Bullard, Exile to Paradise: Savagery and Civilization in Paris and the South Pacific (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); P Redfield, Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); J Vanmai, Pilou Pilou (3 vols.; Paris: Dualpha, 1998–2001); TJ Coates, Convicts and Orphans. Forces and State-Sponsored Colonizers in the Portuguese Empire, 1550–1755 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001); TJ Coates, Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, 1740–1932. Redefining the Empire with Forced Labor and New Imperialism (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

Chapter 1

‘Gloomy Dungeons’: Provisional Prisons in Madrid in the Aftermath of the Spanish Civil War (1939–45) Alicia Quintero Maqua

‘In the future, prisons will not be gloomy dungeons.’ – Francisco Franco, Redención, 20 April 1940

D

uring the past decade, coinciding with a period of ‘raw’ memories of the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist era and with the emergence of social claims demanding the political reparations for the victims of the dictatorship,1 historians have started to give a monographic treatment to the analysis of the Francoist penitentiary system.2 The ‘legal’ post-war repression has especially attracted the attention of many researchers, who have shown how the victory of the generals in April 1939 did not herald peace but, rather, led to a prolongation of a culture of war and persecution of anything considered anti-Spanish (a hodgepodge concept that included anything that sounded like Marxism, liberalism, atheism, the workers’ movement or Republicanism).3 Despite significant progress in this field, there is still a great deal to explore regarding the operation of the Francoist penitentiary system on a local scale and daily life in prisons, as well as the social scope of the discourses and messages issued by the penitentiary authorities. Notes for this chapter begin on page 29.

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The course of the Spanish penal system in the first third of the twentieth century had several features in common with those of other European countries. The reformist policies of the Director of Prisons of the Second Republic (1931–39), Victoria Kent, remind us of the penitentiary reforms approved in Germany in the 1920s, during the Weimar Republic.4 In both countries, reformists put special emphasis on the rehabilitation of prisoners and on their humanitarian treatment, though, in practice, they came up against strong resistance from institutional authorities and their lack of willingness to implement the new norms. In any case, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) brought about not only the end of the reformist trend in the Spanish penitentiary but also the transformation of prisons into a fundamental tool of repression for General Francisco Franco’s regime (1939–75). On 18 July 1936, a group of generals supported by significant sectors of the Spanish political right wing attempted to carry out a coup d’état against the democratically elected Republican government. The military coup encountered fierce resistance by the population loyal to the Republic and failed, triggering instead a long and complex civil war across the country. As Eric Hobsbawm5 has pointed out, the Spanish Civil War was an extreme embodiment of the period’s fundamental political questions: democracy and social revolution thus came up against the alliance of a counter-revolution or reaction inspired by Fascism and, in the Spanish case, also by the Catholic Church. The war reshaped this political polarization, favouring the construction of a stereotyped and dehumanized image of the (political, civil) enemy and extending the extent of the acceptability of violence against the enemy.6 Among the insurgents, this violence reached a brutal scale: historians provisionally talk of a minimum of 130,200 people who were victims of the repression of the insurgent military, a number three times greater than that of the Republican side.7 Of those victims, 50,000 were executed between the end of the civil war and 1950.8 The penitentiary system not only played a crucial role in this context of continued violence by the victors but was also transmuted, becoming something other than what it was before. The transformation of prisons during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War can broadly be defined according to at least four characteristics:

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(i) Prisons became a form of punishment and a space for controlling people whose ideas (not actions) were considered to be hostile to the state and the nation. In this regard, prisons were one of the main methods used to apply ‘reverse’ justice, that is, the justice of the new regime implemented by force against those who supported the legitimate regime, the Republic. The new prisons accompanied a reconceptualization of a political crime that came hand in hand with the establishment of unprecedented political exclusion.9 (ii) Prisons became the space where not only the deprivation of liberty (as a punitive or preventive measure) was realized but also the brutalization of punishment.10 In post-war prisons, the death penalty reached unprecedented rates, and the same happened with other forms of punishment such as torture, forced labour, death by starvation and illness. (iii) In the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the penitentiary system opened up to include the intervention of agents other than specialized civil servants. From the start, the Catholic Church was the institution that gained (recovered) the greatest amount of power in the management of prisons, but the military, members of the Falange (short for Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista, FET y de las JONS), party and entrepreneurs also took part. (iv) The Francoist penitentiary system, complex and split into different branches, operated as a ‘strident’ communication tool: the propaganda, the speeches, the rituals and the penitentiary imagery, though limited by the anaemic economy of the new state, served to prolong a culture of war during a period of supposed peace. The aim of this paper is to approach the transformation of the prisons caused by the outbreak of the war and the culture of victory, in a specific territory and period: Madrid, 1939–45. In doing this, the aim is to shed light on the history of Madrid’s Francoist prisons, a topic on which there currently are few studies. Furthermore, the study of this microcosm of Francoist prisons in a specific province can help to understand the local, everyday dynamics of the prison system. How did prison violence work and what

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for? Who took part in it and why? How was daily life organized in so-called provisional prisons? What messages and meanings did the penitentiary communication machine transmit?

Madrid. Provisional Prisons and Prison Agents As Francoist troops advanced, and especially after their definitive victory in April 1939, Franco’s regime gradually built up a penal and penitentiary system destined to persecute and incarcerate prisoners of war and political enemies on a massive scale. In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the volume of prisoners reached truly exorbitant figures: according to official reports, from an average of 9,403 prisoners in 1930–34, the number rose to 270,719 in 1940.11 The problem for Francoist authorities was that Spanish prisons could house no more than 20,000 prisoners. For that reason, buildings such as former schools, convents, police stations, cinemas and even bullrings came to be used as provisional prisons. Madrid, having resisted as a Republican bastion throughout the war, was especially punished during the post-war period.12 When Franco’s troops entered the city on 28 March 1939, they immediately put into action especially incisive repressive measures. Control posts, juntas de depuración (purging committees), concentration camps,13 police stations, barracks, Falange centres and prisons suddenly filled the city centre, terrorizing the defeated.14 From 1939 to 1943, a total of thirty-one penitentiaries were operating in the province of Madrid. Of these, only three central prisons and five district prisons dated back to the penitentiary structure of the previous period. In 1939, eighteen buildings were opened in the city centre to be used as provisional or makeshift prisons. Moreover, from 1942 onwards, many penal outposts were set up around Madrid, where thousands of prisoners were used as forced labour in construction projects, such as the Monumento Nacional a los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen) and the Madrid–Burgos railway. The data from these centres comes from different official sources (Inspectorate General of Prisons,15 Statistical Yearbook of Spain, Directorate General of Prisons Reports and the weekly for prisoners, Redención [Redemption]).

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Most buildings that operated as provisional prisons in the city were convents and schools loaned by religious orders, such as the prisons of Porlier, Comendadoras, San Antón, Atocha, Cisne, Claudio Coello, Duque de Sexto, Príncipe, San Lorenzo, Santa Engracia, Torrijos and Santa Rita. For women prisoners, in addition to the Modelo prison in Ventas, there were Quiñones, the Women’s Provisional Prison no. 1, San Isidro and the Instituto-Escuela prison. It is hard to establish the figures of Madrid’s prison population for this period; according to the Statistical Yearbook of 1942, the number was 15,585 men and women; however, this figure does not include many of the mentioned prisons or the people imprisoned in concentration camps. According to Amancio Tomé, Director of Prisons in Madrid during this period, there were more than 30,000 prisoners in the province, an estimation that is probably closer to the real figure.16 On entering Madrid, Franco’s forces did not have the structure or official staff sufficient to manage this immense volume of people who were being imprisoned in the aftermath of the war. That is why questions arise as to how it was possible to install and manage more than twenty makeshift prisons. Who collaborated in erecting and maintaining the penitentiary universe and why? The Catholic Church, which provided many buildings for conversion into provisional prisons, was the main collaborator of the penitentiary institution in post-war Madrid. In exchange for these favours, the religious orders requested that inmates be made available to them to repair their buildings. The relationship between Church officials and the penitentiary authorities was more than cordial. There were frequent invitations to informal events, social occasions and letters to the General Directorate of Prisons through which priests exercised their role of intermediaries.17 The dictatorship also re-established prison chaplaincy and the role of religious orders in the management of women’s prisons and prison storerooms. Furthermore, prisons opened their doors on Sundays to the Catholic Action youth, who went to instruct the political prisoners.18 During the Republic, the Catholic establishment had felt threatened by secular legislation and anticlerical attitudes of left-wing organizations, hence its joining the ranks of the insurgent side once the war broke out. In the aftermath of the war, the penitentiary institution constituted yet another space

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for strengthening the strong ties between the Spanish church and Franco’s regime; a context in which church hierarchy had an unlimited freedom of action to indoctrinate and recover the absolute power it had held in previous centuries.19 Nevertheless, the ‘convent-prisons’ never worked as perfect jails: their architecture of low windows and dark nooks and crannies meant a constant outflow of fugitives. As a measure to avoid this and to make up for the lack of watchmen, the dictatorship initially had to resort to placing squads of soldiers outside the prisons, as they did in Porlier and in the building works of the Príncipe de Asturias Reformatory.20 Francoist authorities also successfully channelled the participation of volunteers from the Falange the only political party allowed during the dictatorship, which grouped Fascists and traditionalists. This was the case of the crowded district prison of Getafe, where in June 1939 the mayor started to send three local falangista residents on a daily basis to provide help to the only prison employee there.21 Likewise in early 1940, camp no. 2 of the Falange of Madrid was given custody of prisoners and convicts going from the jail of San Lorenzo to work in Campo de Comillas. Other volunteers grouped into the so-called José Antonio company, named in honour of the founder of the Spanish Fascist party, took care of watching over the prisoners when they were at work. Lastly, it is significant that the collaboration of falangistas with the penitentiary authorities also occurred from within the prisons: at the Comendadoras prison, for instance, there was a group of approximately ten Fascist prisoners, arrested for several reasons, who were in charge of censoring the correspondence of prisoners of war, and they undoubtedly enjoyed certain privileges.22 The burden of managing the penitentiary system, however, fell on prison officers within the civil service. Like other professions, the prisons service underwent an exhaustive purge with the aim of eliminating any employees linked to the Republican correctional reforms.23 Once this was done, the remaining number of employees available for managing the many post-war prisons was clearly limited. Thus, many veteran civil servants whom the regime believed to be of impeccable reputation, were promoted while ex-combatants and ex-captives were brought in to cover

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other posts. Some positions were also given as privileges to former soldiers who had established favourable relationships with officials. Therefore, men who had voluntarily participated in the war and supported the insurgent side or who had participated in the extreme polarization and violence generated during the war or who owed gratitude to regime leaders, became jailers in 1940s Madrid. Franco’s authorities thus had a body of officials who were totally faithful to the precepts of the new state, and their lack of professionalism was generally overlooked. As a result, although the regulations and prison inspectors tried to formally impose zeal, discipline and self-control in the security service, the fact is that theft of funds and supplies from prisons, negligence and abuse of prisoners were, as Ángela Cenarro has pointed out, the order of the day.24 Other agents who collaborated in the management of the penitentiary system and obtained generous benefits from it were private entrepreneurs. From the establishment of the penal outposts in Madrid, many companies close to the regime obtained juicy building contracts and were loaned significant numbers of prisoners (first political prisoners, then also common prisoners) as cheap labour. Building companies such as Banús Hermanos, Hermanos de Nicolás Gómez, Marcor SA, AMSA, etc., in Madrid were involved in the use of prisoners as labour for the construction of the Valley of the Fallen and the Madrid–Burgos railway.25 Lastly, as several authors have observed,26 it is important to note that a significant section of the population became involved to differing degrees in the repression that took place in the immediate aftermath of the civil war. The climate of surveillance, the condition of suspicion weighing on Madrid and the clear divide between the victorious and the defeated led many people to report and inform on their neighbours, to actively participate in the repressive machine or to passively watch what was happening. With the prisons visible and installed within their neighbourhoods, Madrid’s population saw lines of prisoners being transferred, their distressed relatives huddled at the prison gates and the forced labour to which they were subjected. Some could even hear the shots fired during the executions that took place against cemetery walls. In June 1942, two death-row convicts escaped

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Porlier prison, located in the stately Salamanca neighbourhood. The hunt started immediately, and one of the prisoners, desperate, tried to hide in a residential building. He was quickly reported by the neighbours and shot dead in the patio of the building by a corporal from the military guard.27 As historian Carlos Gil writes, ‘No one could keep out of this; no one could not be involved in the fracture that had divided the community in two, in the constructed image of an enemy that could live next door or opposite’.28 In this case, the enemy had indeed lived in the prison opposite. In conclusion, Spain’s prison system during the aftermath of the civil war drew on and channelled the participation of different social sectors close to the Francoist regime, thus strengthening the ties that made up the community of victory. The Catholic Church, the Army and the Falange collaborated with the prison authorities, putting all their efforts into continuing to subjugate and indoctrinate the defeated, placing themselves within the dictatorship’s various networks and positions of power. Other sectors of the population played a role in the post-war penitentiary machine for different reasons: conviction, wartime experiences, a desire to participate in the community of the victorious, the wish to obtain a reward (employment after the war), fear or simply as a means to personal enrichment. Participating in the cause of ‘National Spain’ after the victory provided many with satisfaction and benefits in the difficult context of post-war Madrid. By 1943–44 overcrowding, looming conflicts and changes in the international scene forced the penitentiary administration to employ different measures to ‘normalize’ the situation: provisional prisons were closed, and most political prisoners were eventually released, taken to regular prisons or to penal outposts. By 1945 Franco’s regime declared that they had ‘completely’ put an end ‘to the penitentiary problem created by the Marxist rebellion’.29 However, at the start of that year, the records still reveal 28,288 prisoners incarcerated for political crimes committed before 1 April 1939.30 The nature of the supposed penitentiary normalization was, throughout the length of the dictatorship, more propaganda than real, although the excesses of the immediate post-war years were gradually left behind.

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Everyday Violence in Provisional Prisons The main functions of prisons in the aftermath of the civil war were to eliminate, punish, isolate and convert political enemies. That is, to cleanse society of any ideological and political trace different from the ideology of Franco’s regime.31 For the first time in Spanish prisons, the volume of political prisoners exceeded that of common prisoners. Moreover, humanitarianism and respect for the dignity of prisoners gave way to a period in which punishment was brutalized; that is, the contagion in times of peace of the violence of war and the desire to destroy the enemy transferred to the penal sphere. Consequently, the death penalty, applied in the aftermath of the civil war mainly through military jurisdiction, increased disproportionately.32 According to a study by Mirta Núñez and Antonio Rojas, at least 2,633 people were taken from prisons from 1939 to 1944 and executed against cemetery walls in Madrid.33 The penitentiary documentation does not hide the extensive practice of abuse and torture, especially in the first phase of arrest. For instance, on 23 July 1939, the doctor of the women’s prison of Ventas provided a report of the injuries sustained by three women who had been tortured in different police stations and barracks of the city before being transferred to the prison.34 Madrid’s post-war prisons were characterized by overcrowding, hunger, abuse, uncertainty regarding executions and delay in legal proceedings. Most buildings adapted as penal institutions housed a number of inmates far in excess of their capacity. Crowded conditions were renowned in the more infamous prisons such as Porlier and Ventas,35 but other smaller prisons were similar in this sense. The district prison of Getafe, for example, had been designed for 200 inmates but held some 1,000 men,36 and the women’s provisional prison no. 1 held 2,000 inmates.37 The authorities seem to have been unable to keep an accurate record of the volume of prisoners in one of Madrid’s most famous prisons, Torrijos, with one report of the Inspectorate General of Prisons giving very different figures for this prison: 1,589, 2,000 and 2,400 inmates.38 The scarcity of food led to high mortality rates in Madrid’s prisons. During those years, the General Directorate of Prisons

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received numerous anonymous letters reporting, among other abuses, the insufficient and poor quality of rationed food. In 1941, a former prisoner from Yeserías explained in one of those letters that in the third chamber of the prison there were up to 200 prisoners ‘who could barely walk’ and stated emphatically: ‘These days they are still dying and being taken to hospital, and all of it is attributed to typhoid fever. What there is in that prison is hunger, not typhoid fever’.39 Official reports – probably distorted – regarding the ordinary supply that prisoners received show a meagre and repetitive daily diet that consisted of 175 grams of bread, 50 grams of rice, 50 grams of grass peas, 12 grams of chorizo, 10 grams of oil, 2 grams of paprika, 30 grams of salt, 268 grams of oranges, 400 grams of vegetables and 40 grams of onions. The lack of fat and the regular consumption of grass peas – which can cause, as was soon discovered, a severe muscular illness40 – caused chronic weakness and constant illnesses among the inmates. The only response to that and other complaints made by the General directorate of prisons was an order to ignore ‘any letters by anonymous or imaginary signatories that were sent to the General Directorate reporting abnormalities in the regime of the Penitentiary Establishments’.41 Studies carried out in 13 of the 52 Spanish provinces have established that in these provinces alone, 5,266 people died in prisons in the aftermath of the civil war as a result of hunger and illness.42 The triumphalism of the victors and the dehumanized image they had of the defeated led to constant abuse and to the exploitation of the prisoners held in provisional prisons. On many occasions, for example, prisoners were loaned out to religious orders and entrepreneurs to carry out all sorts of labour without receiving any reduction in their sentence. For instance, on several occasions throughout his service, Amancio Tomé provided the Piarists and the Salesians in Madrid with groups of inmates from the prisons of San Antón and Atocha to repair their schools.43 A more intensive, predominantly male, type of penal labour was also set up to supply a workforce for rebuilding devastated regions (such as Brunete) or for public works (such as at Campo de Comillas or the site where 1,000 prisoners started to build Carabanchel prison in 1940). Women prisoners, for their part, also suffered a specific form of exploitation and abuse: in Ventas, some inmates dared

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report to the penitentiary authorities that when they went out to do legal paperwork, some military judges made them clean official rooms, even obliged them to clean and iron their clothes, as well as engage in ‘inappropriate acts like touching their chin, their waist and other parts of their body’.44 Men and women jailed in Francoist prisons during the aftermath of the civil war lived through this situation with real fear and uncertainty. Prisoners had practically no information regarding their legal processing, their transfers to other prisons or their sentences. On many occasions, those sentenced to death were informed of their execution with only a few days’ or even hours’ notice. As a consequence, many despaired and searched for extreme solutions, such as suicide or escape. Although there are no statistics, the case files opened by the Central Inspectorate of Prisons show that both of these options were chosen exceptionally frequently during the period under study. Many prisoners, affected by untreated psychiatric disorders or wanting to escape from the execution of the death penalty, hid in bathrooms or workshops to take their lives.45 Individual escapes or escapes in small groups were also common. Prisoners took advantage of the scarcity of guards and the poor adaptation of the sites of imprisonment to escape during transfers or in the outdoor work areas, especially if there was an imminent court-martial or death sentence. In Santa Rita prison, the director even wrote a report to his superiors in which he showed deep concern for the constant escapes of prisoners – more than fifteen between April and October of 1942.46 Penitentiary violence extended beyond prison walls. The term ‘concentrationary universe’, which was used by Primo Levi to include all those contexts in which the consequences of the concentration camp system were suffered47, has also been used by historians of Franco’s regime. Thus, the idea of ‘penitentiary universe’, coined by historian Ricard Vinyes,48 enables us to conceive of the outdoor contexts in constant relation to the inside of the prison, especially families, networks of solidarity with prisoners and prisoners’ wives. Most of these women put the survival of their imprisoned husbands before anything else: continuous visits to the prison, doing without food to give it to them, sending letters to the authorities with a view to softening the sentence and moving whenever their husbands were transferred.49 They also

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suffered strong social stigma for being relatives of political prisoners; they were humiliated by penitentiary workers and were constantly under suspicion, so that whenever a prisoner escaped, the police usually went to the escapee’s house and arrested their wife.50 In conclusion, relatives, and especially prisoners’ wives, shared with prisoners the experience of a penitentiary violence aimed at punishing the defeated and eliminating their political identities.

Francoist Prison as a ‘Cultural Artefact’ The sociologist David Garland wrote that in relationships between ‘punishment’ and ‘culture’ there is a two-way process: on the one hand, culture shapes punishment; on the other, punishment generates its own meanings and values which, in a small but significant way, contributes to shaping the dominant culture.51 In the case of Francoist prisons, the process did indeed go in both directions. The culture of victory of the insurgents, as it has been defined, was a determining factor for shaping the punishment and the penitentiary institution. But, reciprocally with this process, the Francoist prison and its different institutional arms were producers of ideas, aimed initially at the great mass of political prisoners but also at a wider population. As an example of the propagandist and instructive character of the Francoist penitentiary system, some authors have pointed to the appearance of the weekly publication Redención in 1939.52 This was the only newspaper that prisoners were allowed to read, and its style and contents were clearly aimed at extolling the virtues of the Francoist penitentiary system and the fair and redeeming treatment of inmates, as well as the collaboration and conversion of political prisoners. Behind this newspaper, as well as behind its publisher Editorial Redención and, in general, all propaganda produced by the penitentiary system, the strings were pulled by the members of the Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas (National Catholic Association of Propagandists). The theological basis behind sentences (expiation versus correctionalism), the demonization of leftist ideas and the naturalization of hierarchies, presenting forced labour and suffering as the road to redemption

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were constantly transmitted to inmates and their families by this means. Likewise, prison life was rife with extraordinary everyday rituals – both internal and open to the participation of people unconnected to the institution – all of them with the same eagerness to transmit the ideals and values of the victors. The crowded masses presided by the prison chaplain of Porlier, the baptisms in the women’s prison of the Carrera de San Isidro, the handing out of toys for children in Madrid prisons on Epiphany, the celebrations of the Día de la Merced;53 many of these events were photographed by the team of Santos Yubero, a photographer with strong ties to Madrid’s penitentiary authorities, and some of the images were published in Redención, Abc and the newspaper Ya, also created by the Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas.54 From the morning of 22 June 1944, however, the Francoist penitentiary iconography, considerably divulged in national newspapers as well as in internal reports, started to undergo subtle changes. That day was the opening of Carabanchel, what would become the dictatorship’s most famous prison. Into it were transferred most of the prisoners from Madrid’s provisional jails as these were gradually closed. The ostentatious opening was attended by the minister of Justice, Eduardo Aunós, surrounded by an entourage of representatives of the Church, the city mayor’s office, the Directorate General of Security, the Civil Guard and the Army. The first published images of Madrid’s new provincial prison continued to reflect the sharp dichotomy existing between the Francoist ruling elite, waving from a box, and the defeated, subjected to the rhythm of a macabre parade. Furthermore, in contrast to the diffuse images of the immediate aftermath of the war, which had revealed little about the buildings that were being used as makeshift prisons, the new building itself gained prominence in these first photographs of Carabanchel. Its spatial immensity and rational architecture, the light of the galleries and, in short, the modernity of the new prison became the iconography of a more consolidated dictatorship. Ultimately, the Francoist penitentiary system was not only an instrument of the regime’s violence and an institution that framed the sectors close to the dictatorship; the prison also worked as a constant and ‘strident’ communicator of symbols that were de-

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rived from a prolonged culture of war in times of peace. As the 1940s went on, however, the new state started to introduce into the various penitentiary publications (booklets, weeklies, bulletins), and in the liturgy and ceremonial events, new ideas regarding the normalization of punishment and the consolidation of power.

Conclusion The rupture and social polarization caused by the terrible experience of the Spanish Civil War were structural elements in the aftermath of the war. This period (1939–45) was also marked by the first stages of Franco’s regime, whose main aim was to strengthen and stabilize his power on the basis of a ‘new society’, purged of any elements that differed from his idea of a Spanish nation. For this reason, hundreds of thousands of people were persecuted and jailed, and many of them were executed. The penitentiary system was a key instrument for the massive repression of political opponents. Thus, in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the prison system suffered a qualitative transformation. As institutions, prisons during those years moved away from what they had been until then: an ordinary form of punishment that had become progressively dominant in the context of an industrial revolution and the formation of nation states. Instead, they came closer to the extermination practices of wartime violence. They also hypertrophied, generating a new type of place of imprisonment: the provisional prison. In the vast network of provisional prisons in Madrid, various social agents collaborated with the Francoist repression in different ways: mainly the Catholic Church, but also falangista volunteers, entrepreneurs, new prison employees and ordinary citizens. Thus, the penal system operated as an institution that generated complicity and networks of power within the community of victors. Prisons also operated to exert unprecedented violence on the penal population, generating another community – that of the disempowered defeated. Political prisoners and their family networks suffered many types of violence: violence within the legal sphere

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(long sentences, death penalties), violence as a consequence of their penitentiary treatment (overcrowding, hunger, illnesses, exploitation, uncertainty) and, irregular but constant, violence exerted by those responsible for the repression (humiliations, torture, abuse). Together with those negative (excluding) functions, Francoist prisons set into motion other machines (propaganda, ceremonies, masses, newspapers) aimed at re-educating the population and moulding the image of a Fascist state, which, as such, would ‘survive’ World War II.55 Alicia Quintero Maqua received her MA degree in history from the Complutense University of Madrid in 2006. In 2009, she was awarded a scholarship from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) for a PhD study. Her research is focused on history and memory of Spanish post-war repression, particularly on Franco’s prison system and political prison experience.

Notes  1.

 2.

 3.

J Cuesta, La odisea de la memoria. Historia de la memoria en España en el siglo XX (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2008), 330–40. An interesting discussion about the relationship between the movement to ‘recover the historical memory’ and the historiography about Spain’s recent past, in Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Special Issue: The Politics of Memory in Contemporary Spain 2(9) (2008). This paper is framed within the research project ‘La cárcel de Carabanchel (1944–2008). Estudio histórico, arqueológico y etnográfico’, Grupo de Investigación Antropológica sobre Patrimonio y Culturas Populares (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) Principal Investigator: Carmen Ortiz García. 2010–12. G Gómez Bravo, El exilio interior. Cárcel y represión en la España franquista, 1939–1959 (Madrid: Santillana, 2009). C Molinero, M Sala and J Sobrequés (eds), Una inmensa prisión. Los campos de concentración y las prisiones durante la guerra civil y el franquismo (Barcelona: Crítica, 2003); R Vinyes, Irredentas. Las presas políticas y sus hijos en las cárceles franquistas (Barcelona: Temas de hoy, 2002). J Aróstegui (ed.), Franco: la represión como sistema (Barcelona: Flor de Viento, 2012); P Preston, El Holocausto español. Odio y exterminio en la guerra civil y después (Barcelona: Debate, 2011), 22–24; J Rodrigo, Hasta la raíz. Violencia durante la guerra civil y la dictadura franquista (Madrid: Alianza, 2008); M Richards, A

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 4.

 5.  6.  7.  8.  9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

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Time of Silence. Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco’s Spain, 1936– 1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). For the Spanish case, see F Hernández Holgado, Mujeres encarceladas La prisión de Ventas: de la República al franquismo, 1931–1941 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2003), 39–84. For the German case, see N Wachsmann, Hitler’s Prisons, Legal Terror in Nazi Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 17–64. EJ Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Penguin Group, 1994), 157. D Viejo-Rose, Reconstructing Spain: Cultural Heritage and Memory after Civil War, (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2011). Preston, El holocausto español, 22–24. J Casanova, Morir, matar, sobrevivir: la violencia en la dictadura de Franco (Barcelona: Crítica, 2002), 20. The phenomenon of the political prison transformed into an instrument for the political exclusion of large sectors of the population was characteristic of authoritarian regimes in interwar Europe. See P Voglis, Becoming a Subject: Political Prisoners during the Greek Civil War (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002), 19–20. We use the term ‘brutalization’ as coined by GL Mosse with reference to the process of growing violence and extension of a culture of death in interwar European societies: GL Mosse, Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memories of the World Wars (London: Oxford University Press, 1990). Statistical Yearbook of Spain, 1942. A thorough research on the courts of Franco’s justice in Madrid: J Ruiz, Franco’s Justice: Repression in Madrid after the Spanish Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Nevertheless, the author does not specifically address the prisons. During the Spanish Civil War, Franco implemented concentration camps in order to control prisoners of war. After the civil war in 1939, some concentration camps remained to organize local repression. In Madrid most of them were closed in less than a year. J Rodrigo, Los campos de concentración franquistas. Entre la historia y la memoria (Madrid: Siete Mares, 2003). A Ortiz Mateos, ‘Lugares de la memoria. Las cárceles de Madrid en la posguerra’, http://www.scribd.com/doc/7982680/ (15 September 2012). Collection of the General Administration Archive (Archivo General de la Administración – AGA), Justicia, 15.03/15.06. A Tomé, Pequeña historia de su vida profesional (Madrid: Artes Gráficas Cio, 1960), 148. AGA: Justicia 41/11945. AGA: Justicia 41/11950. A book that addresses the participation of the Spanish Church in Franco’s repression: J Casanova, La Iglesia de Franco (Barcelona: Critica, 2001). See also G Gómez Bravo, La redención de penas: la formación del sistema penitenciario franquista, 1936–1950 (Madrid: Catarata, 2005). AGA: Justicia 41/11940 and 41/11945. AGA: Justicia 41/11945. Getafe is a small town on the outskirts of Madrid. AGA: Justicia 41/11950. F Hernández Holgado, ‘Carceleras encarceladas. La depuración franquista

‘Gloomy Dungeons’

24.

25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

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de las funcionarias de Prisiones de la Segunda República’, Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea 27(2005), 271–90. A Cenarro, ‘La institucionalización del universo penitenciario franquista’, in C Molinero, M Sala and J Sobrequés (eds), Una inmensa prisión. Los campos de concentración y las prisiones durante la guerra civil y el franquismo (Barcelona: Crítica, 2002), 133–53. Á Falquina, P Fermín, A González-Ruibal, C Marín, A Quintero and J Rolland, ‘Arqueología de los destacamentos penales franquistas en el ferrocarril Madrid-Burgos: el caso de Bustarviejo’, Complutum 2(19) (2008); D Sueiro, La verdadera historia del Valle de los Caídos (Madrid: Sedmay, 1976); J Olaizola, ‘Destacamentos penales y construcción de infraestructuras ferroviarias’, in JM Gastón and F Mendiola (eds), Los trabajos forzados en la dictadura franquista (Pamplona: Instituto Gerónimo de Uztáriz-Memoriarem Bideak, 2007), 116–31. P Anderson, ‘Singling Out Victims: Denunciation and Collusion in the PostCivil War Francoist Repression in Spain, 1939–1945’, European History Quarterly 1(39) (2009), 7–26; C Mir, Vivir es sobrevivir. Justicia, orden y marginación en la Cataluña rural de posguerra (Lleida: Milenio, 2000), 264. AGA: Justicia 41/11940. C Gil Andrés, ‘La zona gris de la España azul. La violencia de los sublevados en la Guerra Civil’, Ayer 76(2009), 115–51. General Directorate of Prisons, Report of 1946. A ‘general pardon’ for prisoners of war was declared on 9 October 1945. Statistical Yearbook of Spain, 1946–47. G Gómez and J Marco, La obra del miedo. Violencia y sociedad en la España franquista, 1936–1950 (Madrid: Península, 2011), 76–92. P Oliver, La pena de muerte en España (Madrid: Síntesis, 2008), 124. M Núñez and A Rojas, Consejo de guerra. Los Fusilamientos en el Madrid de la posguerra, 1939–1945 (Madrid: Compañía Literaria, 1997). AGA: Justicia 41/11945. Hernández Holgado, ‘Mujeres encarceladas’. AGA: Justicia 41/11945. AGA: Justicia 41/11950. AGA: Justicia 41/11940. AGA: Justicia 41/11951. C López Bustos, ‘La almorta y el latirismo’, Cuadernos de Estudios Manchegos 1(1947), 37–47. Circular of the Official Bulletin of the Directorate General of Prisons (Boletín Oficial de la Dirección General de Prisiones), 4, 5 November 1942. Casanova, Morir, matar, sobrevivir, 298. AGA: Justicia 41/11945. AGA: Justicia 41/11945. Gómez Bravo, El exilio interior, 171–21. AGA: Justicia 41/11951. P Levi, I sommersi e i salvati (Torino: Einaudi, 1986). Vinyes, Irredentas. I Abad Buil, ‘Las mujeres de los presos políticos en Aragón’, Rolde: Revista de cultura aragonesa 116(2006), 30–41.

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50. 51.

AGA: Justicia 41/11945. D Garland, Castigo y sociedad moderna. Un estudio de teoría social (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1999), 290–320. D Rodríguez Teijeiro, ‘Adoctrinamiento político en las prisiones españolas de postguerra: el Semanario y la editorial Redención’, Minius: Revista do Departamento de Historia, Arte e Xeografía 13(2005), 227–38. Religious festivity dedicated to the Patron Virgin of Prisons. Martín Santos Yubero Photographic Collection, Comunidad de Madrid Regional Archive (Archivo Regional de la Comunidad de Madrid). C Molinero and P Ysàs, La anatomía del franquismo: de la supervivencia a la agonía, 1945–1977 (Barcelona: Crítica, 2008).

52.

53. 54. 55.

Chapter 2

Paradoxical Outcomes? Incarceration, War and Regime Changes in Italy, 1943–54 Christian G De Vito

Prisons and Camps between War and Multiple Transitions Rome, Regina Coeli prison.1 The night between 25 and 26 July 1943. When news of Mussolini’s fall and imprisonment reached them, the inmates joined the riots taking place in the streets around the prison walls. More than 100 cells were destroyed and more than half of the 2,988 prisoners escaped with the help of the crowd outside. Immobilized and beaten up, around 140 prison officers and a similar number of soldiers, who had been in charge of the external surveillance, were not able to stop the prisoners. It was a ‘sudden, unforeseen and uncontrollable unleashing of forces against which … no effective resistance was possible’,2 the governor of the prison later wrote. Some weeks later, on 8 September, the news of the truce signed by Marshal Badoglio with the Allied commanders provoked a new wave of protests inside the prison on the banks of the Tiber. Like all resistance against the German troops that came to occupy the city, however, this time the inmates’ revolts were harshly repressed: one prisoner died on that same day, and five more were Notes for this chapter begin on page 49.

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killed during the riots in the night between 11 and 12 September. The attempted kidnapping of ten judges during a revolt on 8 October similarly led to a new military intervention inside the wings, to the Nazi occupation of the third and forth wings (400 prisoners) and eventually to the replacement of the former governor with the temporarily appointed General Inspector Marracino, who restored ‘order and discipline’ before handing over the prison in mid November to governor Donato Carretta. After the liberation of Rome on 4 June 1944, the latter was to fall victim to one of the most famous episodes of mass popular justice against (alleged) collaborators: Carretta was first beaten up by the crowd and then thrown and killed in the Tiber, with his body eventually hanged by the feet from one of the prison’s bars.3 This chapter deals with the story of war and multiple regime transitions, in which prisons like Regina Coeli played a significant role. In this context, the overarching question of this volume is echoed here: to what extent did war and regime changes transform imprisonment? Moreover, I seek to point to the need to look more closely at the nature of the transformation brought about by war and regime changes and periodization thereof. The Italian case features an apparent paradox. War and multiple regime transitions clearly modified incarceration practices in the short term, especially as far as the multiplication of the sites for, and the institutional setting of punishment is concerned. However, in the long term, and differently from other Western European countries, they did not foster structural changes in the practices and the ideological legitimation of imprisonment. In the aftermath of World War II, once (some of) the prisoners returned from the German penal institutions to which they had been deported and the camps created for the Fascist inmates were closed down, the prison system of the new democratic state stood in striking continuity with that of the liberal and Fascist regimes.4 Why – I ask – did continuity prevail? This chapter seeks to provide some insights into both shortterm changes and long-term continuity by means of a detailed analysis of two aspects of the Italian history in the period that spans the armistice between the Italian state and the Allied forces (8 September 1943) to the end of the post-war reconstruction (ca. 1954). In the first section I focus on the organization and everyday

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life in the prisons of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI), considering the continuities and discontinuities with the prisons of the Fascist regime (1922–43), the impact of war and the relationship between various (Fascist and National Socialist) authorities. The second section looks at internment camps and penal institutions in the post-war transition to the democratic state, addressing the issues of the treatment of former collaborators, the ‘missed purge’ of prison personnel and the role of prisons in the social and political process of ‘normalization’. Whereas this period, and some of the aspects dealt with here, has been discussed extensively in the literature in Italian, this chapter represents the first attempt to address them from the perspective of the practices of incarceration.

The Prisons of the RSI The liberation of Mussolini by German paratroopers and the SS on 12 September 1943, and the creation of the RSI that followed on 23 September, led to the transfer of its ministries and the related administrative offices to Northern Italy.5 The Ministry of Justice of the so-called Salò Republic established its headquarter in Brescia, while the General Direction of the Prisons requisitioned a former school in Cremona.6 A major continuity can be observed between the structure and the personnel of the latter and its liberal and Fascist predecessors. The magistrates of the central offices were recruited from the available members of the former prison administration, and the central offices, although reduced in number from ten to three, mirrored the functions of their predecessors. Yet, administrative and ideological continuity notwithstanding, war increasingly made the difference. The lack of personnel had already appeared a problem at the end 1942, when a ministerial note counted only 334 administrators against an official need for 922 persons, and 8,530 prison guards in charge of nearly 68,000 prisoners.7 The situation worsened during the twenty months of the existence of the RSI. The transfer of the prison administration offices to the North took the whole period between October 1943 and May 1944, further reducing the number of available staff. More importantly, the military and administrative personnel was missing during a period when

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bombings and rapidly shifting military fronts – and therefore the political borders of the RSI – imposed continuous transfers of prisoners. At the end of September 1944, for example, all prisons south to the river Po were evacuated, with hundreds of prisoners and dozens of guards transferred to the main prisons of Venice, Genoa, Turin and Milan. The impossibility of the prison administration to perform even its most basic tasks often made it necessary to call in other authorities. From the second half of 1944, officials of the Fascist republican army – the Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana (GNR) – ‘with a specific and appropriate culture’ acted as governors in approximately thirty prisons,8 including the single most important prison of the RSI, San Vittore in Milan. However, the expected cooperation from other administrative units turned all the more frequently into administrative conflict and, therefore, into one of the main obstacles for the functioning of the prison system.9 Provincial Fascists dismissed prison personnel at will, causing the General Director of the prisons, Toeschi, to repeatedly complain about this ‘subversion of the discipline’; members of the GNR and the paramilitary of the Black Brigades (Brigate Nere) frequently appropriated fuel, blankets and other scarce material owned by the prison administration. Any attempt to limit these ‘bandit-like actions’ failed, because the changing composition of the prison population made personnel not belonging to the prison administration a constant presence inside the prison walls. The military conflict turned the prisons from institutions for preventive custody of those suspected and legal punishment of those sentenced, into repositories for individuals detained by various kinds of police forces. Political prisoners, for instance, formed a considerable portion of the inmates in the prisons of Venice and Milan in late 1944 and the overwhelming majority of the inmates held in the prison of Vicenza on 15 September that year.10 There, twenty-one were at the disposal of the local police headquarter, thirty-eight at the disposal of the German Zug Gendarmerie, twelve at the disposal of the German Work Office, twenty-two at the disposal of the Platzkommandatur and seventeen at the disposal of the provincial branch of the GNR. They were held in custody on suspicion of, among other

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things, ‘complicity with communists and rebels’, ‘desertion and suspected communist activities’ and ‘connivance with the rebels’. Notwithstanding the alleged independence of the RSI, German authorities acted as an occupation force, and prisons were no exception.11 National Socialist authorities opened ‘offices’ inside the RSI penal institutions and directly ruled certain wings inside the most important prisons. As had been the case in Regina Coeli in late 1943,12 this system gave them the chance to arbitrarily dispose of the inmates held both in the wings under their own and those under Fascist jurisdiction. This practice became a common feature of the RSI prison, as is highlighted, for instance, by the sources of the important prison of Perugia:13 after months of executions and deportations, during their retreat from the city on 13 June 1944, the German troops first violently repressed attempted escapes and then deported ‘northward’ all the prisoners held in the two wings they directly controlled. From 1944, direct German occupation of some wings in the main prisons increasingly aimed to exploit convicts as labourers in Germany. Prisoners arrested by the German authorities in the whole territory of the RSI were concentrated in those wings, selected by the delegates of the MilitärKommandanturen-Gruppi Lavoro and then sent on to penal institutions in Germany. Largely arbitrary and actually illegal, this practice of deportation claimed to be legally based on Decree n. 120, 2 April 1944, of the RSI government, as well as on a subsequent agreement between the German military authorities and the RSI Ministry of Justice.14 According to the latter, remand prisoners suspected of minor offences could ‘voluntarily’ apply for transfer to Germany; all prisoners sentenced to fewer than ten years of imprisonment, except those classified as ‘criminals by habit, profession and tendency’, could be forcibly sent to Germany; and all prisoners sentenced to more than ten years imprisonment could be forcibly put at the disposal of the German authorities ‘so that they can serve their time in the workshops of the penitentiaries in Southern Germany’. From a juridical point of view, prisoners sent to Germany were conditionally released. Fascist authorities conceived their transfer for work in Germany as a continuation of the policy inaugurated with the 27 June 1942 Act no. 827 on the broadening of the con-

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ditional release. The need to counteract prison overcrowding and the wish to mobilize prisoners for the war effort, specifically on the ‘labour front’, had been the main rationale for these arrangements.15 After the events of 1943, as overcrowding persisted and the German need for workers rose, it seemed logical to make use of convict labour directly in the workshops in Germany. Conditional release became the specific legal instrument by which the RSI prisons, though formally controlled by the Fascist authorities, were part of the broader system of forced labour in Germany and in the territories occupied by the Wehrmacht.16 It was the instrument by which the RSI participated in the broader system of Nazi terror. Notwithstanding the peculiar juridical situation of the RSI, its case can therefore be compared with those of the Nazi-occupied countries. As Wachsmann has shown for Germany itself and as other studies are starting to point out for Belgium, the Netherlands and the occupied French territories, in the RSI too no ‘Dual State’ existed, and therefore no clear-cut distinction is possible between the arbitrary and unlawful actions of the various police forces, party structures and special courts (‘Prerogative State’) and the ‘rule of law’ allegedly represented by ordinary magistrates, state prosecutors and the prison administration (‘Normative State’).17 Moreover, contrary to what leading Italian lawyers such as Giovanni Leone and Giuseppe Bettiol argued after 1945,18 nor can any distinction be made between the ‘arbitrariness’ of the German authorities and the alleged ‘legality’ of their Italian counterparts. Since the 1944 acts were rooted in the 1942 legislation, the idea of the need to mobilize convict labour for the (Axis) war effort emerged under the Fascist regime, i.e. before and independently from German intervention. While some Italian prison officers individually opposed the deportation of prisoners to Germany, the authorities of the RSI structurally supported it. The case of San Vittore in Milan is telling in this respect.19 The German authorities repeatedly expressed their surprise at any ‘legalist worries for the fate of the individual prisoners, be they still awaiting trial or even innocent, since war justified the daily police raids against free citizens’. Conversely, in an attempt to reaffirm the autonomy of the RSI jurisdiction, the prison governor and, especially, the Milan attorney general tried to prevent any arbitrary deportation of individual prisoners whose

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legal status did not match those listed in the laws and agreements. However, in an official note dated 6 May 1944, minister Pisenti argued in favour of a further expansion of compulsory work service to include all former prisoners, since they ‘disperse in unknown ways and embrace equivocal life-styles instead of representing useful energies for national reconstruction’. The influence of war, the lack of personnel and basic services, the conflicts between various authorities, the practice of the transfer for work in Germany: these were then some of the key features of the RSI penal institutions. How did they shape the daily experience of the inmates and the prison guards? From the prisoners’ perspective, the main issue was that of safeguarding their own existence. War for them meant air raids, during which they were brought to improvised and inefficient shelters and sometimes even abandoned in their locked cells by the guards. The frequent transfers from one prison to another also directly exposed prisoners to the bombings. Moreover, because of the damage caused by the bombings and the constant influx of newly arrested inmates, prisons were heavily overcrowded. Official notes on San Vittore reported ‘cells vomiting prisoners, who are crammed like chickens in a cage, with no pallets to sleep on, no blankets, no sheets’.20 Similar conditions were observed during the whole period in all kinds of penal institutions and in the isolation cells of the police headquarters of the RSI.21 Prisoners also lacked food and clothes. Destitution was, no doubt, a common experience also on the ‘outside’, but the almost complete loss of contact with their families and friends and their total dependence on the prison administration made the prisoners’ specific situation generally worse. Finally, the unclear jurisdictions and the competing goals of the various authorities that operated inside the prisons, together with the weak legitimacy of inspecting authorities, contributed to the arbitrary (mis-)treatment of the prisoners. The material conditions in the prisons, the impossibility for the prison authorities to perform their most basic tasks and the almost complete lack of legality, security and discipline, contrasted sharply with the obsessive attempts of the central prison and political authorities to assert full control over the institutions. The British historian John Foot has very tellingly summed up this fundamental contradiction with the expression ‘anarchy in the dicta-

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torship’.22 Along with prisoners, prison guards found themselves caught between two conflicting forces.23 They too experienced the harshness of the prison setting. Moreover, each of the frequent escapes and every ministerial inspection represented an occasion for the authorities to scapegoat the guards and submit them to all kinds of disciplinary punishments, including their (illegal) transfer to Germany for forced labour. In the official reports, they were consistently depicted as lazy, ‘untrustworthy and dangerous’ and sympathetic to the prisoners, in some cases even to political prisoners. As a matter of fact, we can safely assume that these charges almost always lacked any basis and that they were frequently invented for personal and political purposes. Only in rare circumstances did prison guards actively participate in the Resistance movement. Exceptions were, for instance, Efisio Raccis and Duilio Manci, two guards of the La Spezia prison who were members of the local National Liberation Council (CLN) and, once discovered, were deported on 1 February 1945 to the concentration camp of Mauthausen, from which they never returned. In order to ensure order and security, the prison service initially tried to strengthen the external surveillance of the penal institutions and limit access to the prisons. In practice, however, the presence of overlapping and conflicting authorities made full control impossible. Political authorities therefore decided to centralize the management of prison security. By late March 1945, this task was entirely assigned to the Ministry of Interior, where already in September a General Inspectorate of the prison services (Ispettorato generale dei servizi carcerari) had been formed, headed by the Milan Chief Officer (Prefetto), Ippoliti. The latter spelled out for his Inspectorate the ambitious goal to ‘eradicate all chances of escape’;24 because of the very short time he could actually operate, though, he was only able to carry out some inspections in the most important prisons (Milan, Turin, Venice and Varese) between September 1944 and the following February. During the last weeks of the RSI, General Inspector Ippoliti could do nothing but impotently watch the growing number of escapes.25 Common-law and political prisoners fled individually, in couples and in larger groups from the prisons of Turin, Bolzano and Bologna. Dozens of them escaped from small district prisons (carceri mandamentali), from hospitals and psychiatric hospitals.

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Fascist and National Socialist prison authorities lost virtually all control over some penal facilities in Piedmont and part of Liguria, where considerable numbers of political prisoners had been gathered and which fell under areas where the partisans’ brigades were particularly active. In those cases, official reports lamented ‘the continuous flourishing of communist symbols and, during the recreation, of antinational songs’. Not surprisingly, escapes of political prisoners were particularly frequent there. The changing situation in the prisons reflected the general agony of the neo-Fascist regime, by then close to its final demise. On the evening of 24 April, in the Milanese headquarter of the Ministry of Justice, Pisenti bid ‘farewell to his Cabinet’s officials, warning them about something new which would take place on the following day’.26 On the morning of 25 April, as the general insurrection started, the Palace of Justice was occupied by the partisans. The National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy (CLNAI) appointed a new Justice Commissar. Some days later, the latter ordered the arrest of the Head of Cabinet and the Head of Services of the by-then-former Ministry of Justice.

Camps and Prisons in the Post-War Transition Unsurprisingly, the explicit continuity between the Fascist regime (1922–43) and the RSI was reflected in the administrative and ideological continuity of the prison systems of the two states. In that context, regime change played a limited role in the transformation of imprisonment. It was the state of war that triggered change, together with the ideological radicalization brought in by the Nazi forces of occupation and the Fascist authorities alike. Conversely, we would expect a clear-cut discontinuity in the practices and discourse of incarceration in the transition between a Fascist and a democratic regime. Was this the case? And, more generally, what was the relationship between regime change and incarceration after the conflict ended? In order to address these questions, I focus on two issues: first, the fate of the ‘collaborators’ after the liberation of the various parts of the Italian territory; and second, the role that the prisons played in the broader process of the post-war social and political normalization.

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Temporary camps under direct control of the Allied forces were the most common places of internment for collaborators in postwar Italy.27 Unfortunately, the rare and qualitatively uneven studies on this issue, as well as the published memoirs of some collaborators, only allow a very general description of these camps. They do make it clear, however, that the settings and the population of the camps varied greatly, as did their overall geography and capacity over the months. Between the 8 September 1943 truce and the liberation of Northern Italy on 25 April 1945, camps in Southern and Central Italy were mainly opened in former military barracks and industrial complexes, and each hosted several hundred, or up to a few thousand inmates. After April 1945, the number of prisoners grew rapidly, and this led to the establishment of larger new camps made of tents and barracks: in the biggest of these, such as those of Coltano (Pisa) and S Andrea (Taranto, also known as ‘Camp S’), up to 32,000 prisoners were interned at the same time. This caused a persistent state of overcrowding and lack of hygiene until the mass of less dangerous prisoners were released, and those charged for heavier crimes were transferred to the more specialized camps in Narni and Laterina (Arezzo) and to the military prison of Forte Boccea (Rome) in October 1945. The main part of the camp population consisted of former RSI officers and activists,28 former members of the German and Italian armies and so-called ‘reluctant members’ of the disbanded special forces of the RSI (Italian SS, Brigate Nere, Legione ‘Muti’, X Flottiglia Mas, Folgore and the formation of Marshal Graziani). An attempt at specialization within the network of the camps was originally made: women suspected of collaboration or participation in the RSI military and police corps were interned in a camp in Scandicci and later in Caselline, both in the Florence province; German prisoners of war (POWS) were mainly interned in the camps of Miramare (Rimini) and Riccione; Italian civilians suspected of espionage and hostile activities against the Allied forces in ‘Camp R’ in Collescipoli (Terni); Italian POWs coming from Algeria and Tunisia were first hosted in ‘Camp 211’ in Algeria, then transferred to the camps in Afragola and Padula (Naples). However, the sheer number of prisoners soon led to the breakdown of any kind of specialization. This is particularly the case of San

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Rossore and Miramare, where Italian, German and South Tirol POWs shared the same barracks; in some cases war criminals and ex-deportees returning from the German concentration camps were even interned together in the formerly Fascist concentration camps of Fossoli di Carpi (Modena). While the last German POWs were liberated by the Allied authorities in the Autumn of 1946 – the camp in Miramare being the last to be dismantled – the liberation of the majority of the RSI POWs and of the Italian collaborators already took place between the end of 1945 and the beginning of 1946, coinciding with the transfer of the jurisdiction of the camps from the Allied forces to the Italian authorities. The camps were therefore progressively closed down, while ‘non releasable’ Fascist prisoners, i.e. those accused of major war crimes, were first gathered in the camps in Collescipoli (Terni) and Laterina (Arezzo) and then, after their closure, mainly transferred to penal institutions. In addition to this last group of prisoners who came from the temporary camps, prisons also hosted Fascist activists and authorities who were charged with, or had been sentenced for, some kind of crime. By turning the attention towards this active minority within the population of collaborators, we gain a useful perspective from which to view the role that the prison system as a whole played in the ‘normalization’ of the social and political life in post-war Italy. In the first year after the Liberation, prisons went through a wave of mass revolts, the most important being those at RomeRegina Coeli (22 July 1945), Turin-Le Nuove (December 1945) and Milan-San Vittore (21 April 1946).29 These violent riots were a continuation of the revolts and protests that had characterized the period after September 1943 and were grounded in the very poor living conditions within the penal institutions, where overcrowding, lack of hygiene and shortage of the most elementary services and goods persisted. The Communist leader and Minister of Justice, Palmiro Togliatti, personally witnessed these conditions. When addressing a delegation of the prisoners in Rome, he openly stated that ‘Regina Coeli is no prison, but a bad concentration camp’.30 However, in the context of the post-war transition, most political parties saw prison riots exclusively as a potentially dangerous threat

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to public order. The large majority of the political élite and the press therefore emphasised the need for their harsh repression and the restoration of a rigid ‘law and order’ policy in the penal institutions. Soon after the Regina Coeli revolt, Togliatti himself signed two fundamental administrative acts31 that sought to fight ‘with energy each and every signs of disorder, indiscipline and corruption’, ordered the end of any ‘open cell’ policy in the wings and fully endorsed the militarization of the prison officer corps. Moreover, together with the government and the media, the Communist leader provided additional political legitimacy for the restoration of the prison order by insisting that the prison protests represented a Fascist manoeuvre to destabilize the new democratic regime. Archival documents clearly show that this was not the case.32 They suggest that radical left-wing tendencies – to the left of the Italian Communist Party’s (PCI) policy – actually inspired at least some of the protest organizers; more consistently, in-depth research in the archival sources of the biggest neo-Fascist organization of the time, i.e. the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), shows that neo-Fascists lacked the organizational network that would have been necessary to organize such broad and diffused revolts. Furthermore, neo-Fascist prisoners underlined their political status by distancing themselves from the common-law prisoners who dominated the bulk of those protests. Only around 1953 was the MSI able to start a specific intervention in exclusive support of the Fascist prisoners, but this was limited to the sending of letters and Christmas presents. By then, as we shall see, the prison situation had radically changed, and the Fascist prisoners had been reduced to a few hundred. Interestingly, such a drastic reduction of their number had been made possible by the amnesty Minister Togliatti himself had instigated already on 22 June 1946 as a sign of ‘national pacification’.33 The mass liberation of Fascist prisoners that had followed strongly contrasted with the claim that they represented a danger for the prison and public order, although this claim had been used to justify the harsh repression of the San Vittore Easter revolt just two months prior. The amnesty played a fundamental role not only in the liberation of Fascist prisoners but also in the extinction of penal pro-

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ceedings against collaborators and in the definitive closure of the administrative camps. Moreover, it allowed for a continuity of the prison system in the transition between the Fascist regime to the post-war democratic state, because it terminated the administrative proceedings against the personnel of the state bureaucracy, including the prison staff.34 As such, it put an end to detention in camps and mass imprisonment – the practices of incarceration specifically generated by the war – at the same time that it paved the way for more substantial continuity of the Fascist penitentiary practices and discourse into the prison system of the democratic state. The archives of the Fascist and RSI Ministries of Justice were quickly recovered after the end of the war. Nearly all personal files of prison guards, leading magistrates and counsellors of the previous prison administration reached Rome already in late May 1945. All transfers of the personnel who had moved to the North could therefore be traced, and files also carried detailed information about the widespread Fascist ‘qualifications’ and ‘merits’ of the personnel. Thus, no material obstacles would have prevented a full purge of the prison administration from taking place. For this specific sector and for the overall administrative bureaucracy, the striking ineffectiveness of the purging process – the ‘missed purge’, as it is frequently termed in Italian historiography – came essentially from political decisions. It was linked to the conservative tendencies that emerged within the new state. The need for a purge in the administrative personnel of the new state was seen by its advocates not simply as a bureaucratic act but as the sign of a deeper political and ethical discontinuity with the past regime. For them, the purge would symbolize that the ‘wind of the North’, i.e. the radical ideas and practices of the partisan movement,35 had penetrated the very structures of the ‘Republic born out of the Resistance’ created on 2 June 1946. In contrast to these hopes, a moderate outcome marked the Italian post-war transition.36 In this context, priority was given to productivity in workplaces and to administrative continuity in the administrative sector. The ‘missed purge’ in the prison administration therefore was no exception and actually followed the same path of all other sectors of the state bureaucracy. Sources in-

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dicate three main steps in the progressive emptying of the purging proceedings. In May 1945, the purging policy was still formally inspired by the principle of ‘striking at the top and indulging at the bottom’. Lower-level officers, e.g. prison guards, were to be considered less or not at all responsible for their actions, because of their weak social and professional status in the totalitarian structure of the Fascist state. As early as November 1945, an official document of the Commissar for the purge substituted for this political standard an approach based on the principles of ‘acceleration of the procedure’ and ‘simplification of the purging field’. In relation to each Fascist qualification, the commissar suggested the granting of some extenuations – e.g. ‘age, lack of experience and the heated spirit of the suspect which represented some easy bait for the evil propaganda of the regime’ – and stressed the need to quickly restart the administrative machine of the state and, therefore, his hope for the ‘ideologically limited goals of the purging process’. The stress on the subjective ability of the commissars to distinguish ‘unworthy elements’ among the mass of the ‘fundamentally honest people’ turned the purging process into a technical-administrative exercise with progressively less and less influence on the political life. Finally, as already stated above, the April 1946 amnesty granted by Togliatti assured that the majority of the purging proceedings were cancelled.37 The liberation of collaborators, the amnesties and the ‘missed purge’ of the prison administration and of other sectors of the state bureaucracy were all presented as gestures of ‘national pacification’ coming from a by-then solidified new state. Yet historians may better see them as signs of the continuity of the new democratic state with the Fascist state – an administrative continuity that stemmed from the conservative character of the political transition that started before the end of the war and was embedded in the overall compromise between the parties of the National liberation councils and the Allied forces. From the perspective of this volume, a general point can be made out of this, and eventually put to test in further research: the transition from authoritarian to democratic regimes as such is not enough to trigger major penal reform; the political cultures and the policies of the new demo-

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cratic states, and the way they emerge from that transition (and eventually from the war that accompanies it), make a difference when it comes to producing a shift toward more liberal conceptions and practices of punishment (and imprisonment). The camp and prison perspective I have taken here shows that in Italy the process of conservative ‘normalization’ was already in an advanced state in mid 1946, i.e. by the time the Republic was declared. During the following years, the parallelism in the restoration of order in and outside the prisons only became more explicit. Between the two processes, a direct link can actually be traced, since the non-purged prison administration, together with the non-purged juridical and police sectors, played a fundamental role in the repression of the mass social and political conflicts that characterized the period. A flexible strategy was staged vis-à-vis the post-war political and union conflict, based on the deterrent, diffused use of preventive custody as an effective means to break the solidarity around and the organizational continuity of contention. Moreover, (much less numerous) definitive sentences tended to be short and were eventually amnestied when the social and political order had been ‘normalized’ with the help of repression. Parallel to this repressive use of prisons for overall political purposes, inside the penal institutions the prisoners’ protests declined swiftly in the late 1940s, and their goals became more and more limited to specific issues inside specific prisons. The rebuilding of the prisons after the material destruction of the war period, therefore, was not a mere technical process but also metaphorically expressed an overall political trend.38 The prison buildings were reconstructed in the very same years when the politicians and the prison administrators chose not to transform the structures of the prison service, in the same months when the social and political normalization was reimposed through, and inside, the prisons. In the early 1950s, the cell doors in the prison wings were shut again. Destroyed by the bombings during the war and then by the fury of the prisoners during the Easter revolt of 1946, San Vittore in Milan could now be described in the official journal of the prison administration as an ‘ordered’ institution with a panopticonlike organization:39 each category of prisoner was incarcerated in a

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separate wing, a prison guard controlled every movement inside and on the prison walls and from a loudspeaker the governor addressed the prisoners with speeches aimed at their moral education. That was, no doubt, an idealized representation of the much more chaotic and uncertain situation of that penal facility. Yet it perfectly expressed the new climate, which would characterize Italian prisons until the late 1960s. To get a clearer idea of this, one only has to read the 24 February 1954 circular document of the ministry of Justice De Pietro, which officially imposed the definitive repressive turn in prison policy.40 ‘Although punishment must tend … to the reeducation of those sentenced’ – wrote the ministry – it could not be ‘completely deprived … of its afflictive character’ and should therefore ‘inevitably cause suffering’. Prisoners then ought to realize that there existed no ‘asserted rights’ but only obligations, so that they would not think of ‘the penal institutions as holiday or recreational resorts’. Finally, all ‘pietism’ ought to be abandoned, and the ‘highest sense of humanity’ ought to go hand in hand with the ‘irrepressible need of a strict respect of the prison order’. In 1948 the new Republican Constitution had reaffirmed the principles of the State of Law, abolished capital punishment and set ‘re-education’ as the exclusive goal of all kinds of legal punishments (art. 27, paragraph 3). However, the implementation of these principles would have demanded a thorough penal and prison reform, which, contrary to what happened in other European countries, never took place in Italy until 1975. Administrative continuity within the prison service and the role prisons played in the post-war ‘law and order’ policy were pivotal in preventing structural transformations to take place in the penal and prison system after 1945. This had long-lasting consequences in Italian history, not only inside the prison walls. Christian G De Vito is Research Associate at the University of Leicester. He has published extensively on the social history of prison, convict labour and prisoners’ movements. His current research addresses convict circulation and convict labour in the Spanish empire (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and postindependence Latin America.

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Notes  1.

 2.  3.

 4.

 5.

 6.

 7.

 8.  9. 10.

11.

I have already presented some of the findings of this research in Christian G De Vito, Camosci e girachiavi. Storia del carcere in Italia, 1943–2007 (Rome: Laterza, 2009). The account in this paragraph is based on the archival sources held in two collections: Archivio Centrale dello Stato Rome (further ACS), Ministero di Grazia e Giustizia (further MGG) Segreteria, 3–4; ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 61–62. For an overall account of the 1943–45 period in Italy, see, e.g. PA Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy. Society and Politics 1943– 1988 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 61.130.1.43, 4 May 1944. On the ‘lynching of Carretta’ see G Ranzato, Il linciaggio di Carretta. Roma 1944 (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1997); A Portelli, L’ordine è già stato eseguito: Roma, le Fosse Ardeatine, la memoria (Rome: Donzelli, 1999). According to these accounts, Carretta had actually helped many political prisoners held at Regina Coeli during the time he was appointed governor of that prison. On the long-term continuity of the Italian prison system, see esp. E Fassone, La pena detentiva in Italia dall’800 alla riforma penitenziaria (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1980). The main archival sources consulted on the prisons of the RSI are held in the following collections: ACS, ‘Repubblica Sociale Italiana. Ministero dell’Interno, Ispettorato Generale dei servizi’ [hereafter RSI Interno]; ACS, ‘RSI Ministero della Giustizia – Direzione generale per gli istituti di prevenzione e di pena – Ufficio VII (1944–45)’ [hereafter RSI MG]. On the RSI, see also N Cospito and HW Neulen, Salò-Berlino: l’alleanza difficile. La Repubblica Sociale Italiana nei documenti segreti del Terzo Reich (Milan: Mursia, 1992); L Klinkhammer, L’occupazione tedesca in Italia, 1943–1945 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1993); W Ganapini, La Repubblica delle camicie nere (Milan: Garzanti, 1999); G De Luna and A Mignemi, Storia fotografica della Repubblica Sociale Italiana (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2001); M Franzinelli, Le stragi nascoste. L’armadio della vergogna. L’impunità e rimozione dei crimini di guerra naziFascisti 1943–2001 (Milan: Mondadori, 2003). The official denomination for the period 1921–90 is Direzione Generale per gli Istituti di Prevenzione e di Pena (DGIIPP, General Direction for the Institutions of Prevention and Punishment). ACS, MGG-DAP Segreteria, 3.15.3. The figures included those of the Italian colonies and protectorates in North Africa, Aegean, Mentone and Dalmatia. ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 61.130.1.1, 25 August 1944. For a more detailed document, see ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 61.130.1.14, 22 September 1944. ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 61.130.1.15b, 12 July 1944. On the situation in the Vicenza prison: ACS – RSI – Ministero dell’Interno, Ispettorato Generale dei Servizi Carcerari, B. Unica, ‘Ispezione alle Carceri giudiziarie di Varese 8–9–10 febbraio 1945 XXIII’, 15 September 1944. A comparison between the RSI prisons and those in the Italian territories under Allied control would prove very important, for example in order to study the relationships between various authorities. Unfortunately, no historical re-

50

12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

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search exists on the subject. An important document for this is Commissione visitatrice e di assistenza ai detenuti – Roma, Il problema carcerario italiano. Relazione sulle deficienze del vigente sistema penitenziario e sulla necessità di una urgente riforma (Rome: Tipografia delle Mantellate, 1944). The presence of German wings inside Regina Coeli can be argued on the base of the daily reports of the governor of the prison, held in ACS, MGG-DAP Segreteria, 11.54.4. See the documents held in Archivio di Stato, Perugia (ASPG), Direzione Casa Circondariale di Perugia (DCCPG), 4. The two most important documents on the process of deportation from the RSI prisons are decreto legislativo 2 April 1944, n. 120; and circolare 23 June 1944, n. 29, prot.n. 55385/5 of the Ministero della Giustizia. For a more specific document on the praxis to be followed in the deportation of prisoners, see ACS, RSI Interni, busta Unica, ‘Segreteria Particolare’, 10 July 1944. Important archival sources are held in ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 62.130.4.2. It is interesting to notice that this (relative) shift to the productive use of prisoners and internees coincides with the similar but by far more visible transformation of the National Socialist concentration camps described in the most recent literature on the latter: K Orth, Das System der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Eine politische Organisationsgeschichte (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1999); W Benz and B Distel (eds), Geschichte der Konzentrationslager 1933–1945 (5 vols.; Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2004–5); J Caplan and N Wachsmann (eds), Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany. The New Histories (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010). The single most important reference is N Wachsmann, Hitler’s Prisons. Legal Terror in Nazi Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). Other important studies are P Pédron, La prison sous Vichy (Paris: Éditions de l’Atelier, 1993); G von Frijtag Drabbe Künzel, Het recht van de sterkste. Duitse strafrechtspleging in bezet Nederland (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1999); R. Futselaar, Gevangenissen in oorlogstijd 1940–1945 (Amsterdam: Boom, 2015); A Bancaud, Une exception ordinaire. La magistrature en France, 1930–1950 (Paris: Gallimard, 2002); T Altman, Les criminels de droit commun jugés par les conseils de guerre allemands durant la seconde guerre mondiale en Belgique: étude qualitative et quantitative sur base des Personalakten de la prison de Saint-Gilles (Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2004); D Roden, ‘Van aanhouding tot strafuitvoering. De werking van het Duitse gerechtelijke apparaat in bezet België en Noord-Frankrijk, 1940–1944’, Cahiers-Bijdragen 22(2010). The theory of the ‘dual state’ has been originally introduced by political scientist Ernst Fraenkel: E Fraenkel, The Dual State. A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941). The legal historian Lothar Gruchmann has readopted this category in his Justiz im Dritten Reich Aanpassung und Unterwerfung in der Ära Gürtner (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1990). The theory is discussed in the conclusions of Wachsmann, Hitler’s Prisons, 379–383, where the author also shows that Fraenkel himself ‘did not simply equate the Normative State with the legal system’ (p. 382). G Leone, Scritti giuridici (vol. 1; Naples: Jovene, 1987); G Bettiol, Scritti giuridici (2 vols.; Padova: Cedam, 1966). See also F Grispigni and E Mezger, La riforma penale nazionalsocialista (Milan: Giuffrè, 1942).

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19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26.

27.

28.

29. 30.

51

See documents in ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 62.130.4.2. The statement of Minister Pisenti is in ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 62.130.4.2, 6 May 1944. ACS, RSI – Ministero dell’Interno – Ispettorato Generale dei servizi carcerari, B Unica, ‘Pratiche varie concernenti le direzioni delle carceri della RSI’, 23 March 1945. On the capacity of the RSI prisons: ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 61.130.1.1, 25 August 1944. J Foot, ‘The Tale of S Vittore: Prisons, Politics, Crime and Fascism in Milan, 1943–1946’, Modern Italy 2(1) (1998), 27. For the examples given in the text, see ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 61.130.1.8, 20 August 1944; ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 61.130.1.3, 10 November 1944; ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 61.130.1.13, 16 April 1945; ACS, MGG Gabinetto, 62.130.2.4, 20 April 1945. Unfortunately no academic account is available of the history of the prison guards in Italy. ACS, RSI Ministero dell’Interno – Ispettorato Generale dei servizi carcerari, B Unica f, ‘Pratiche relative alla sicurezza e vigilanza delle carceri’, 26 March 1945. On the escapes in this period, see the documents in ACS, RSI Interno, busta Unica. ACS, MGG Segreteria, 1.15.12, 18 July 1945. Minister Pisenti was arrested on 21 June 1945. He was imprisoned until the end of the trial against him, which started on 18 July 1945. Charged with ‘collaboration with the German invader’, he was acquitted by the special branch of the Corte d’Assise in Bergamo. Pisenti later wrote a memory of his period as Minister of Justice, P Pisenti, Una repubblica necessaria, RSI (Rome: Giovanni Volpe, 1977). The following account is based on the following memoires and historical essays (the scientific standard of the second varies greatly, with a consistent number of essays explicitly aiming at neo-Fascist revisionism); M Dal Dosso, Quelli di Coltano (Milan: Giachini, 1950); R Mieville, Fascists’ Criminal Camp (Rome: Corso, 1957); FG Conti, I prigionieri di guerra italiani. 1940–1945 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986); V De Marco, ‘Il “Campo di S. Andrea” presso Taranto e l’azione caritativa di Mons. Bernardi (1945–46)’, Cenacolo 7(19) (1995), 145–68; P Ciabattini, Coltano 1945. Un campo di concentramento dimenticato (Milan: Mursia, 1995); G Tanti (ed.), Il dopoguerra: il campo di concentramento di Coltano, 1945 (Pisa: Archivio di Stato di Pisa, 2002); C Di Sante, Stranieri indesiderabili. Il campo di Fossoli e i ‘centri di raccolta profughi’ in Italia, 1945–1970 (Verona: Ombre Corte, 2001). None of the islands and the other isolated places of forced confinement (confine di polizia) that the Fascist regime had used against political opponents, homosexuals, ‘professional delinquents’ and mafiosi were used to host collaborators after the armistice and after the end of the war. Estimates suggest around 400,000 Italians, including some 150,000 belonging to the former GNR, and around 400,000 German soldiers. See F Lanfranchi, La resa degli ottocentomila (Milan: Rizolli, 1948). See also E Aga Rossi and BF Smith, La resa tedesca in Italia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2003). On the San Vittore riot, see, for instance Foot, ‘The Tale of S Vittore’; A Bevilacqua, La Pasqua Rossa (Turin: Einaudi, 2003). Quoted in G Neppi Modona, ‘Carcere e società civile’, in R Romano and C Vivanti (eds), Storia d’Italia (vol. II; Turin: Einaudi, 1973), 1978, note 2.

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31.

Circolare n. 3076/1684 MGG, DGIIPP, Ufficio VI, 14 August 1945; Circolare n. 3091/1693 MGG, DGIIPP, Ufficio VI, 13 September 1945 (in application of the Decreto luogotenenziale 21st August 1945, n. 508). The main archival sources on the Movimento sociale italiano are held at the Fondazione ‘Ugo Spirito’ in Rome collections ‘Mario Cassiano’ and ‘Movimento Sociale Italiano’. For some prison memoirs of Fascist militants, G Pisanò, Io, Fascista. 1945–1946. La testimonianza di un superstite (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1997), 174–86; V Costa, La tariffa (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000), 52. For research on the neo-Fascist groups in Italy, M Tarchi, Dal Msi ad An. Organizzazione e strategie (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997). On the amnesty M Franzinelli, L’ Amnistia Togliatti. 22 giugno 1946: colpo di spugna sui crimini Fascisti (Milan: Mondadori, 2006). The most important archival sources on the purge of the prison administration are in ACS, MGG Segreteria, 1, f. 1. On the overall issue of the ‘missed purge’ see G Melis, Storia dell’amministrazione in Italia, 1861–1993 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996); RP Domenico, Processo ai Fascisti (Milan: Rizzoli, 1996); R Canosa, Storia dell’epurazione in Italia. Le sanzioni contro il fascismo 1943–1948 (Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1999); H Woller, I conti con il fascismo. L’epurazione in Italia 1943–1948 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007). On legal theories and practices within the Resistance movement, see G Neppi Modona (ed.), Giustizia penale e guerra di liberazione (Turin: Regione-Isr/ Milano, Franco Angeli, 1994). E.g. D Ellwood, L’alleato nemico. La politica dell’occupazione anglo-americana in Italia 1943/46 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1977). A further step was made in February 1948, after the economic-political order had been restored: a governmental decree allowed the extinction of all judgement on purges and their eventual transformation into disciplinary sanctions. This administrative continuity was not limited to the personnel and to the legislation. The material reconstruction of the prisons went hand in hand with the choice to leave all aspects of the prison administration (e.g. the hierarchical structure within the General Direction; the exclusion of the administrative personnel from the top-level of the General Direction, which remained reserved for magistrates; the contract work in the prison manufactures, transports and supplies) untouched. Moreover, no plan for prison building was ever made, and the very much needed reforms of the custodial personnel were never discussed until the second half of the 1980s (eventually to be passed in 1990). G Borgioli, ‘Le carceri giudiziarie “San Vittore” in Milano’, Rassegna di Studi Penitenziari 2(3) (1952), 502–10. Circolare n. 314/2804, prot.n. 1527/5.2 Ministero di Grazia e Giustizia, Direzione generale per gli istituti di prevenzione e di pena, Ufficio Segreteria, 24 February 1954.

32.

33. 34.

35.

36. 37.

38.

39. 40.

Chapter 3

Life in the Frontstalags: Colonial Prisoners of War in Occupied France, 1940–42 Sarah Frank

W

hen France was defeated by Germany in June 1940, almost two million French soldiers became POWs. Among them were over 85,000 men hailing from across the French Empire. They came from the colonies, departments and overseas territories in Africa, Indochina, Madagascar and the French West Indies. Unlike their white counterparts who were brought to prisoner camps in Germany, these colonial prisoners of war (CPOWs)1 were interned in camps called Frontstalags located across occupied France. On 17 June 1940, the new Prime Minister, World War I veteran and hero of Verdun, Philippe Pétain requested an armistice. In face of such a massive and rapid defeat, Pétain and many French felt that German victory was now inevitable. Pétain believed that collaboration with the German occupiers would benefit France in the short and long terms by bringing its prisoners home quickly, and giving France an important role in the new German-dominated Europe. Despite Pétain’s popularity, the French public needed to be convinced that collaboration was the correct path to restore French grandeur. To do so, the new regime at Vichy created a political and social programme, the National Revolution, designed to restore France to its traditional values Notes for this chapter begin on page 76.

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that had been destroyed by the Third Republic. Among the issues exploited were those of the POWs and the French Empire. With almost every French household missing a POW, Pétain’s goal of obtaining their release received great support. The role of the empire remained a more difficult symbol to support. The armistice had guaranteed the empire would remain free and French. As it remained beyond the Germans’ control, Vichy felt the empire was not only a symbol of French strength but also a potential asset in negotiations with the Germans. The CPOWs represented both issues. As they were interned on French territory, they were visible components of the French empire as well as colonial subjects who had lived France’s defeat. Furthermore, Vichy felt that influencing the CPOWs would help shape the narrative of defeat in the colonies when they inevitably returned home. As such, the CPOWs were in a unique and delicate position. French military paternalism shaped the political negotiations on their behalf. While Germany dominated the negotiations, French officials used the negotiable space available to improve conditions for the CPOWs and retain at least the image of an important colonial power able to care for its subjects. Vichy’s actions for CPOWs were directly related to this preoccupation. The Germans exploited the importance the CPOWs represented for Vichy by imposing the cost of their care onto the French government in violation of the 1929 Geneva Convention requirements for a detaining power. While it is clear that Vichy acted in its own self-interest, seeking closer and closer collaboration with Germany, the colonial prisoners remain one area where Vichy may have offered some protection from Nazi racial politics.

From the Chaos of Capture to Building a Camp Structure Despite the Franco-German Armistice signed on 25 June 1940, becoming a prisoner had not been a simple business, least of all for colonial soldiers. The intensity of the battles, and totality of the defeat in May and June 1940, created an instability that proved dangerous for colonial soldiers. After capture, a soldier could have one of three experiences. First, he might be shot or killed during

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surrender or shortly after.2 Second, he could become a POW, go to a temporary location in France and later be sent by foot and train to camps in Germany. Or lastly, he could be sent to a camp in occupied France instead of Germany. Most white French prisoners fell into the second category and most colonial prisoners in the third. This initial period of captivity was particularly difficult and chaotic. The Germans did not have the infrastructure to cope with such high numbers of prisoners. The French roads and railways had been damaged by the fighting and were engorged with displaced civilians. Food, water and basic sanitation were in short supply. Tens of thousands of prisoners were left in fields surrounded by barbed wire. These camps lacked basic sanitation and food. Conditions were difficult for all prisoners. Almost immediately, Vichy and the Germans launched negotiations to improve conditions for the prisoners. While two legal texts, the Franco-German Armistice agreement and the 1929 Geneva Convention for the protection of prisoners, formed the backbone of negotiations, both powers sough to circumvent these texts to obtain greater concessions from the other. The prisoners’ return would advance the physical and emotional reconstruction of France after a humiliating defeat. It would also show the French that collaboration was a viable and beneficial path forward, spearheaded by Pétain’s new regime at Vichy. Therefore, and despite article 22 of the armistice agreement stating that all French prisoners would remain in captivity until the signature of peace, Vichy began negotiations for their early return and for an improved administrative and logistical system for dealing with them in the interim.3 This system’s structure changed several times at the beginning of the occupation. The most significant change was the appointment of Great War veteran Georges Scapini as Ambassador of France in September 19404 giving his Service diplomatique des prisonniers de guerre (SDPG) control over all POW issues for the French side. Scapini’s appointment led to the first major departure from the Geneva Convention rules. Instead of maintaining the internationally recognised neutral ‘protecting power’ to uphold the prisoners’ interests, the Germans suggested that Scapini assume the responsibility.5 The French acquiesced and signed the protocol of 16 November 1940, which ensured that French prisoners were no

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longer protected by a powerful neutral nation, the United States, but by a defeated Vichy which held no German prisoners. Vichy saw itself as a post-war regime, negotiating with wartime Germany. Scapini took a two-pronged approach to negotiations: request the release of specific categories of prisoners while emphasizing the need to send all prisoners home. In a letter to his German counterpart and friend Otto Abetz, Scapini worried about ‘the serious impact of the prolongation of captivity, in this time of neither peace nor war, on the morale and physical state of the prisoners’.6 Scapini had some early successes, notably the so-called ‘Scapini accord’. These releases included prisoners who posed a financial burden to Germany, such as wounded or older soldiers.7 These limited successes gave Vichy unfounded confidence in collaboration. However, the German war economy needed manpower and the French prisoners were too valuable to surrender in their entirety. Instead, as Julian Jackson argues, the release of some POWs cost the Germans nothing and encouraged Vichy’s desire to believe that collaboration brought concrete results.8 Despite the doubts and contradictions within Vichy’s own reasoning, it was committed to collaboration and determined to move forward with it. However, German policy towards CPOWs was different. Precisely because it believed France had been wrong to deploy colonial soldiers in Europe, Germany intended to make the resulting captives a charge for France. By physically separating the colonial from French POWs, Germany effectively split CPOWs from negotiations on French prisoners. Vichy simultaneously considered CPOWs to be part of, and separate from, the POW question. They were not, however, hostages in Germany. They were located in occupied France and provided Vichy an area where negotiations might prove fruitful. The CPOWs were not a priority for the Germans, as demonstrated by their refusal to bring them to Germany. However, that decision set in motion a series of events that would, ironically, make the CPOWs important for Germany. The decision to keep the CPOWs in France defined, above all other factors, their experience of captivity. Being on French soil increased the CPOWs’ visibility and significance for the Vichy regime, which hoped to promote its imperial agenda through them. Once Ger-

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many understood that, it used the CPOWs as leverage to exact additional financial concessions from Vichy. The CPOWs were a significant political issue because of the complex and contentious role played by the empire in Vichy’s relations with the German occupiers. For Germany, the CPOWs represented only a small portion of their greater North African propaganda strategy. For Vichy, close control of CPOWs, who might prove a disturbing element for future French colonial rule because they had experienced the defeat and collaboration, now became vital. Vichy worried about outside influences on the colonies and the CPOWs, and how one might affect the other. Unless there was one singular and clear French message to the colonial peoples, Vichy was anxious that the latter would be swayed by external propaganda. With the CPOWs, the Germans literally had a captive audience to that end. Vichy’s fear of German propaganda was therefore not unreasonable, and it led Vichy to try to control the flow of information to CPOWs, notably through a propaganda campaign to counteract that of the Germans. The unity of the French empire was fragile. Reinforcing the colonial status quo was central to Vichy’s need to prove that France remained a great power, firmly in control of its colonies and dependent territories, despite proof to the contrary. Germany, by contrast, exploited independence movements and encouraged revolt in the British and French colonies, while threatening Vichy with intervention if it could not maintain stability in the Maghreb. Later, the provisional government of the French Republic would share Vichy’s concern that captivity had spoilt the hearts and minds of some subjects, but blamed both Germany and Vichy for it. Intelligence briefings and monthly reports detailed Vichy’s growing concern over Germany’s interest in the French colonies.9 The CPOWs became a subject of contention between conflicting German and Vichy French aims. Vichy was invested in the fate of the CPOWs, and Germany used that for its advantage. Germany understood two things: first that Vichy wanted to prove its commitment to collaboration and, as such, was willing to take on greater financial responsibility in the hope of greater authority. Secondly, Vichy needed to be seen as the legitimate French government of both the empire and of metropolitan France. However,

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competing claims on the colonies, from Charles de Gaulle in Africa or the Japanese in Indochina, forced Vichy to bargain for colonial loyalties. Vichy dreamt of colonial expansion to compensate for its territorial losses in metropolitan France, but never even received concrete assurances from Germany that the empire would remain intact after the war. Germany, in turn, hid promises made to Italy and Spain from France. In the meantime, the CPOWs became one of the main arenas for competing French and German propaganda efforts. Tensions built up because Vichy feared German influence over the CPOWs but lacked the political clout to back up its complaints. Having decided to separate prisoners by race, the Germans spent late 1940 and early 1941 implementing this policy. To do so, the Germans increasingly moved white prisoners to Germany and returned the 38,000 CPOWs, possibly 40 per cent of the total, whom German forces had brought to Germany in the confusion following their massive victory.10 For Nancy Lawler, this decision was due to German racism, fear of colonial diseases and a desire that France pay for using uncivilised soldiers against Europeans.11 For the Germans, the physical sorting of prisoners was a fundamental part of organising the chaos of early captivity. For the Vichy regime it signified having the political structures capable of negotiating with the Germans. Structures it believed proved that despite the occupation Vichy was the legitimate French government capable of negotiating on an international scale and improving conditions for its population. For the CPOWs it meant internment in an established camp, regular food deliveries and a predictable daily schedule. For most CPOWs, this stability began in early 1941 when the POW system in France was fully established. Twenty-two Frontstalags had been built across occupied France from the Ardennes, to Brittany, to the Landes near Bordeaux. The construction and habitation of the Frontstalags initiated the second phase of captivity, which lasted until the German occupation of the southern zone in November 1942. As diplomatic relations between Vichy and Germany stabilized, so did physical conditions for CPOWs. The combination of German general lack of interest in the CPOWs and Vichy’s fear of propaganda created a favourable situation for CPOWs. This favourable period lasted from the winter of 1940 to November 1942. This period was never-

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theless not without difficulties: such as food shortages, cold weather and lack of supplies. Germany imposed greater financial responsibility for the CPOWs on Vichy, but ultimately this protected them from the harsh captivity forced on the Reich’s other prisoners.

Internal Camp Hierarchies: Formal and Informal As the Germans continued to filter out the white prisoners, the Frontstalags became an increasingly colonial world. However, this world did not reflect Vichy’s rhetoric of a united and loyal empire. As a diverse group of individuals under considerable stress from difficult conditions, the CPOWs did not always get along. For a start, CPOWs in the Frontstalags had been separated from their officers and thereby from the military hierarchy. New formal and informal hierarchies emerged in this relative vacuum. French paternalism expected the white soldiers, while they remained in the Frontstalags, to take on a leadership role towards the CPOWs. This attitude was prevalent in both the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) inspectors’ reports.12 Unfortunately, we do not have the CPOWs’ opinion on the subject. Being accustomed to the ‘ways’ of the colonial soldiers was an important skill for French officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs). Because most French with ‘colonial experience’ went through the same training, this effectively ensured that colonial soldiers’ were isolated from those with a different background or experience. Thus, it reinforced the status quo and conservatism of the French army. Vichy feared German influence over the CPOWs would increase without the white French when most of the latter were released from the Frontstalags throughout 1941. The German camp staff had both direct and indirect influence over the CPOWs. However, the homme de confiance or man of confidence was one prisoner who could directly influence the CPOWs’ daily experience. He served as the liaison between the prisoners, the German commanders and the aid organizations. The Geneva Convention protected the prisoners’ right to choose their homme de confiance.13 However, this was not respected in France. Instead camp commanders nominated the representative. This allowed

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opportunistic CPOWs to obtain favoured roles from the Germans, often at their comrades’ expense. El Mouldi Benahssen wrote to the president of the French Red Cross demanding their right to choose their own homme de confiance.14 Generally, complaints like these were ineffective, as the Germans maintained total control over the internal camp organisation. Vichy preferred white men to hold these roles over the CPOWs, as it avoided ‘awkward’ racial tensions. The Germans preferred to give them to North Africans, who sometimes also served as a well-paid internal camp police force.15 A white French prisoner recalled that: ‘These “policemen” are generally native NCOs, but often just simple soldiers who through despicable manoeuvring have gained the German’s confidence. They then are subject to their comrade’s clear hostility, which led some to resign their position’.16 This was quite common throughout the Frontstalags.17 Vichy’s opposition to the use of colonial soldiers as police was straightforward. Vichy feared that the CPOWs would be unduly influenced by the Germans, or grow accustomed to positions of power, especially over the French. Vichy preferred that the CPOWs continue to think of Germany as the enemy. Captivity, at least at this stage, facilitated this. The abstract notions of collaboration remained subservient to the realities of prisoner life. During this period, it was still the Germans who forced the CPOWs to work, restricted their movements and shot those who attempted to escape. While collaboration permeated every aspect of the political discussions around CPOWs, Vichy tried to keep it away from the CPOWs themselves. A figure that solicited universal hatred was he who betrayed his comrades in exchange for favours from the Germans. Repatriated Algerian prisoners ‘complain equally about certain NCOs or men who work as informants to the Germans and reveal the escapes’.18 This reaction was common among all prisoners.19 Vichy propaganda spoke of unity and support of the French empire, glossing over the dissidence in the colonies. The reality of a fragmenting French empire was in fact reflected in the actual relations among CPOWs. Worry about German propaganda certainly preoccupied the Vichy authorities, but their desire for the separation of races went further. Behind the racist discourse of the French colonisers

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lay detailed knowledge of the empire’s populations. Despite publicly praising a vast empire brought together through love of the motherland, actual unity was difficult to obtain and even feared by Vichy. The CPOWs had different cultures, languages and religious traditions. Rural farmers from Upper Volta had as little in common with urban workers from Algiers as with their German captors. Some colonial societies, such as the Peuhls in Guinea, were divided along social lines. The French colonial administrators and military officers had experience with the different and distinct cultures within the colonial populations. Germany, by contrast, had the organisational power over the CPOWs, but none of the colonialists’ inside knowledge of the different peoples and cultures. This knowledge was combined with generalisations and stereotypes to create French policy, notably to separate colonial soldiers of different ‘races’.20 Vichy continued this practice, feeling it would effectively limit potentially dangerous transnational feelings among the CPOWs, like the Négritude championed by Aimé Césaire and Senghor in the 1930s. By November of 1941, most CPOWs were housed according to their origins.21 Usually this meant there were small groups from different colonies in each Frontstalag, each with separate living quarters. Were the racial conflicts innate, as the French authorities often argued or were they exacerbated by captivity? There was certainly evidence that members of Vichy’s central organisation charged with supporting the prisoners, the Comité central d’assistance aux prisonniers de guerre (CCAPG), preferred to blame problems on inherent racial conflicts. When Mme Lyautey, wife of the military coloniser and herself symbolic of the empire, complained that at Lerouville ‘natives from Morocco, Algeria, Madagascar and Senegal suffer from lack of sufficient food and warm clothes, are reduced to great suffering. They fight amongst themselves which incites their guards to punish them’.22 Her explanation was dismissed: ‘It is hardly due to lack of food, but only to the fact that Moroccans and Senegalese cannot stand each other and fight’.23 Perhaps the CCAPG felt Lyautey was criticising their efforts for the CPOWs and preferred to deflect her criticism with tired racial tropes. In another case, it was gambling that caused troubles between the Senegalese and Indochinese prisoners.24

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One of the only CPOWs to comment on racial questions was Gnimagnon, who echoed Lyautey’s belief. He remembered that: The prisoners maintained excellent relations among themselves, without regard for colour, race or rank. They saw themselves as brothersin-arms, united by the same misfortune. One could see at the beginning, and it was painful, some hostility between race and colour due certainly to the shortages and the misery in which we brutally found ourselves. But immediately the brotherly instinct quashed the instinct for egoism and petty mindedness and [now] all fraternize in the common fate.25

The crux of Vichy’s fears can be seen in Gnimagnon’s phrase ‘united by the same misfortune’. France wanted the colonial soldiers to be united and loyal to France, but not necessarily united with each other. Racial differences might have been the catalyst, but the prisoners’ discord was affected by the constraints of captivity. Prisoners lived in confined spaces, far from home in harsh conditions. AJ Barker argued that ‘captivity breeds increased irritability in all men; some suffer a little more, others a little less. This is the so-called “barbed-wire disease,” which is not particular to any nationality’.26 Ultimately, the CPOWs were just men adapting as best they could to their new lives in German captivity.

Daily Life in the Frontstalags, early 1941 to November 1942 By 1941, most of the CPOWs had settled into a routine. The CPOWs’ life revolved around work and camp with limited time for distractions. CPOWs needed protection against the winter climate, acceptable clothing for the work they were required to do and enough food to survive captivity. A good camp had wellbuilt barracks with heating and a well-stocked kitchen that offered a variety of food. Even so captivity was long and difficult for CPOWs. The boredom, separation from families and uncertainty of its length, all wore them down. The physical conditions could either improve their captivity or make it much worse. The CPOWs’ daily life experiences revealed the dynamic between Vichy and Germany that would continue until November 1942 and

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which shaped all aspects of their captivity. The Frontstalags were both the CPOWs’ homes and enclaves of total German control on French soil. Vichy believed that influencing the physical conditions within the Frontstalags would also allow Vichy to regain some control over its occupied metropolitan territory, or at least, be better informed of the CPOWs’ experiences. No CPOW, or POW in general, had an easy captivity, despite Pétain’s portrayal of them suffering in quiet contemplation. The reality for the CPOWs was austere. Camps varied drastically in cleanliness, situation and German organisation. The winter climate was difficult for the CPOWs. The French military tradition of hivernage dating from the Great War moved colonial soldiers from the front to warmer regions during the winter months. Citing this practice, Vichy attempted unsuccessfully to obtain the mass release of CPOWs to North Africa or the colonies. Despite German assurances that all CPOWs would be moved south of Orléans, many CPOWs spent their captivity in cold regions of eastern France or Brittany.27 Even those moved to southern regions of the occupied zone suffered from the cold.28 Food was another pressing concern from the moment of capture until the CPOWs returned home. CPOWs could not survive on the German rations alone. In rare cases, this was due to neglect. CPOWs in the Somme were only fed one meal a day, forcing them to beg for bread when outside the camps.29 Other guards thought a strict regime benefited colonial prisoners. At Labenne, the German commandant declared that work was good for the CPOWs, which prompted them to yell to the Red Cross delegate to ‘give food’ and ‘come, come, see kitchen. Nothing to eat. Come see soup. Soup of water’.30 More often it was disorganisation that affected their food. The prefect of the Loiret noted in February 1941 that, ‘the problem of their diet is acute with the state of total disorder in which the roads, railways and telephone services are found. The German commander, totally overwhelmed by the number of prisoners, has not taken the necessary steps to deal with the situation’.31 The Germans understood that Vichy could not afford to let the CPOWs starve on French soil and did not attempt to increase their rations. Undernourished CPOWs benefited no one – especially as both Vichy and the Germans saw their potential as a labour force.

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Three things occurred which improved the food situation. Immediately and before official deliveries were put in place, French civilians intervened to support the local CPOWs sending products directly to the camp or slipping food to individuals. They sent extra bread or vegetables depending on what could be spared. While certain aspects of captivity remained removed from civilian concerns, food was universally understood. The French wanted to be reassured that their prisoners, including the CPOWs, were not starving. This concern for the prisoners’ food fundamentally improved the CPOWs’ experience of captivity by supplementing the rations provided by the Germans. French civilians continued to help CPOWs throughout the occupation, often filling roles that Vichy could not. Secondly, camp commanders sent requests to Vichy officials for more food. Consequently, their CPOWs were better fed, worked better and were in better sprits without costing the camp.32 Despite the onus placed on the detaining power by the Geneva Convention to feed its prisoners, the Germans depended on the French to fulfil that obligation. Lastly, camp inspectors reported to the Vichy officials that the CPOWs needed more food.33 Once the Red Cross deliveries had been organized, the CPOWs did not hesitate to ask for improvements, especially food from home.34 When possible, these requests were honoured, and CPOWs received products like mint, rice, couscous, dates, chickpeas and kola nuts.35 The freedom to choose and cook their food improved morale greatly. CPOWs could purchase sweets, cakes, chocolates, bread, beer and occasionally wine at the canteen.36 This access to alcohol appears surprising as France, during both wars, went to great lengths to ensure Muslim culinary rules were respected. This included the prohibition of alcohol. However, photos and anecdotal evidence revealed that colonial soldiers drank more alcohol than the French military would have liked. By October 1942, Onesse-Laharie had seven cooks working under a colonial chef. Prisoners could use individual stoves for cooking private food.37 Products bought in the canteens combined with individual packages allowed the CPOWs some independence regarding their nutrition. Working with the German commanders, the Vichy regime and its dependant charities attempted to provide adequate ra-

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tions. This was as much about humanitarian aid as political aims. Vichy needed to retain the image of a strong colonial power that would not abandon its subjects. Despite Vichy’s substantial efforts for the CPOWs, they remained first and foremost colonial subjects who should not feel entitled to make demands on the state. French officials feared the dangerous precedent if the CPOWs thought that France owed them something as fundamental as food. Regular distribution of chocolate, couscous, rice, sugar, dates, etc., by the French Red Cross and the Direction du Service des Prisonniers de Guerre (DSPG) in the Ardennes created an unfortunate situation for Vichy. CPOWs had got the idea ‘that this was a normal ration owed to them and that they could claim it as such. The German guards helped reinforce this view by pointing out the merits of their claims, and often joining the prisoners in complaining … if there were delays or reductions in the quantities distributed’.38 The fact that the CPOWs and their German guards agreed was particularly worrying for the French officials. The Germans provided a useful third party for Vichy in relation to their CPOWs. Germany could be blamed for the harsh experience of captivity. Vichy felt its donations were a simple and effective counterweight to German propaganda and feared that any complaint about the French contributions, not about German captors, was a slippery slope to outright rebellion. While the potential for subversion of Vichy’s authority was real, Vichy’s fear was greater than the actual risk represented by CPOW complaints.

CPOW Labour Diverging needs for prisoner labour set French and German priorities at odds with each other. France wanted the CPOWs released to offset labour shortages in the colonies and wanted the return of the French prisoners to restart the French economy. Germany had quickly incorporated the French prisoners into its own agriculture and industry and presented CPOWs as a solution for labour shortages in the occupied zone. This also gave the Reich access to an inexpensive workforce for German exploitation of French agriculture and industry.39 As early as the summer of 1940, CPOWs

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brought in the harvest and they were increasingly integrated into the French economy as the war progressed.40 This changed the CPOWs’ experience of captivity as they left the overcrowded Frontstalags for small groups working on local farms and industries. Their work made them more visible and fostered relationships with French civilians. For the French, the CPOWs were seen less as representatives of a political agenda than as individuals who needed help. That said, the work was often difficult and the CPOWs ill-equipped for its demands. These competing goals had a direct impact on the CPOWs’ experiences, as the two powers defined, and redefined, the kind of work CPOWs could do. CPOW labour offered the Germans another opportunity to shift costs to the French and to reinterpret the governing legal texts: the Hague accord and Geneva Convention. Neither power was willing to abandon the international agreements entirely, but both hoped to use the negotiable space to their advantage. Hence, these international doctrines remained the standards against which all changes were negotiated. CPOWs, far from the front, remained relatively protected in the ‘war work’ they did. Neville Wylie argues that since most states view themselves as law-abiding, even with good economic reasons, it was difficult to completely disregard the Geneva Convention.41 Despite Vichy’s weak position, it challenged the German legal interpretations on prisoner labour. CPOWs became the test subjects for these new interpretations since Vichy had little oversight of French prisoners’ work in Germany. The Vichy authorities, especially Scapini, saw revisions to the Geneva Convention as logical modifications of international law, designed to reflect the reality of the situation. It seemed natural that France would contribute to this revision as a prelude to its future role in German Europe. However, unlike during the previous international conferences, France was now an unequal partner. Despite the drastic change of position regarding international law by becoming its own protecting power, the act of negotiating the new interpretations helped Vichy legitimize itself as the legal independent French government, rather than as a puppet regime. The question of CPOW labour revealed both the limits and the benefits of the CPOWs for Vichy’s policy of collaboration. Vichy knew it could not refuse German demands for prisoner labour

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and believed, correctly, that the CPOWs would benefit from working closely with the French, another unintentional consequence of being left in France. Two weeks after the armistice, the occupying forces instructed prefects in the occupied zone to communicate their department’s labour requirements because ‘this allocation of French prisoners [wa]s a gracious gesture by the Führer of Germany who wants to see them employed for France to facilitate economic recovery and ensure the harvest is brought in’.42 This was not an unselfish act. France would become a major supplier of foodstuffs for Germany. Rebuilding the French economy benefited Germany if it were to limit the use of its own resources in occupying France. Even if all 80,000 CPOWs, a significant number, were able to work outside the camp, it was still a limited resource. French agriculture was an immediate and lasting priority since 36 per cent of French prisoners in Germany were farmers.43 The labour shortages in the still peasant-based agriculture were particularly severe in 1940–44. Hence CPOW labour was as urgent for the French as the German authorities. The CPOWs who went to work immediately escaped some of the chaos their compatriots faced in the large temporary camps. Instead they were engaged in difficult labour in France, leaving the more ‘valuable’ workers, the white French, for German industries. Two competing needs rapidly appeared: agriculture and forestry. In the summer of 1940, 65 per cent of all the Reich’s prisoners worked in agriculture, by 1941 it was 52 per cent, though this eventually decreased to 31.5 per cent by February 1944.44 The CPOWs were no exception. Generally unskilled, they were quickly allocated to French farms to help alleviate food shortages across France.45 North African prisoners ‘were actually highly sought after by farmers who now recognize the great help provided by this casual labour’.46 However, two factors frustrated the French employers: the Germans controlled the CPOWs’ work and the CPOWs were unskilled, and sometimes unproductive, workers.47 French fuel requirements were just as important as agriculture. After the defeat, fuel shortages forced Vichy to exploit the forests for wood. However, a lack of trained lumberjacks hindered their progress.48 Instead groups like the CPOWs and the Chantiers de la Jeunesse were used to chop wood. Thus, the CPOWs engaged in two essential sectors of the French economy.

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There were advantages and disadvantages for the CPOWs working outside the camps. Work offered a welcome change from the strict regime in the Frontstalags. It allowed the CPOWs to interact with the French with less German oversight, and to escape, at least for a little while, the discipline of the Frontstalags. Their German guards were often more relaxed on work groups than in a large Frontstalag.49 Although Vichy incorrectly feared the CPOWs would be influenced by close contact with German guards and forget their loyalty to France, it also took advantage of the leniency to gain access to the CPOWs.50 In the Ardennes, locals slipped prisoners packages and letters despite the risk that, if caught, the local post offices would be closed as punishment.51 Nevertheless, while some CPOWs preferred working outside, farm work was demanding and exhausting, especially for those unused to physical work.52 Moving CPOWs directly into the local economy and working for private firms, which paid the camp, left them vulnerable. Sometimes employers used the camp commanders’ control to get around French labour laws. For example, upon request from their employers, the Feldkommandantur increased the working day to ten hours for CPOWs at Mézilles (Yonne).53 The CPOWs did not have a regular work schedule. The difficulty of the physical labour was combined with the distance CPOWs were forced to walk to work. At Dixmont, CPOWs walked sixteen kilometres daily.54 The teams were changed constantly meaning CPOWs were forced to adjust to different jobs with different colleagues.55 The inspector for the French forestry department complained to the prefect about the increased hours and ‘onerous conditions of the black prisoners employed in the forests of your jurisdiction’.56 After which the camp commander agreed that the CPOWs’ working day would be limited to eight hours. Private companies soon contacted the camp commanders for access to this source of inexpensive labour.57 Eventually, camp commanders and local businesses signed legal contracts for the CPOWs’ labour, stating the number of prisoners, type of work, means of payment and the local town’s responsibilities.58 These contracts benefited the Germans, who could break them at any time, and not the CPOWs.59 The CPOWs had no control over the type of work they did. Once their labour was regulated, they lost some of the freedoms

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of the summer of 1940 and their German guards always accompanied them.60 Technically, the guards were present to relieve the French of the responsibility for the CPOWs in case of escape.61 In reality, this gave the CPOWs two masters: the guards for captivity and the French for productivity. As more CPOWs were sent to work in small communes, the German authorities published posters with instructions. Prisoners and communities were reminded that the Germans trusted both in order to help the French economy. This brought ordinary French men under the influence of the local Frontstalag. Mayors and employers were held personally responsible for the prisoners quartered locally. Most importantly, ‘escape was equivalent to desertion and would be punished as such’.62 In this form, collaboration effectively made French civil servants agents of the detaining power. For all the assistance provided by CPOWs, communities often hesitated to employ them due to the accompanying restrictions. French towns were given more and more financial responsibility for the upkeep of these prisoners. From February 1941, employers, be they farmers or businesses, were required to provide ten francs per day for food for each working day.63 Vichy subsidized the cost, often taken from local budgets, when the employers could not.64 By April 1941, towns and communes were forced to accept teams of CPOWs and find work to occupy them.65 As seen, feeding CPOWs was more than a simple monetary transaction. It meant ensuring the prisoners’ most basic right. By refusing to continue to feed the CPOWs, the German authorities showed a clear understanding of Vichy’s commitment to collaboration and its own general disregard for its Geneva Convention responsibilities. Without any concessions from Germany, Vichy had additional financial charges. Vichy could not let the CPOWs go hungry on French soil while simultaneously struggling to maintain sovereignty in the colonies. Here practical business sense and humanitarian concerns collided and revealed the multitude of French attitudes towards the CPOWs. For individual French men and women sharing a meal or providing food to the CPOWs, this was an act of solidarity in a country under foreign occupation. It drew the CPOWs and the French together and created shared experiences. Feeding the less fortunate is a nearly universal act of charity and thus fit nicely

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into Pétain’s paternalistic and Christian discourse. While some administrators protested at the financial burden, the principle, that the CPOWs be well-fed while working in France, was generally accepted. Despite the difficulties, many communities managed to do it well. In Saint-Jean sur Erve, prisoners were fed soup, meat, potatoes or beans, jam or cheese, bread and coffee, red wine or cider every day.66 Saint-Jean’s mayor described how the locals ‘welcome[d] the soldiers to their tables and len[t] them cutlery. When our native soldiers work directly for an individual, they feed them completely, and often the German guard too’.67 This vocabulary reflected a personal attachment to the CPOWs and could be found throughout occupied France.68 The complicated dynamic created by Vichy collaboration meant that the Germans were pressuring the French to ensure the CPOWs were fed. This effort cost the Germans nothing and saved them the cost of feeding their prisoners. However, this sense of solidarity was tested when the Germans imposed the cost of the CPOWs’ salary on French communes and employers. Work was one of the CPOWs’ only opportunities to earn a salary and was guaranteed by the Geneva Convention.69 Most CPOWs received ten francs, keeping eight and giving two to the camps’ communal fund.70 Here again, the convention assumed the employers and the detaining power would be the same nationality. The Germans followed their modus operandi and shifted the cost to the French. Many employers had assumed that colonial labour would be cheaper than French prisoners because the CPOWs were generally assumed to be less productive. The mayor of Nitry, when faced with this new payment, forgot all feelings of imperial solidarity: Had the municipal council thought we would be asked to pay twenty francs per day per man for the prisoners, it would have simply left them in their quarters. In the beginning there was no mention of salaries for the colonial prisoners: it was only by your memos of 17 and 22 April that we learnt that the payment of colonial prisoners was the same as for French prisoners.71

These increased financial burdens drew out the paternalistic, and sometimes racist views of some French officials. The prefect of the Yonne worried about the ‘potential inconveniences’ in allowing

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CPOWs access to cash. He proposed placing their salary directly into savings accounts, which presumably the CPOWs would not be allowed to touch. Limiting the CPOWs’ access to funds was a manner to further limit their movements. Fortunately for the CPOWs, the German authorities at Frontstalag 124 rejected this idea.72 The mayor of Selle-Craonnaise explained that while they would be able to take fifteen French prisoners, even Bretons, quite easily, ‘placing Arabs … would be absolutely impossible and the team [would be] unused … no farmer would want to employ Arabs, Indochinese or others …’73 As seen, many farmers had no difficulties employing CPOWs. These racist reactions reflected the frustrations many small towns felt upon learning that they would not receive white prisoners, but CPOWs.74 At the beginning of 1941, the occupying authorities decided to further regulate CPOW labour by insisting prisoners be grouped together. No longer could CPOWs be sent individually to work sites.75 Apparently, the German authorities feared that CPOWs would both escape and incite disorder, so it was only reluctantly they were allowed to work on civil projects, and why they were no longer to be sent to farms individually.76 The prefects were encouraged to find large farms where supervised groups of CPOWs could work effectively. Family farms were much more common in western and south-western France, especially in smaller communities like Beaulieu-sur-Oudon. Initially it was sent ten prisoners, five Africans who worked individually on local farms and five Vietnamese (Annamite) employed repairing local roads and pathways.77 However, the commune was instructed to use the ten prisoners on the same team. This, as the mayor explained, was impossible as no farmer could use such a large team on the small farms that predominated in the region. The mayor himself had to try and use them on the one collective worksite in the area.78 He was essentially creating and paying for work just to keep the CPOWs occupied. The German authorities made little attempt to ensure the towns could absorb CPOW labour effectively.79 Public works had to be found, and financed, for the CPOWs when the farms could no longer absorb their labour. Unsurprisingly, after some debate, the cost for these smaller work camps was imposed on the French.80

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Bringing CPOWs onto French farms and into French businesses created a three-way interaction between CPOWs, French people and the German authorities. In the summer of 1940, most French towns were eager for CPOW labour, unskilled as it was. Many thought the CPOWs would only be there for the summer, while Germany rapidly defeated the United Kingdom, and no ongoing obligations were implied. As the occupation continued, resistance against this labour force increased.81 It would be unhelpful to attribute this to simple racism, despite a few local figures who would have preferred French prisoners. The growing dissatisfaction with CPOW labour was inherently linked to the demands made by the German authorities, which not only increased costs but also placed individuals at risk if their prisoner escaped. Who benefited from CPOW labour? The German argument that CPOWs were working for France’s benefit was disingenuous. Both France and Germany needed the French economy to revive. Germany exploited French agriculture heavily. By 1944 German grain purchases had increased from six to eight million quintals, and meat purchases had doubled to 270,000 tons.82 The occupation costs were crippling France. Conditions worsened as the occupation continued. Vichy’s obligation to pay for unnecessary labour meant the German authorities benefited more than the French. Their prisoners were supervised and kept busy with minimal German intervention and infrastructure. Additionally, Germany was able to provide a cost-effective replacement to missing prisoners’ effect on the labour pool. Providing workers for the French economy was the German contribution to collaboration. The French incorrectly thought their economic arguments would ensure the release of white prisoners to fill the void, but also recognised the benefits for the CPOWs to work outside the camps. As always, this collaboration benefited Germany more than Vichy. The CPOWs were the unexpected beneficiaries of this policy. Difficult labour conditions were normal for prisoners. At least in France, some of their employers saw them as more than just workers and felt some responsibility for their conditions. The above evidence shows two different levels of French and CPOW interaction. The first was on a local and individual level, between small farmers and their prisoners, where relations were

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generally good. The second, when salaries entered the equation, was on an economic level between businesses, or town governments, and large groups of prisoners that they hired or had forced upon them. In the first instance, peasant farmers and poor households viewed feeding CPOWs as a humanitarian gesture. At this level, they extended the solidarity with French POWs to CPOWs, who had also fought for France. The CPOWs could thus be included in the solidarity of defeat and occupation. In the latter case, injecting salaried work – especially when paid labour was not necessarily the norm – altered the equation. Feeding the CPOWs was generally acceptable but salary often appeared an unjustified extra. Many family farms were not used to hiring labour or to a large income in cash. It was the absence of the men that made them abnormally reliant on hired labour. Productivity and a return on the investment became the dominant consideration. For logging companies, the question was simple economics: how much did it cost to use CPOW labour and what did they make out of it. Yet the motive of solidarity never entirely disappeared, despite the ongoing war. The French towns and villages were in a more difficult position. On the one hand, they had budgets that needed to be respected and less and less money. On the other, they were not unsympathetic to the plight of the CPOWs. The CPOWs’ daily life presented certain difficulties that should not be minimized: hunger, cold, strenuous work and harsh living conditions. However, from early 1941, the CPOWs at least had a means of communication with the French: first, through international organizations and later through French ones. Being able to complain and having those complaints heard were two fundamental signs of a stable experience of captivity. Vichy used the CPOWs’ complaints and needs as a way to access the closed German space in the Frontstalags. Eager to prove their commitment to collaboration, Vichy helped improve the camps and the CPOWs’ experiences within them, to the CPOWs’ benefit. The fate of the CPOWs was first and foremost a matter of their own experience. But their very status as prisoners posed a political question for both Vichy France and the Germans. The decision to keep CPOWs in France and not Germany defined the CPOWs’ experiences of captivity above all other factors. Instead

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of being interned in an enemy country with a clear and dangerous racial hierarchy, CPOWs were surrounded by a generally friendly French population. Most French recognised the colonial soldiers and praised their contributions in defending France. Many of the CPOWs spoke some French, another advantage over internment in Germany. While an unintentional consequence, leaving the CPOWs in France forced them into the public eye. That fact, combined with Vichy’s pro-imperial rhetoric, ensured that Vichy could not neglect the CPOWs in favour of the French prisoners. It is ironic that German racism, which kept the CPOWs out of Germany, was exactly what made them an important question at stake in relations between France and Germany. Assisting CPOWs sprung from the traditional paternalism of the French army and Third Republic’s ideals of French duty towards its colonial subjects. More importantly, Vichy saw material and moral aid to colonial prisoners as a way to negate the effects of the defeat and to reinforce the status quo. Terrified that German propaganda would encourage revolt among unhappy CPOWs, Vichy sought to improve their conditions. Through governmental and private organizations based in France and the colonies, Vichy sent CPOWs individual packages, colonial delicacies, extra clothing, games, books and musical instruments. This type of authorized assistance fit nicely into Vichy’s collaboration as well as its paternalistic views of how to best help its colonial subjects. By donating extra rations, Vichy enabled the Germans to provide the minimum while reaping the benefits from prisoners who were better fed and in better spirits. This allowed Vichy to play the role of caretaker to the CPOWs. This was largely successful, and the CPOWs’ first two years of captivity were relatively stable and were improved by Vichy’s efforts. In providing for the CPOWs during captivity, Vichy sought to prove the CPOWs’ dependence on France, and thus the colonies need for French rule. Following the war’s major turning point with the battles of El Alamein, Stalingrad and then the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942, Germany invaded the rest of France, destroying any remaining illusions of Vichy’s autonomy. Needing all available German soldiers, camp guards were replaced by French officers. This created situations where their former officers guarded the CPOWs. The paradox of the CPOWs’ captivity experience is

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that they fared better when Vichy only had indirect influence. As long as they had political significance for Vichy, as prisoners who would return and potentially influence things in the empire, they benefited. Because Vichy feared German sway, they went to great lengths to improve CPOWs’ conditions. This allowed Vichy to portray itself to the CPOWs in a benevolent light. Within the constraints negotiated by Vichy, CPOWs were granted the same basic Geneva Convention protections white French prisoners enjoyed. The French uniform protected CPOWs from the fate of Russian or Polish prisoners. In November 1942, Vichy loses the empire, their home, and gains direct influence over the CPOWs. However, without the empire, they no longer matter. When Vichy gained direct control of CPOWs, after repatriation for illness or conversion into civilian workers, conditions for CPOWs worsened. This was partially due to the general degradation of conditions in France as the war continued, but mostly because CPOWs were no longer a priority when under Vichy’s direct control. While CPOWs were exposed to German propaganda, Vichy used the carrot. When back under French control it used the stick. Vichy France needed to reassert its dominance over its colonial subjects whose obedience might have been affected by German propaganda and schisms in the empire. The consequences of this paradox were soon felt. After years of Vichy rhetoric praising imperial loyalty and sacrifice, many CPOWs were shocked to find themselves back under a strict regime. Their legitimate complaints were often dismissed as echoes of German propaganda. After the liberation of France, prisoners likewise were not a priority. France had no resources and its countryside was devastated. As always, metropolitan interests prevailed and CPOWs were sent home as quickly as possible. Sarah Frank is a postdoctoral research fellow at the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State in South Africa. She received her doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin. Her thesis entitled, ‘Colonial Prisoners of War and Vichy France, 1940– 1942: Experiences and Politics’, was funded by the Irish Research Council. She holds a BA from Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, in French and history and an MPhil in modern Irish history from Trinity College, Dublin.

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Notes  1.

 2.

 3.  4.  5.  6.  7.

 8.  9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

For the purposes of this article ‘CPOW’ refers to prisoners from the French colonies, protectorates and overseas departments considered ‘of colour’ by the Germans. White French prisoners from North Africa, the pied-noirs, were taken to Germany with the rest of the white prisoners. Some German forces murdered between 1,500 and 3,000 colonial soldiers shortly after surrender. For a detailed discussion of the massacre of African prisoners see R Scheck, Hitler’s African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940 (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006). Archives Nationales [henceforth AN], AJ/41/1835, state of negotiations, sub-committee for POWs, 8 October 1940. Ambassador was an administrative rank giving Scapini the legitimacy needed to negotiate with the Germans and to represent French interests. AN, AJ/41/1834, Humbert, note for DSA POW section, 13 November 1940. AN, F/9/2007, Scapini to Abetz, 10 December 1941. AN, AJ/41/2053, Poussart, meeting with Scapini’s services, 6 June [no year]; see also AN, AJ/41/1835, State of negotiations, sub-committee for POWs, 8 October 1940; AN, AJ/41/1835, summary of DFCAA meeting, 5 July 1940. J Jackson, France, the Dark Years, 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 233. See SHD, 1P200 for regular intelligence reports on German propaganda for North Africa. SHD, 2P65, Scapini to Koeltz, 20 March 1941. NE Lawler, Soldiers of Misfortune, Ivorian Tirailleurs of World War II (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992), 104. AN, F/9/2351, Anderson and Senaud, report of YMCA visits to POW camps in Occupied France, 4 February 1941. Section 5, article 43, The Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva, 27 July 1929. Ibid. SHD, 14P46, Prost, report on captivity and escape [n.d.]. SHD, 34N1081, Guerin, liberation report, 22 December 1941. AN, F/9/2351, ICRC, visit to Mont de Marsan, 13 June 1941; for other examples see SHD, 2P70, Senghor, captivity report, 7 July 1942; SHD 14P46, Gnimagnon, captivity report, 7 February 1941; SHD, 14P17, report on escapes from POW camps, Subdivision of Taza, 4 November 1940. ANOM, Alg GGA 1CM-73, Préfecture d’Oran, Centre d’Information de d’Etudes, 6 February 1942. SP MacKenzie, The Colditz Myth British and Commonwealth Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 128. AN, F/2959, Bigard to Chief of OKW in France, 5 January 1941. SHD, 2P67, CCAPG Section d’outre-mer, minutes from 24 November 1941 meeting, 28 November 1941. AN, F/9/2959, Mme Lyautey to CCAPG, 25 October 1940. AN, F/9/2959, translation and commentary of Mme Lyautey’s letter to CCAPG, 1 November 1940. SHD, 2P88, Jean Brelivet, captivity report, 22 July 1941.

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25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

48.

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SHD 14P46, Gnimagnon, captivity report, 7 February 1941. AJ Barker, Behind Barbed Wire (London: BT Batsford, 1974), 78. AN, AJ/41/1835, summary of meeting between Chauvin and Von Rosenberg, 14 September 1940. SHD, 2P70, anonymous captivity report, 7 July 1942. Originally identified as Léopold Senghor, first president of Senegal, by Raffael Scheck. [Henceforth: Senghor, captivity report.] AD Somme, 48W70, Lallemant, report on the situation of POW camps, 6 Mai 1941; see also AN, F/9/2351, ICRC, visit to St. Martin d’Orney, 13 June 1941. AN, F/9/2351, CRF, Automobile section of Bordeaux, report on camp visits in the Landes, 15 October 1941. AD Loiret, 11R14, prefect of the Loiret, note regarding POWs in the Loiret, 6 February 1941. Ibid. AD Ardennes, 1W146, L. Bonnaud-Delamare to prefect of the Ardennes, 21 January 1942. SHD, 2P78, Jean Detroyat, report of visit to Frontstalag 121 Epinal, 27 March 1941; see also AN, F/9/2351, CRF, automobile section of Bordeaux, report on camp visits in the Landes, 15 October 1941. SHD, 2P78, Verdier to Huntziger, 26 April 1941. AN, F/9/2351, ICRC, report on Joigny, 18 June 1941; for additional examples see AN, F/9/2351, Anderson and Senaud, report of YMCA visits to POW camps in Occupied France, 6 April 1941. AN, F/9/2351, Schimmer and de Morsier, ICRC visit to Frontstalag 195, 28 October 1942. AD Ardennes, 1W146, L. Bonnaud to Contrôleur de l’armée sous-directeur de Service des prisonniers de guerre, 19 August 1942; for another example see AD Mayenne, 227W6, Commune of Beaulieu-sur-Oudon to Perfect of Mayenne, 11 June 1941. R Scheck, ‘French Colonial Soldiers in German Prisoner of War Camps 1940– 1945’, French History xxiv(3) (2010), 425. AN, AJ/41/1835, Subcommittee for POWs, 1 December 1940. N Wylie, Barbed Wire Diplomacy, Britain, Germany and the Politics of Prisoners of War 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 34. AD Yonne, 1W643, Gutschmidt to Joseph Bourgeois, 7 July 1940. RO Paxton, Vichy France, Old Guard and New Order 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 209. J Billig, ‘Le Rôle des prisonniers de guerre dans l’économie du Reich’, Revue d’Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale xxxvii(1960), 56. ‘Notes documentaries et Etudes’, Ordre nouveau et collaboration (Ministère Français de l’Information, 25 June 1945, n 83), 6; see also AD Yonne, 1W655, prefect of Yonne, memo to mayors of Yonne, 23 June 1941. AD Nièvre, 137W 126, Sadon to Scapini, 18 July 1941. AD Yonne, 1W655, Ulrich to prefect of Yonne, 2 April 1942; see also AD Yonne, 1W644, Wildermuth to prefect of the Yonne, 4 August 1941; SHD, 14P16, Hassen-Ladjimi, escape report, 28 September 1940. C Pearson, ‘“The Age of Wood”: Fuel and Fighting in French Forests, 1940– 1944’, Environmental History xi(2006), 777–78.

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R Scheck, French Colonial Soldiers in German Captivity during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 430. 50. AN, F/9/2351, Brault, notes on a mission to the Eastern Region, Overseas section, 27 October–9 November 1941. 51. AD Ardennes, 1W145, prefect of the Ardennes to the sous-prefects and mayors, 21 January 1941. 52. Yves Durand, La Captivité, Histoire de prisonniers de guerre français 1939–1945 (éditions FNCPG, 1980), 117. 53. AD Yonne, 1W655, Wildermuth to French forestry department inspector, 7 June 1941. 54. AD Yonne, 1W655, Michel Verneaux, Minister of Agriculture report, 15 May 1941. 55. AD Mayenne, 227W6, mayor of Ballots to the prefect of the Mayenne, 18 September 1941. 56. AD Yonne, 1W655, prefect of the Yonne to French forestry department inspector, 30 May 1941. 57. AD Yonne, 1W655, prefect of the Yonne to mayor of St-Martin-des-Champs, 3 June [probably 1941]. 58. AD Yonne, 1W652, contract between the German Reich represented by the chief of the military administration in Bordeaux and the chief of French forestry department at Bordeaux [n.d.]. 59. AD Marne, Châlons en Champagne, 7W S5989, Blank Contract, Frontstalag 194. 60. AD Yonne, 1W655, Mathès to prefect of the Yonne, 14 March 1941. 61. AD Yonne, 1W655, French forestry department inspector to prefect of the Yonne, 24 May 1941. 62. AD Haute Saône, 27W63, Lieutenant-Colonel Laub, Poster Consignes pour les prisonniers aidant aux travaux des champs [n.d.]. 63. AD Somme, 49W27, prefect of the Somme to the mayors of the department, 20 February 1941. 64. AD Mayenne, 227W6, mayor of Changé to the prefect of Mayenne, 30 July 1941. 65. AD Gironde, 45W15, Dr. Heerdt to prefect of the Gironde, 22 April 1941. 66. AD Mayenne, 227W6, mayor of Saint Jean sur Erve to the prefect of Mayenne, 26 March 1941. 67. Ibid. 68. SHD, 7NN2022, Huntziger to Amiral de la Flotte, 23 May 1941. 69. Section III, Article 28, Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of Prisoners of war, 27 July 1929. 70. SHD, 2P78, Georges Scapini and Jean Desbons, summary of visit to Frontstalag 195, 10 April 1941. 71. AD Yonne, 1W643, mayor of Nitry to prefect of the Yonne, 23 May 1941. 72. AD Yonne, 1W652, Letter Sous-prefect Sens to Prefect [n.d.]. 73. AD Mayenne, 227W6, mayor of Selle-Craonnaise to Bussière, 22 March 1941. 74. AD Mayenne, 227W22, JF Bussiere to Kraaz, 26 March 1941. 75. AD Somme, 49W27, prefect of the Somme to the mayors of the department, 20 February 1941.

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76. 77. 78. 79.

80.

81.

82.

79

AD Loiret, 11R14, prefect of the Loiret, note on POWs in Loiret, 21 February 1941. AD Mayenne, 227W6, Commune of Beaulieu-sur-Oudon to the prefect of Mayenne, 11 June 1941. Ibid. AD Yonne, 1W655, Maurice Vincent to prefect of Yonne, 15 March 1941; see also AD Mayenne, 227W22, mayors of Ambrières, Chantigné, Signé et Saint Loup du Gass to the commandant in charge of POW services [n.d.]. AD Ardennes, 1W145, Jean Brunet to the prefects, 12 May 1941; see also AD Yonne, 1W655, prefect of the Yonne to mayor of Gisy-les-Nobles, 28 February 1942; AD Yonne, 1W655, sous-prefect Avallon to prefect of the Yonne, 15 March 1941. For examples see AD Mayenne, 227W6, mayor of Chatelain to the prefect of Mayenne [n.d.]; AD Mayenne, 227W6, mayor of Cosmes to the prefect of Mayenne, 21 March 1941; AD Nièvre, 137W 127, Sadon to Scapini, 9 August 1941; AD Nièvre, 137W 128, Sadon, monthly report, 4 November 1941; AD Yonne, 1W644, prefect of the Yonne to Commandant of Frontstalag 124, 29 September 1941. Paxton, Vichy France, 144.

Chapter 4

Containing ‘Potentially Subversive’ Subjects: The Internment of Supporters of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands Indies, 1940–46 Esther Zwinkels

F

rom 10 May 1940, about 2,800 Germans and about 500 alleged supporters of the National Socialist Movement (NationaalSocialistische Beweging, NSB), an affiliate of the German Nazi party, were interned in special camps in the Netherlands Indies.1 These preventive measures were taken after the invasion of the Netherlands by the German army on 10 May and the subsequent declaration of war on Germany.2 Based on often outdated and scarce evidence, observations and rumours, people were listed to be interned. For an indefinite period, they would be kept under harsh circumstances without being interrogated or informed about their status. In several camps, the internees were maltreated, assaulted and publicly humiliated by guards. At first sight, these measures do not seem extraordinary. Putting away enemy nationals and sympathizers with the enemy in internment or isolation camps in times of war was quite common, as has been outlined in the introduction of this volume. In the same period, internment was enacted by various parties: the Notes for this chapter begin on page 102.

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Americans interned about 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast of the United States; the British put away Germans and other enemy nationals in internment camps within the Commonwealth.3 From World War I onwards, internment of enemy aliens had become a more prominent wartime measure.4 Yet in colonial conflicts and wars, such practices had been common for an even longer period. Internment and concentration camps had, for instance, existed under the Spanish on Cuba (1868–78, 1879– 80, and 1895–98) and under the British in South Africa during the Boer Wars (1899–1902), during which thousands of civilians had been kept together under harsh conditions.5 Internment is not limited to times of war; it is also a popular measure in peacetime. Whereas measures for criminal acts, such as imprisonment, are generally based on articles in the law, the legal foundation of internment remains weak and is more or less a ‘grey area’, which does not safeguard the position of internees.6 If there are any rules at all, they generally concede governments the right to act whenever and in any way is deemed necessary. In colonial territory, the distinction between wartime and peacetime was less clear. The extraordinary circumstances made it appealing to turn to measures of internment, since the colonization had initially started as ‘occupation territory’ and remained in a state of permanent alertness to protect the colonial possessions.7 The relationship to the metropole was ambiguous, with, on the one hand, dependency on the metropole in certain administrative respects but, on the other hand, far-reaching autonomy to rule in the colony. Moreover, the fact that the colonizers were a small minority compared with the colonized people, required a clear display of power to protect their position. Disobedient or dangerous subjects should be isolated from society to retain order. Practices of exile, isolation and internment therefore formed an indispensable basis of the colonial power structure. However, imprisonment, internment and exile are still underexposed topics in colonial and global history, even though they provide valuable insights into and explanations for precolonial, colonial and even post-colonial practices.8 Expanding the spatial and temporal scope in the study of internment and incarceration regimes to include colonial territories, being one of the objectives of this volume, would therefore be of great value.

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An interesting example in this respect is the case in the Netherlands Indies. Putting the internment of NSB members in historical perspective, it shows that the Indies archipelago has a long history of measures of isolation such as internment and exile. From the early seventeenth century onwards, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) protected its trade interests by expelling threats from its trading posts and making alliances with local rulers.9 The VOC operated an intensive network of forced migration, penal transportation and political exile between its headquarter in Batavia and other ‘nodal points’ in its network to maintain control over its civilian subjects and personnel.10 After 1816, when the Indies archipelago became part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, these practices of isolation were also applied in combination with violent repression to ‘pacify’ or subjugate people in areas resisting the expansion of Dutch rule. The Javanese prince Diponegoro, whom the Dutch fought in the bloody Java War (1825–30), along with many other opponents of Dutch colonial policies on Java, was several times sent into exile to the outer regions of the archipelago.11 This also happened during colonial wars, such as the Aceh War (1873–1913) and several ‘expeditions’ such as those to Kalimantan (Borneo; 1904–6) and Bali (1906).12 Given these practices, it is no surprise that the Netherlands Indies has been characterized as a ‘state of violence’ in which violence and terror was used to retain order and keep up the colonial prestige.13 The violent character remained, but in the 1920s and 1930s, waging internal wars was rather avoided, and more emphasis gradually was laid again on internment practices to control political movements before other parts of the colony would also be ‘infected’. Isolation of prominent leaders seemed to be the best remedy – among the internees were several future leaders of the independent Indonesian republic. Political circumstances increasingly demanded legitimation of power, and this resulted in the codification of the exorbitante rechten (excessive rights), which allowed the governor-general to intern or extern those born in the Netherlands Indies who posed a potential threat to the security of the state.14 No indictment or conviction was needed; the only condition for enforcing this measure was the interrogation of the suspect before internment, but even this was omitted in many cases. Under influence of growing tensions and fear of the government,

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the number of political prisoners increased tremendously in the years before World War II.15 The Dutch colonial authorities thus had a long tradition of isolating and incarcerating undesired elements from society, and the internment of NSB members and Germans seems to fit this pattern. Yet what makes the internment of the members of the NSB in the Netherlands Indies interesting is that, for the first time, a large group of Europeans was interned.16 In a colonial society, in which Europeans had a privileged position in relation to the indigenous people, keeping up prestige was one of the priorities for maintaining and legitimizing power. Categories of race, class and gender were used to define moral superiority.17 By publicly humiliating this elite group in front of indigenous people, ‘white prestige’ was made subordinate to the security cause, which sharply contrasts with previous periods in the Netherlands Indies. Therefore, this chapter aims to contribute to the insights into experiences, practices and justification of internment in the colonial society of the Netherlands Indies, especially in this period of regime change. The central question is: what were the reasons for the internment of the members of the NSB in the Netherlands Indies that justified a treatment incompatible with the institutionalized segregation in colonial society? And what were the consequences of these measures? In order to answer these questions, a wide variety of primary sources have been used, ranging from government reports to accounts and memoirs of judicial officers, investigators, internees and guards. First I will analyse who these internees were, how they were conceptualized and to what extent they really posed a threat. Subsequently, attention will be paid briefly to the conditions and treatment in the camps. An analysis of the government’s ideas and intentions behind the treatment will follow. Finally, the consequences of the internment of this group of internees will be discussed, during the war as well as in the years directly after the war.

The NSB in the Netherlands Indies The interned Europeans were Dutchmen who supported the Indies branch of the NSB, a Dutch organization established in 1931

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that sympathized with Hitler’s Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP).18 Its Indies branch was founded in 1933 by one of the confidants of NSB leader Anton Mussert (1894– 1946). As had been the case with political organizations in the colony, the Indies NSB had been under surveillance by the political intelligence service (Politieke Inlichtingendienst, PID). However, during the 1930s, the Indies NSB was not perceived as a major threat. First of all, the organization was anything but a unity. The Indies NSB had its own leaders, but many disagreements prevented the organization from speaking with one voice. Mussert’s influence in the organization was therefore strong.19 His visit to the Indies in 1935 made a profound impression and persuaded people to apply for membership or donate money to the movement. At the height of its existence in 1937, the Indies NSB counted 5,000 members, among a European population of 300,000 people.20 Secondly, only a few leaders would have been supporters of the Nazi ideology. The Indies branch had a different character, due to the circumstances in the Indies society. Its members did not turn against the government, nor did they resort to violence, as was the case in the metropole. Instead, its supporters were attracted by the optimistic and nationalist spirit, the opting for a strong authoritarian state with a powerful army and navy and the acknowledgement of the importance of the colony within the kingdom.21 Members were found in all strata of the European and Eurasian) society and in all parts of the archipelago. A considerable number of civil servants were themselves members of the NSB, and also in the army many men were sympathetic to the organization.22 Especially Eurasians believed that the NSB could improve their social position. As a result of the expanding educational system and the increasing political influence of Indonesians, Eurasians considered Indonesians more and more a threat to their position in society. At the same time, the influx of well-educated and well-mannered totoks, or ethnic Europeans, had downgraded the position of the Eurasians. The backgrounds of its members affected NSB propaganda and policies, especially regarding racial doctrine. Mussert pursued the unity of a white imperial state (Great Netherlands) in which the colony would play an important role, and a dividing line between

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indigenous people and Europeans would be drawn. Yet he was constrained to openly propagate his ideas regarding race and miscegenation in the Indies.23 Not only were nearly three-quarters of NSB members of mixed descent, but the NSB in the metropole depended heavily on contributions by Eurasian members. Therefore, Mussert distinguished between rassen van het bloed (race by blood) and rassen van de geest (race by spirit), which both could become members as long as they felt purely Dutch.24 Indonesians were thus allowed to apply, but hardly any Indonesians had become members.25 Also with regard to Jews, Mussert took a different stand in the Netherlands than in the colony. Anti-Semitic ideas lacked resonance in the Indies, where about 3,000 Jews resided – even though there had always been a slight aversion towards Jews.26 Nevertheless, Jews were more and more discredited as a result of negative NSB publications that appeared in the Indies. After 1937 the support for the Indies NSB drastically declined. Aside from a conflict over policy to exclude Eurasians and Chinese from NSB membership, the organization was clearly affected by developments in Europe. The NSB approval of German military actions, violent incidents and the growing importance of purity of race led some members to end their membership. Some prominent journalists, who had long been amenable to the propaganda and nationalistic program of the Indies NSB, turned their backs on the movement and vented their criticism on the organization in newspapers.27 By March 1940, its membership figure was reduced to 1,500 members and 700 beneficiaries.28 The movement had thus reached its zenith well before the war in Europe even had commenced.

Potential Threats Given the crumbling membership figures, there was no reason for immediate concern in early 1940, but political developments in Europe put Indies politicians under pressure. The invasion of Eastern Europe by German troops had made the Dutch government aware of a possible attack on the Netherlands. In April 1940, the minister of colonies ordered Governor-General AWL Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer to take precautions, including con-

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fiscation of all German ships, internment of all German men age seventeen years and older and internment of prominent leaders of the Indies NSB. When German troops invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, the Dutch government proclaimed the Regulation of State of Siege and War (Staat van Oorlog en Beleg, SOB), by which martial law came into force. The ‘fifth column’ fear led to the internment of 10,000 NSB members and Nazi supporters in the Netherlands.29 The large numbers of detainees and the limited preparations resulted in a chaotic situation. Yet, within four days, this would end when the Dutch government capitulated and the German Wehrmacht released all internees. A similar fear seized the Netherlands Indies. Although at that time the Indies did not experience a change of regime itself, being part of the kingdom resulted in the State of Siege being declared in the Netherlands Indies, which legalized extraordinary measures. Since the governor-general already had far-reaching powers based on the Indies laws and amendments, there were no major changes in his position, or the government policies. The State of Siege restricted the opportunities to hold meetings, implemented press censorship and allowed the governor-general to remove subjects from certain places and take them into custody. When the code word ‘Berlijn’ (Berlin) was sent to the governorgeneral, he took even more radical measures than prescribed. He ordered all ‘Germans’ to be taken into custody. ‘Germans’ here encompassed ethnic Germans, regardless whether they were born in Germany, in the Netherlands Indies or had become naturalized Dutch citizens years ago. At that time in the Netherlands Indies, there were about 2,400 men age sixteen years and older of German origin, making them the second largest group of Europeans after the Dutch.30 Other ‘enemy aliens’ supposedly in support of the National Socialist ideology, such as Austrians and Hungarians, were in some cases also counted as Germans. Citizenship suddenly became insignificant. One was in the first place enemy alien by birth and becoming a naturalized subject would not change the questionable loyalty towards the enemy. Alien residents became an ‘enemy within the gates’.31 In addition to enemy nationals, also those who allegedly sympathized with the Nazi ideology were interned. They were considered ‘potentially subversive’ (potentieel staatsgevaarlijke) or ‘traitor-

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ous’ (landverraderlijke) elements to domestic security and had to be isolated from society. The NSB members were divided into three categories, ranging from those who had ‘probability’ (waarschijnlijkheid) to ‘slightest possibility’ (kleinste mogelijkheid) to become a threat. The first category was considered capable of acting similar to the NSB in the Netherlands. The second category of people was ascribed a chance of being able to act like the NSB. The last category was deemed ‘disloyal’ (déloyaal) for reasons other than being supportive to the NSB, such as being pro-German or having anti-British sentiments, or they were considered somehow capable of disturbing public order.32 The detainees were thus conceptualised as being more than just enemy aliens. Moreover, they were not limited to prominent NSB leaders, as had been ordered by the minister, but included anyone who could possibly support Germany or the NSB. Measures were taken even though the NSB had officially not been forbidden until June 1940.33 The measures were justified by the assumption that investigations would soon demonstrate who should be rehabilitated.34 However, as later would turn out, public resentment against these ‘state enemies’ would make it almost impossible to reverse these measures afterwards.

Internment Camps From 10 May 1940 onwards, the police arrested Germans and NSB members in different areas in the archipelago and put them into improvised camps. In following days, they were shipped to designated camps on Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi (Celebes). About 1,300 prisoners were brought to Onrust, an island near the coast of Batavia that in past centuries had served as a service island for trading vessels, a place of exile and a quarantine ground for the sick and hajj pilgrims. Within a few weeks, prisoners on Java were divided among several camps that ranged from schools and former prisons to old forts, such as Ambarawa and Ngawi in Central and East Java, which became the most notorious camps. Initially, Germans and NSB members were interned together, but they were separated after complaints by the alleged NSB members who objected to being held in captivity with the en-

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emy.35 They considered their internment a mistake. A large part of the 2,800 Germans was transported to camps in northern Sumatra (Lawe Segalagala), while the majority of NSB sympathizers were moved to Ngawi and Ambarawa. Men and women were separated. About 147 German women accused of being spies or public sympathizers with the National Socialist ideology were, together with their children, interned separately in Banyu Biru and Ngawi. At a later stage, thirty-two ‘fanatical’ NSB women and their children were added.36 These women had persisted in their support of the NSB. By the beginning of 1941, approximately 2,400 Germans, including German Jews and Eurasians with ‘German blood’, and 472 of the 1,500 remaining NSB members, had been arrested.37 The conditions in the camps differed over time and place and depended to a large extent on the local circumstances, the character of the camp officers and guards and the nature of the camp regime. Several accounts by commanders and guards as well as detainees on the conditions and treatment were given during and after the war.38 Understandably, the authors experienced the internment differently and had different objectives with their reports. The reports therefore contain contradicting descriptions about circumstances in the camps and should be used with caution. Yet this does not mean that the general line of the treatment has to be ignored, all the more so because the government acknowledged that severe abuses took place in the camps. The camps Ambarawa and Ngawi had been developed out of former Royal Netherlands Indies Army (KNIL) fortifications Fort Willem I and Fort Van den Bosch, which were built after the Java War (1825–30). Although the buildings and facilities were old, the location and construction made them ideal internment camps.39 The same was true for the island of Onrust. The internees were brought together in small cells without beds. With very limited facilities and a minimal amount of food, the camps offered poor living conditions. Internees were not allowed to see their family and could only send and receive censored letters. Newspapers or other new sources were prohibited, which intensified the experience of isolation. A number of internees turned ill or insane, died of diseases, committed suicide or were shot for standing too close to the barbed wire fence.40

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In several camps a public fury towards the ‘traitors’ was vented on detainees: European and Eurasian officials and camp guards molested them. Initially the camps had been guarded by Indonesian KNIL soldiers, of whom on Sumatra it was said that they ‘without exception had behaved correctly and politely’ and therefore deserved ‘a modest tribute’ (stille hulde) paid to them. Yet they were often replaced by European home reserves (Landstorm), who elicited ‘a blush of shame’ (een blos van schaamte) on the Europeans.41 Aside from the physical maltreatment, the experience in the camps was also a mental challenge for Europeans. In the strongly divided society of the Indies, Europeans considered it a humiliation to be guarded or body-searched in front of Indonesians.42 On Onrust, the internees had to bathe in the open air in groups of seventy to one hundred persons in the presence of Indonesian guards, while on Sumatra, internees had to use the toilet out in the open.43 Also, being transported in third class carriages was considered degrading.44 These experiences likely made an even greater impression on the internees than the physical maltreatment.

Settling Accounts As has been outlined earlier, the internment practices do not stand out. More interesting is therefore to analyse where these frustrations were rooted. In the colonies, the ‘race card’ was played more often in the internment of Europeans in colonial territories. During the Great War, British and French civilians were interned by the Germans in German East Africa under ‘native conditions’ on purpose, for it was considered humiliating.45 The treatment was motivated by a strong feeling of anxiety and the growing suspicion of traitors, the so-called spy fever. Similar factors seem to explain the violent outbursts in the Indies. Frustration over the outbreak of war in Europe made the people in the Indies helpless spectators. By taking measures, they could contribute to the war. Anxiety about a pending Japanese attack on the Indies had been around for years and contributed to the ‘war psychosis’ (oorlogspsychose).46 It was a public secret that Japan had actively gathered intelligence about the Netherlands Indies and its resources.47

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Another element that might have affected the aggression aimed at NSB members was the existing tension among ‘Europeans’ who had to uphold the prestige of the ‘white colonizer’. Yet the boundaries between different categories of race, class and gender were often flexible, and social or legal groups were anything but homogenous. This was also the case with the group of Europeans.48 As has been mentioned above, the majority of the NSB members were Eurasians. Although they belonged to the legal category of Europeans, Eurasians often had a lower status in society than the totoks, who had been born in the Netherlands. A portion of the Eurasian population had different ideas about the political future of the Netherlands Indies. They considered the Netherlands Indies their motherland and saw a future in the archipelago ahead of them in which they would play a leading political role.49 The totoks, however, primarily supported the kingdom and its interests in the colony. Influenced by the growing nationalist movement, ideas about the future of the archipelago gained importance. The NSB members did not show unconditional loyalty to the motherland and were considered traitors for their support of the Nazis. This behaviour was considered such a serious threat that punishment came to be the preferred action over keeping up authority towards Indonesians. The distinction between Europeans and Eurasians was not made explicit in the reports about the internments – they were both referred to as Dutchmen – but it is likely that the existing antagonism between Europeans and Eurasians was exhibited in violent treatment in internment camps. Finally, the impact of public opinion cannot be underestimated. Although the Indies press had initially been favourable to the NSB, journalists increasingly criticized the pro-German and pro-Japanese stand and the anti-Indo ideas of the NSB. They also blamed the government for not detaining all Germans and alleged NSB members.50 These concerns were also expressed in the Volksraad (the People’s Council) but questions about the internment practices long remained unanswered by the government.51 In turn, the government accused the press of provoking the public to turn against the NSB and write insinuating stories.52 A continuous tension existed between government practices and public opinion on the internment.53

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Government Intervention The government took an ambiguous stand towards the internment. The governor-general had ordered the internment, but soon after the commencement of internment of NSB members and Germans in the Indies, the internment practices became seen as undesirable, and change seemed to be close at hand. After witnessing the maltreatment of the internees on Onrust at the end of May 1940, Governor-General AWL Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer ordered that a separate internment camp be prepared for the Germans in northern Sumatra. Also he established an internment board to advise on the internment and release of detainees. However, this board concluded, based on limited available files on NSB activities and allegations and without interrogating any of the detainees, that there was no reason to terminate the internment.54 One of the most pressing issues, the selection of Germans and NSB members for arrest, was neglected by the board, and it was clear that this had been carried out in an anything but accurate manner. On 9 May 1940, the local governors of the colonial administration (residents) had been ordered to hand in lists of the local leaders and alleged members of the NSB. They had to check all allegations and provide factual evidence of their subversive activity and had to indicate those for whom internment was most desirable. This was practically impossible to carry out. The lists that the governors had received were not up to date and often contained names of people who had withdrawn their membership. In addition to government officials, civilians also provided many names of people in their surroundings whom they suspected of sympathizing with Germany or the NSB. After the war, investigators acknowledged that it was possible that government officials had protected friends and family from being listed.55 In the meantime, pressure increased from Nazi authorities in the Netherlands, who had learned about the internment of Germans in the Netherlands Indies and ordered their release. When the governor-general refused to comply with these demands, 231 government officials in the Netherlands were arrested and transported to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany in July 1940.56 Among the internees were a substantial number of officials from the Netherlands Indies who were on leave in the Netherlands.

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The governor-general ignored orders from the government-inexile to comply with the demands, for in his eyes the Dutch government was, given its position, not able to make such decisions. After new negotiations at the end of October, the Dutch agreed to ship a few hundred German women and children from the Netherlands Indies to other locations in Asia in exchange for the release of Dutch female hostages.57 Yet the Netherlands Indies government persisted in not releasing the German men, and therefore a new group of prominent Dutch men in the Netherlands were taken hostage in October 1940.58 Among the internees were the future Attorney General of the Netherlands Indies, HW Felderhof, and future Minister of Overseas Territories, JHA Logemann.59 It remains unclear whether it was in response to the German repercussions, but in July 1940 the investigation board decided to conduct interrogations in the camps. Four judicial officers were appointed to carry out investigations, under the chairmanship of BJ Lambers, the district attorney (officier van justitie) of the district court (Landraad) in Surabaya. The interrogations were set up to distinguish between different categories of ‘subversives’, ranging from those who were a serious threat to those who no longer posed a threat. An exam consisting of questions about their loyalty towards the government and the ‘treason of the NSB’ would determine to which category internees belonged.60 Although the committee had only limited information about internees, it immediately concluded that no strong sympathy for the NSB or Nazi Germany was felt among the internees. Its members did further investigate allegations in individual cases, but due to a lack of staff and the numerous untraceable sources, little progress was made. In order to clear many detainees at once, Lambers was ordered to read out pamphlets in front of groups of fifty internees. Subsequently, each internee was asked ten questions. This way, more than 200 persons had to be assessed within three days. Not surprisingly, these ‘Blitz interrogations’, as they were called in the camps, resulted in confusion rather than reliable results. In December 1940, judicial official WFC van Hattum concluded in his investigation on the threat posed by the NSB that no evidence was found that the Indies NSB had given any form of assistance to the enemy.61 Nevertheless, the situation of the internees would not change. According to Attorney General AS Block, who

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was jointly responsible for the internment, the findings did not guarantee that the NSB members would not pose a threat. Despite repeated recommendations to make the conclusions public, Block refrained from doing so, leading the committee to resign.62 In February 1941, 80 onverzoenlijken or ‘implacables’, who were marked as disloyal or undisciplined and persistent in their ideas, were brought together in a separate barrack in Camp Ngawi, for they were considered the most dangerous NSB members.63 They had been selected by the camp commander, on the basis of their political convictions and their behaviour in the camp. About 385 NSB internees from Ambarawa had also moved into the camp.64 Army Commander Captain SH Spoor, who was responsible for the internment measures, had initially supported strict measures against ‘traitors’. He changed his mind after witnessing the treatment of the prisoners with his own eyes on his visit to Ngawi in March 1941.65 He promised to report the government about the ‘disgraceful character’ of the circumstances in Ngawi. Spoor wrote two articles in Indies newspapers in which he completely endorsed the legitimacy of the internment and the investigations into the internees in the interest of the state. He stated that, in contrast to criminal cases in which it is better to let one guilty person run than to convict ten innocent persons, in internment cases the approach was, rather, to keep ten innocent persons interned rather than letting one dangerous element go. Yet Spoor emphasized that suspects in less serious cases would become a danger to society if they would remain interned much longer. He therefore distinguished between the ‘mental traitors’ (mentale landverraders) and the ‘followers’ (meelopers) and proposed programs for rehabilitation of the latter, such as reintegration through work in labour colonies.66 Spoor’s articles were followed by indignant letters to the newspapers in which people opposed his views.67 Again, hardly any concrete measures were taken to change the state of affairs. The reason for refraining from revising the internment measures became clear in April 1941, when questions about the internment were, again, raised in the Volksraad. Attorney General Block responded there was no evidence for the involvement of the NSB in conspiracies but that NSB members were considered ‘potentially subversive’ subjects and were most likely to follow enemy initiatives whenever they would occur.68 This was the first time the gov-

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ernment made the outcomes of the investigation public, although the information had been known for more than a year.69 Not much later, name lists of alleged NSB members interned in Camp Ngawi were released by the Government Publicity Service (Regeerings Publiciteits Dienst) and published in the newspaper, making their release and return to society even harder.70 Lambers could not accept that the majority of the people in Ngawi were irrevocably considered a threat without a thorough investigation or a proper explanation. From August 1941 onwards, he reassessed the categories, also considering the behaviour during internment, and he concluded that thirty out of fifty ‘implacable’ internees (de onverzoenlijken) who had been interrogated again could by no means be considered disloyal. Even more internees would be eligible for release. In his final report, Lambers also proposed to Block to appoint once more an investigation committee with prominent members and to shift the burden of proof, meaning that the internees should be released unless there was evidence of misbehaviour before the war or during the period of internment. Moreover, Lambers proposed serious rehabilitation programs for those who had been dishonourably discharged.71 The attorney general disagreed with the conclusions of the report and refused revision of cases. He emphasized that internment was not a punishment but an administrative security measure to secure peace and order. Block still deemed the internment policies a success: ‘One thing is for sure, nobody can complain that the internment policies had been too soft’.72 In December 1941, about thirty internees among the serious cases were indeed set free based on Lambers’ investigations. But aside from these cases, no changes were made. Block refrained from distributing Lambers’ report, as requested, since it was no use now that war with Japan had commenced.73 Consequently, Lambers refused further responsibility for the policy vis-à-vis NSB members and requested to be released from his duty.

The Japanese Threat After the Declaration of War on Japan on 8 December 1941, the Netherlands Indies government ordered enemy aliens and sub-

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versives be shipped to a location outside the archipelago to make sure the internees would not be released by the enemy. British soil was considered the most suitable destination for the German internees. Two groups consisting of nearly 2,000 Germans were shipped to British India and Siam in late December.74 A third group of Germans left Sumatra for Singapore by SS Van Imhoff on 18 January 1942, but the ship was bombed by Japanese aircrafts. It was about to sink when the staff and guards left the ship in the few safety boats, leaving the German prisoners behind. Only 66 of the 473 Germans survived this disaster by reaching the nearby island of Nias, where they were imprisoned again.75 NSB members also had to be evacuated, for it was feared that the internees would avenge themselves. Given the outcomes of the investigations and the limited capacity to transport internees, only 146 of the most persistent NSB members, the ‘implacables’, were shipped to the Dutch colony of Suriname.76 The Governor of Suriname, JC Kielstra, who already had interned Germans and NSB members living in Suriname, would accommodate state enemies from the Netherlands Indies separately.77 The Indies prisoners were first brought to the local convict prison on Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam and six months later interned at ‘Jodensavanne’.78 This area was a former settlement of Jewish refugees who had fled the Spanish Inquisition in Europe. Now, new barracks formed a camp for the Indies NSB members, which would become known as ‘Kamp Jodensavanne’. The internees had to conduct heavy labour in ‘the green hell’, as it was called. The prisoners were humiliated and maltreated by Dutch guards, although no remarks have been made about racial motivations. Eight prisoners died during their stay, two of whom were killed by guards after an attempted escape.79 In the Indies, paradoxically, the government’s expectation of the release of Germans and members of the NSB from Dutch camps came true after the Japanese occupied the Netherlands Indies in March 1942. Initially, the Axis alliance led the Japanese to consider the German subjects and their supporters their allies and, therefore, to release them. As part of the ‘Nipponization’ of society, the Japanese tried to remove all European influences. The internment of the European population in civilian and prisoner of war (POW) camps, partly in former colonial internment sites, was a

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far-reaching measure that concerned more than 100,000 people.80 After their release from the camps, NSB members in Surabaya opened an office, but they were not usually granted any privileges by the Japanese. Within a short time, the Japanese authorities realized that NSB members were not necessarily supporters of the Axis and could also remain loyal to the Dutch crown. Many NSB members therefore were interned again in mountainous areas on Java or elsewhere, in regular civilian camps, together with other Europeans.81 Indeed, the loyalty of the NSB members differed. About forty NSB members, among whom were former Ngawi internees, cooperated with the Japanese in agricultural projects in East Java.82 In one of the Japanese camps in Bandung, former ‘Ngawi internees’ established an association, Ngawi Contact Bureau (NCB).83 The internment by their own government had caused frustrations and loss of faith in their fellow Dutchmen and had created an esprit de corps.84 The members formulated their own written oath in which they declared complete loyalty towards the Axis and pledged to fully cooperate with the Japanese. As mentioned above, not all NCB members had been convinced supporters of the Axis, but their internment under the Dutch could now serve as a means to escape internment under the Japanese.

Restoration and Rehabilitation After the war, the former internees could not leave their internment experiences behind. Several committees were established to investigate the wartime conduct of people in the Indies. The former NSB internees became frontrunners in the policies and practices related to the purge of society, because their behaviour had been evaluated several times more than any other people. Because of the destruction of nearly all intelligence files during the Japanese attack on the Indies, the Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service (NEFIS) had to rely on the few available copies of reports and the memories of the investigators. Although the investigators of the NEFIS and the General Criminal Investigation Service (Algemene Recherche Dienst, ARD) were well aware that

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many accusations had been based on envy, hate and frustration, they now partly relied on the same questionable information yet again.85 The NEFIS concluded that the majority of NSB members had not committed any crime during the occupation. ‘Political delinquency’ was in itself not punishable, and the alleged NSB members had already suffered in isolation.86 Only a few NSB sympathizers had committed crimes or had openly collaborated with the Japanese. Their behaviour could be further investigated, and if they were found liable, they would be prosecuted. The most pressing question regarding NSB members was whether they could return to their former positions. As mentioned above, internment for reasons of state security automatically led to dishonourable discharge from government positions, meaning loss of pension rights and government support after the war. In his decisions over the treatment of NSB members, Attorney General HW Felderhof consulted with the director of the Bureau for National Security (Bureau Nationale Veiligheid, BNV) in the Netherlands, L Einthoven, to learn what measures were taken against NSB members in the Netherlands. Felderhof concluded that the situation in the Indies had been completely different from the metropole. The most notorious NSB members had not been present in the Indies, or had been interned by the Japanese during the war and could not have collaborated with the enemy, whereas in the Netherlands, NSB members had been in a position to cooperate with the enemy, and they had done so on a large scale. Therefore, the number of NSB members prosecuted for collaboration was far larger in the Netherlands than in the Netherlands Indies.87 In the Netherlands, between 120,000 and 150,000 people, including 50,000 NSB supporters, were arrested and interned in one of the 139 improvised camps.88 For pragmatic reasons, the government decided to limit the number of internees and criminal cases, and only the most severe cases would be brought to justice. Eventually, about 65,000 of the political prisoners were convicted.89 Although the forms of collaboration might have differed, the fury against the NSB members in the liberated Netherlands had some similarities to the violence used in the Indies, although in the Netherlands the violence was expressed only after the war.

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Especially in the first months after the liberation, people in internment camps were exposed to abuse, although the conditions differed from camp to camp. Only from 1946 onwards were measures taken by the government to prevent this excessive violence.90 Contrary to the Indies case, racial considerations played no part. It was acknowledged that the situation in the Indies differed from the Netherlands and therefore required a different approach. But one of the issues in which the Dutch government was involved was the treatment of the onverzoenlijken who had been interned in Suriname. Not until July 1946, nearly a year after the end of the Pacific War, were the 138 survivors of Camp Jodensavanne repatriated to the Netherlands. For a long time there was no consensus what should happen with them, and priority was given to the repatriation of war victims. A NEFIS staff member had stated in his report of the repatriation of the Surinamese internees that ‘releasing the antisocial scum of the pre-war Indies society’ posed a threat, because there was too little surveillance.91 The government did not take this comment seriously, though this was not the only form of protest against the settlement of NSB members in the Netherlands.92 The government was aware that the internees from Suriname could not be prosecuted for criminal acts and that they should return to society as soon as possible. The stigma of being a former Ngawi or Camp Jodensavanne internee was hard to get rid of, especially since names had been published in newspapers. The government provided them with a statement of unconditional release, and if they passed a political test, a positive judgement of the security committee of the Ministry of Overseas Territories. Yet this did not end the quarrelling. Many of the former internees had been dishonourably discharged and had difficulties finding a job. Requests for rehabilitation and recovery of pensions were dealt with individually by special commissions and proved time consuming.93 Discussions on definitions, practical implications of rehabilitation and re-education would continue for years, for, after all, ‘there must have been a reason why these people were suspected of disloyal behaviour’, and they could therefore not be allocated the same rights as ‘innocent people’.

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Impact on Policies Aside from the consequences of internment measures for the personal lives of NSB members, the negative experiences of the internment measures were of importance for future internment and prosecution practices. The selection and internment practices were reviewed several times to develop rehabilitation policies. Generally it was concluded that the measures had been just and legal but, according to Attorney General Felderhof, had required ‘inevitable injustice’ (noodgedwongen onrecht).94 The local authorities had been given too heavy responsibilities, and this had resulted in the internment of innocent people as well, and serious misjudgements had been made in bringing the measures into practice. The government also realized that the revision of internment could have been far easier if the outcomes of the NSB conspiracy had been made public and if provoking media would have been actively refuted. Mistakes had been made by letting the public believe the rumours that were going around and that reinforced the violent attitudes towards the NSB members. Even though there was no evidence at all of subversive actions, the government and the departments had done everything ‘to make people believe there was nevertheless something going on’. For pragmatic reasons, the government had decided to cover up this ‘burning matter’.95 It was easier to maintain the existing justification than to attempt to change public opinion and admit the mistakes that had been made. Also, a few officials had feared that admitting that mistakes had been made would provide ground for claims for compensation by internees.96 The difficulties of investigations of large numbers of suspects, with regard to collecting and checking evidence, reinforced the initiatives of a general amnesty for minor cases of collaboration. General Spoor, who had proposed such a measure for the NSB internees in 1941, was one of the proponents of this decree. Eventually an Amnesty Decree was declared on 7 May 1947, which stated that only severe cases of collaboration would be excluded.97 It must be noted, though, that Indies government did intern Indonesian Republicans on a large scale during the subsequent war of independence.

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The experiences of the internment measures also affected the views of legal experts. During the formulation of prosecution and detainment policies for collaborators and delinquents, Lambers repeatedly referred to the internment of 1940–41. This was no guarantee that his references were taken into account. The involvement of Lambers and Van Hatttum with the fate of the former NSB internees stems from their successive positions. Van Hattum was appointed chairman of the Rehabilitation Committee for former internees in 1949. Lambers obviously also felt compassion with the people he had been investigating. After fulfilling several other positions after the war, he started his own law office and devoted himself to stand up for the interests of former NSB internees in their applications for rehabilitation relief.98

Conclusion The internment practices in war and peace time laid bare the relation between the metropole and colony: they revealed the dynamics of mutual dependency and at the same time autonomous rule in colonial territory. The regime change in the Netherlands not only fed the anxiety for the war but also provided extra legal tools for the internment of enemy sympathizers in the Netherlands Indies. A combination of fear, ‘war psychosis’ and incited public opinion legitimized the large-scale internment of enemy nationals and sympathisers, being Germans and alleged supporters of the NSB, even if there were hardly any concrete indications of support. Underlying frustrations and tensions between different groups in society were expressed in the maltreatment and humiliation in the internment camps. The subsequent regime changes in the Indies caused shifting perceptions, and therewith the treatment, of the alleged enemy sympathizers. This even led to further isolation of groups and even transportation of a selection of internees to overseas territories. Contrary to what might be expected, loss of ‘white prestige’ due to the humiliating treatment of the NSB members was not the government’s first concern, and it is also difficult to measure. The internment of NSB members ended – at least in the Indies – when the Japanese army took control over the archipelago. Neverthe-

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less, the Japanese internment of a large part of the European community made a profound impression on the Indonesian people. The fact that the colonizers were not only defeated by an Asian army within a few days but also humiliated and weakened during internment made them realize that the Dutch colonizer was not invincible.99 When it became clear that state security was not at stake, the government’s fear of possible subversive actions was replaced by a fear of repercussions and revenge for the internment practices. Although several prominent government officials acknowledged that serious mistakes had been made, no firm measures were taken to undo the injustice. A lack of determination by the government on the one hand, and an overconfident attorney general on the other, prevented adequate measures being taken to counter the maltreatment or the aggressive press. Pragmatic considerations trumped admitting mistakes. Although mass internment was not new in the Indies, interning Europeans had more serious consequences than the government could have predicted. The humiliating treatment, the lack of proper investigation and the failure of revising judgements had repercussions on the mental condition of the European internees. The Indies government lost credibility in the protection of its own people, which to some extent created a feeling of shared victimhood and aversion to the government.100 Yet, whereas the interned Europeans in German East Africa two years after the war had turned their humiliating experiences into a narrative of ‘a gentlemen’s war’ in the African bush in order to maintain power relations in colonial territory, the NSB internees did not feel like saving the government’s face.101 Rather, they turned against the government, complaining about their treatment. A few wrote down their experiences on paper, and one internee even prosecuted the Dutch state for his unlawful internment.102 The internment of the NSB members was also a lesson for the Indies government. The many mistakes and difficulties that involved the investigations in 1940 and 1941 contributed to the awareness that investigation into the different conducts of people was almost impracticable. This resulted in a different stand towards NSB members after the war and contributed to revised measures against collaborators in general. The NSB may not have

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played a significant role in Indies society and may not have posed as much of a threat as people were made to believe, but the (alleged) enemy sympathizers and their internment experience did play a significant role in shaping the post-war prosecution and rehabilitation policies. Esther Zwinkels is lecturer and coordinator of the Cosmopolis Programme at the Institute for History, Leiden University. She is finishing a dissertation on war crimes and collaboration trials in relation to the Japanese occupation of the Netherlands Indies. Her MA thesis on anti-Japanese resistance on Sumatra has been published as a book, entitled Het Overakker-complot. Indisch verzet tegen de Japanse bezetter op Sumatra 1942–1945 (2011).

Notes  1.

This publication was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) as part of the research project ‘Recognition and Retribution. Transitional Justice in the Netherlands Indies after the Second World War’. Many thanks to Petra Groen, Thomas Lindblad, Sanne Ravensbergen, the editors of this volume and anonymous reviewers for commenting on earlier versions of this chapter. Spelling: geographical and personal names are used and written according to the current spelling. Old names are written between brackets.  2. State of Siege and War, laid down in Royal Decree 13 September 1939, Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië 1939, no. 582. Article 20 of the SOB measure implied that without evidence or accusation, one could be arrested and taken in preventive custody. L de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (vol. 11a; Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 534.  3. See for instance C MacClain (ed.), The Mass Internment of Japanese Americans and the Quest for Legal Redress (New York: Routledge, 1994); D Cesarani and T Kushner (eds), The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1993).  4. M Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees in Europe, 1914–20’, Immigrants & Minorities 26(1–2) (2008), 49–81; S Wolf, Guarded Neutrality: Diplomacy and Internment in the Netherlands during the First World War (Leiden: Bril, 2013).  5. I Smith and A Stucki, ‘The Colonial Development of Concentration Camps (1868–1902)’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 39(3) (2011),

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 9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

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417–37; Z Denness, ‘Women and Warfare at the Start of the Twentieth Century: The Racialization of the ‘Enemy’ during the South African War (1899– 1902)’, Patterns of Prejudice 46(3) (2012), 255–76. Stibbe, ‘Civilian Internment and Civilian Internees in Europe’, 55. CJ Lammers, Vreemde Overheersing : Bezetten En Bezetting in Sociologisch Perspectief (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2005), 244–59. I Brown, ‘South East Asia: Reform and the Colonial Prison’, in F Dikötter and I Brown (eds), Cultures of Confinement: A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 221–68. Aside from publications mentioned in this article, important works are K Ward, Networks of Empire. Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); L Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); L Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). The Colonial and Postcolonial Policing Group (COPP) pays attention to colonial internment policies, but as one of many topics discussed: http://www .open.ac.uk/Arts/copp/index.shtml (9 May 2014). Brown states that local people in Southeast Asia already used banishment as form of punishment in pre-colonial times: Brown, ‘South East Asia’, 226. Ward, Networks of Empire, 285–86. Diponegoro was sent to Manado (1830–33) and Makassar (1833–55), P Carey, The Power of Prophecy. Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java, 1785–1855 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2007), 74. See for an overview of Dutch military actions, P Groen, ‘Colonial Warfare and Military Ethics in the Netherlands East Indies, 1816–1941’, Journal of Genocide Research 14(3–4) (2012), 277–96. The leader of the Padri, Imam Bonjol, was exiled to West-Java, Ambon and Manado for nearly thirty years: J Hadler, ‘A Historiography of Violence and the Secular State in Indonesia: Tuanku Imam Bondjol and the Uses of History’, The Journal of Asian Studies 67(3) (2008), 971– 1010. Mohammad Daud was exiled to Java in 1907 until his death thirty years later: P van ’t Veer, De Atjeh-oorlog (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1969), 281. H Schulte Nordholt, ‘A Genealogy of Violence’, in F Colombijn and J Lindblad (eds), Roots of Violence in Indonesia: Contemporary Violence in Historical Perspective (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002), 33–62. M Bloembergen nuances the effectiveness of violence for the late colonial state in M Bloembergen, De geschiedenis van de politie in Nederlands-Indië: Uit zorg en angst (Amsterdam: Boom, 2009), 23–24. This extraordinary authority was constituted in Articles 45, 46 and 47 of Regeringsreglement 1854 and adopted in Articles 35, 36 and 37 of Indische Staatsregeling 1925. The GG had to act in accordance with the Raad van Indië (Council of the Indies). C Bruinink-Darlang, Hervormingen in de koloniale periode: verbeteringen in het Nederlands-Indisch strafstelsel in de periode 1905–1940 (Arnhem/Gouda: Quint, 1993), 161. Bloembergen, De geschiedenis van de politie in Nederlands-Indië, 346. A Stoler and F Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda’, in F Cooper and A Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial

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19.

20.

21.

22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

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Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 7. It is debated which factors played the most significant role in society. See, for a comprehensive overview of the debate, S Protschky, ‘Race, Class, and Gender: Debates over the Character of Social Hierarchies in the Netherlands Indies, circa 1600–1942’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 167(4) (2011), 543–56. See for an extensive study on the early years of the NSB, R te Slaa and E Klijn, De NSB: Ontstaan en opkomst van de Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging, 1931–1935 (Amsterdam: Boom, 2009). T Pollmann, ‘Either One Is Fascist or One Is Not’: The Indies National-Socialist Movement, the Imperial Dream and Mussert’s Colonial Milch Cow’, Indonesia (92) (2011), 43–58 [Original published, T Pollmann, ‘Men is fascist of men is het niet’. De Indische NSB als imperiale droom en koloniale melkkoe’, in M Bloembergen and R Raben (eds), Het koloniale beschavingsoffensief: Wegen naar het nieuwe Indië, 1890–1950 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2009), 169–86. J Zwaan, ‘De NSB in Indië’, in J Zwaan (ed.), De zwarte kameraden: Een geïllustreerde geschiedenis van de NSB (Weesp: Van Holkema en Warendorf, 1984), 151. The elite was defined as ‘European’, equal to the legal category. It was a hybrid category that encompassed not only all who were born in Europe or the Netherlands but also those who were granted this legal status. Roughly 200,000 Europeans were ‘Eurasians’ of mixed descent. The total population in the Netherlands Indies was approximately 70 million in 1940. NIOD. Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam (henceforth NIOD), Indische Collectie (henceforth IC), 1063, Rapport WFC van Hattum, ‘De Nationaal Socialistische Beweging in Nederlands-Indië’, 15 December 1940. Early 1940, approximately 175 government officials were members of the NSB: S van der Wal, ‘De Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging in NederlandsIndië’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap (82) (1968), 35–56. Pollmann, ‘Either One Is Fascist or One Is Not’, 45–46. NIOD, IC, 1063, Rapport ‘De NSB’, 15 December 1940; L de Jong, Koninkrijk der Nederlanden (vol. 1; The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), 333; Zwaan, De zwarte kameraden, 160. Less than ten Indonesians were members of the NSB: NIOD, IC, 1063, Rapport ‘De NSB’, 15 December 1940. R Kowner, ‘The Japanese Internment of Jews in Wartime Indonesia and Its Causes’, Indonesia and the Malay World 38(112) (2010), 349–71. Many journalists and editors of popular newspapers had been member of the NSB: G Termorshuizen, Realisten en reactionairen. Een geschiedenis van de Indisch-Nederlandse pers 1905–1942 (Amsterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar; Leiden: KITLV Uitgeverij, 2011), 260; Pollmann, ‘Either One Is Fascist or One Is Not’, 55. Zwaan, De zwarte kameraden, 168. De Jong, Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, vol. 3, 111–15, 124–26, 183–87, 196–201, 503–8; H Grevers, Van landverraders tot goede vaderlanders: de opsluiting van collaborateurs in Nederland en België, 1944–1950 (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, 2013), 35.

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30. Zwaan, De zwarte kameraden, 168. 31. Similar policies had been applied by the British and Australians during World War I and II. In Australia, not only enemy nationals were interned, but also allied and neutral aliens: K Saunders, ‘“The Stranger in Our Gates”: Internment Policies in the United Kingdom and Australia during the Two World Wars, 1914–39’, Immigrants & Minorities 22(1) (2003), 22–43. 32. Interview Attorney General AS Block, published in Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, ‘De Indische regeering en haar interneeringspolitiek’, 17 October 1941, 15–16. Although not all internees were in fact member of the NSB, they were referred to as such. This line will also be followed in this article. 33. On 9 May 1940, the governor-general had only declared a ban on NSB membership for government officials and members of the military. After that date, NSB members could not remain in government positions, and so many suspected civil servants were dismissed with dishonour and arrested: National Archives, The Hague (hereafter NA), Archief van de Procureur-Generaal bij het Hooggerechtshof van Nederlands-Indië, 1945–1949 (hereafter PG), 2.10.17, 33, Circulaire 1ste gouvt. secretaris (Zeilinga) aan Departementshoofden en Governeurs van Java en de Buitengewesten, 17 May 1940. 34. As was stated in Advies van de Raad van Departementshoofden, 13 June 1940: Universiteit Bibliotheken Leiden, Leiden (henceforth UBL), Collection BJ Lambers inv. 59, 52, Concept circulaire van gouvt. secretaris (Kist), November 1948. 35. Not all internees were pro-German: UBL, Lambers, 5, Rapport BJ Lambers, ‘De interneering van Nederlanders in Ned.-Indië’, 3 December 1941. On Sumatra a few NSB members were also interned with Germans, but they had ‘a very good relationship’: NIOD, IC, 1050, Rapport van J Nieuwenhuis over de behandeling van Duitse geinterneerden en NSB-ers in Nederlands-Indië, 1941. 36. C van Heekeren, Batavia seint: Berlijn. De geschiedenis van de Indische Duitsers in Nederlandse gevangenschap (2nd rev. ed.; The Hague: Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 1983), 54. 37. L de Jong, The Collapse of a Colonial Society. The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002), 27. About 400 Jews had fled from persecution in Europe and ended up in the Indies in a precarious position: De Jong, Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, vol. 11b, 852. 38 JE Stulemeyer, Kamptoestanden in Nederlands Oost-Indië en Suriname 1940– 1946: een doorgaans onbekende historie, die toch ons allen aangaat: getuigenissen en commentaren (Amsterdam: De Pauw, 1978); A van Kampen, Een kwestie van macht: het bewogen leven van de arts dr. L.J.A. Schoonheyt in het voormalige Nederlandsch-Indië, Nieuw-Guinea, Suriname en Nederland (Bussum: Van Holkema en Warendorf, 1975). 39. J van Dulm, WJ Krijgsveld, HJ Legemaate, HAM Liesker, G Weijers, Geïllustreerde atlas van de Japanse kampen in Nederlands-Indië, 1942–1945 (Purmerend: Asia Maior, 2000), 145–46, 162. 40. On Onrust, by July 1946 at least twelve people had died as a consequence of internment and ‘numerous’ severely ill internees were still held in camps: NA, PG, 33, Anoniem rapport over internering doorgestuurd door Hoofd PID, 22 July 1946.

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41.

NIOD, IC, 1050, Rapport J Nieuwenhuis, 1941. On Onrust mainly Manadonese soldiers served as guards until they were replaced by European Landstorm: NIOD, IC, 5538, Verslag van HJ de Vries, in 1940 commandant van het eiland Onrust, over de internering van NSB’ers en Duitsers aldaar in 1940–1941, z.d. [1968]. In Ngawi, guards were mainly Javanese soldiers. Government and police officials had been guilty of revengeful and tyrannical behaviour: NIOD, IC, 7501, Verslag EJ van Baarsel, commandant van het NSB-interneringskamp Ngawi (midden-Java), z.d. Zwaan, De zwarte kameraden, 170. UBL, Lambers, 4, ‘Zevende verbeterd memorandum betreffende de interneringen van Nederlanders in Indonesië’, [Anoniem], 1941. NA, PG, 33, Rapport internering, 22 July 1946. D Steinbach, ‘Challenging European Colonial Supremacy: The Internment of “Enemy Aliens” in German East Africa during the First World War’, in L Rowe, A Miller and J Kitchen (eds), Other Combatants, Other Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2011), 153–75. Explanation by Felderhof, Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta (hereafter ANRI), Algemene Secretarie van de Nederlands-Indische Regering en de daarbij Gedeponeerde Archieven, 1944–1950 (hereafter AS), 317, Notulen vergadering Algemene Personeelsraad, 20 May 1949. Ten Years of Japanese Burrowing in the Netherlands East Indies: Official Report of the Netherlands East Indies Government on Japanese Subversive Activities in the Archipelago during the Last Decade (New York: The Netherlands Information Bureau, 1942). See for an important contribution on inclusion and exclusion of people in the group of Europeans: B Luttikhuis, ‘Beyond Race: Constructions of “Europeanness” in Late-Colonial Legal Practice in the Dutch East Indies’, European Review of History 20(4) (2013), 539–58. See Pollmann, ‘Either One Is Fascist or One Is Not’, 49–51. Zwaan, De zwarte kameraden, 166. See, for example, Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, ‘Indische NSB een Augiasstal’, 18 April 1939, 3. ANRI, AS, 317, Afdeling C (Arriëns), Kort overzicht van de ontwikkelingen van de gedragslijn tav niet-eervol uit de overheidsdienst ontslagen (ex-)NSBers (en vijandelijke onderdanen), December 1948. See Pollmann for debates in the Volksraad in greater detail: Pollmann, ‘Either One Is Fascist or One Is Not’. Judicial officers criticized the press for writing about the NSB in the previous period: De Sumatra Post, ‘Strafwet en journalist’, 24 February 1941, 7. According to Jaap de Moor, public opinion restrained the government from taking action: J de Moor, Generaal Spoor: triomf en tragiek van een legercommandant (Amsterdam: Boom, 2011), 88. De Jong, Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, vol. 11a, 527. UBL, Lambers, 5, Rapport interneering, 3 December 1941. Both Allied and German government had taken numerous enemy aliens as hostages during World War I, expecting them to be valuable in negotiations. See for instance: M Stibbe, ‘A Question of Retaliation? The Internment of British Civilians in Germany in November 1914’, Immigrants & Minorities 23(1) (2005), 1–29.

42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

47.

48.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53.

54. 55. 56.

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57.

58.

59.

60. 61. 62. 63.

64.

65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72.

73. 74.

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Fifteen women were interned in Ravensbrück but released in October: NIOD, IC, 1076, Stukken betreffende het interneren van 15 Nederlandse vrouwen in Ravensbrück als represaille voor het interneren van Duitse vrouwen in Nederlands-Indië, 1961–62; L de Jong, Koninkrijk der Nederlanden (vol. 4; The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972), 346–47; Van Heekeren, Batavia seint, 54–57. JCH Blom, De gijzelaars van Sint Michielsgestel en Haaren: Het dubbele gezicht van hun geschiedenis (Amsterdam: Balans, 1992); Van Heekeren, Batavia seint, 56; De Jong, Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, vol. 11a, 535–39. SL van der Wal, Officiële bescheiden betreffende de Nederlands-Indonesische betrekkingen, 1945–1950 (20 vols.; The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971), vol. 3, 484–87, Minister Overseas Territories (Logemann) to Lt-GG (Van Mook), 2 March 1946. UBL, Lambers, 4, ‘Zevende memorandum’, 1941. NIOD, IC, 1063, Rapport ‘De NSB’, 15 December 1940. The investigation was partly based on archival material of the NSB. De Jong, Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, vol. 11a, 543. UBL, Lambers, 5, Rapport interneering. After the war, the investigators acknowledged that these people sometimes ended up in this group due to circumstances. UBL, Lambers, 4, ‘Zevende memorandum’, 1941. In 1949 Lambers once more emphasized that a few people had ended up in the camp of ‘implacables’ by accident or because they had irritated people in the other camps. Most of these people had received a written statement from former Attorney General Block that the selection of the Surinamese internees had been based on invalid investigations: ANRI, AS, 317, Notulen vergadering Algemene Personeelsraad, 20 May 1949. De Moor, Generaal Spoor, 86–90. NA, PG, 33, Stukken betreffende de behandeling van NSB-ers sedert mei 1940, hun internering, eventuele herplaatsing en repatriëring, 1945–1946. Spoor’s articles were reprinted or summarized in several newspapers, e.g. De Sumatra Post, ‘De internering der N.S.B.-ers’, 8 April 1941 (I) 3, 9 April 1941 (II), 9, and 10 April 1941 (III), 7. Reactions appeared in several newspapers, for instance: De Sumatra Post, ‘De quaestie der reclasseering: op het goede spoor?’, 18 April 1941, 7. UBL, Lambers, 4, ‘Zevende memorandum’, 1941; De Moor, Generaal Spoor, 89–90; De Sumatra Post, ‘De N.S.B. in Indië’, 5 April 1941, 3. Major-General GJ Berenschot had made this public in July 1940, but it probably lacked significance because it was not issued by the government: De Moor, Generaal Spoor, 88. Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, ‘De geïnterneerde Nederlanders’, 8 July 1941, 3. UBL, Lambers, 5, Rapport interneering, 3 December 1941. Original quote:‘Een ding staat als een paal boven water en dat is, dat niemand kan klagen, dat de interneeringspolitiek te slap is geweest’, in Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, ‘Regeeringsstandpunt tegenover de N.S.B.-ers’, 17 October 1941, 4. Private archive BJ Lambers, Brief Lambers aan PJA Idenburg, 26 December 1946. Van Heekeren, Batavia seint, 93. In India, the Germans would be detained in several internment camps.

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75.

De Jong, Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, vol. 11a, 756. See for eyewitness reports on the disaster: Van Heekeren, Batavia seint, 100–53. Thirty-seven of these ‘onverzoenlijken’ had not been member of the Indies NSB: T van den Brand, De strafkolonie. Een Nederlands concentratiekamp in Suriname 1942–1946 (Amsterdam: Balans, 2006), 183. In Suriname and the Dutch islands Bonaire and Curaçao, German sailors and NSB sympathizers were interned. Algemeen Dagblad (Caribbean edition), AG Broek, ‘Gevaar voor rust en veiligheid van het gebiedsdeel Curaçao’, 4 May 1996. Van den Brand, Strafkolonie, 64–67. Ibid., 101. Investigations later confirmed that the internees’ deaths were not the result of attempted flight but were an execution. Initially Eurasians were not interned, but at a later stage of the war, a part of the Eurasian population was interned, for they had shown no loyalty to the Japanese; E Touwen-Bouwsma, ‘Japanese Minority Policy; The Eurasians on Java and the Dilemma of Ethnic Loyalty’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde [Japan, Indonesia and the War. Myths and Realities] 152(4) (1996), 553–72. Aside from the civilian internees, also 42,000 European POWs were incarcerated. Zwaan, De zwarte kameraden, 171. De Jong, Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, vol. 11a, 353. NA, Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service (NEFIS), 1945–1950, 2.10.37.02, BJ 1654, Extract NEFIS hoofdrapport NSB, 1 June 1946. According to the report, ninety-seven persons would belong to the NCB. It is a common phenomenon that people in exile or imprisonment unite and form new networks of resistance. U Kothari, ‘Contesting Colonial Rule: Politics of Exile in the Indian Ocean’, Geoforum 43 (2012), 697–706. UBL, Lambers, 52, Concept rondschrijven gouvt. secretaris (Kist), November 1948. Investigators concluded that in many cases, strong evidence was lacking and that the role of internees turned out to be different than was reported. Ibid.; NA, PG, 202, Brief PG (Felderhof) aan G.P. Kiès, 22 May 1946. NA, PG, 33, Brief PG (Jonkers) aan Directeur BNV (Einthoven) 21 January 1946; Idem, Brief Directeur BNV (Einthoven) to PG (Jonkers), 31 January 1946. Exact numbers of NSB members who have been convicted for collaboration in the Netherlands Indies are not known. An estimated guess is that about twenty convicted collaborators were associated with the NSB. This will be further analysed in my forthcoming thesis. Grevers, Van landverraders tot goede vaderlanders, 55, 138; P Romijn, Snel, streng en rechtvaardig: Politiek beleid inzake de bestraffing en reclassering van ‘foute’ Nederlanders, 1945–1955 (Houten: De Haan, 1989), 164. Romijn, Snel, streng en rechtvaardig, 171. In total, 14,562 people were convicted by the Bijzondere Gerechtshoven and 49,920 by Tribunalen, courts that judged based on disciplinary principles, according to the Bijzondere Rechtspleging (Special Criminal Law proceedings). AD Belinfante, In plaats van bijltjesdag: De geschiedenis van de bijzondere rechtspleging na de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1978), 610–12. See Grevers, Van landverraders tot goede vaderlanders, for an extensive description of the treatment of NSB members in the Netherlands.

76.

77.

78. 79. 80.

81. 82. 83.

84.

85.

86. 87.

88.

89.

90.

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 91.  92.

 93.

 94.  95.  96.  97.  98.  99. 100. 101. 102.

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NA, PG, 33, NEFIS officier (Rikkert) aan Directeur NEFIS (Spoor), 9 August 1946. The Dutch and Indies government experimented with the establishment of a camp for former NSB members on New Guinea. See Grevers, Van landverraders tot goede vaderlanders, 244–55. UBL, Lambers, 53, Brief PG (Felderhof) aan Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon in Indonesia (hereafter HVK) (Beel), 30 December 1948; UBL, Lambers, 54, Brief PG (Felderhof) aan HVK (Lovink), 12 March 1949. ANRI, AS, 317, Notulen vergadering Algemene Personeelsraad, 20 May 1949. Ibid., Kort overzicht, December 1948. Ibid., Memorandum rehabilitatie, Arriëns, 13 July 1949. Regeringsbesluit, 1947 no 14: Amnestie besluit. UBL, Lambers, 60, Correspondentie Lambers aan Commissie van Bijstand Rehabilitatie Indische Oorlogsslachtoffers, 1949, 1954. B Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance 1944–1946 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), 31. Van den Brand, Strafkolonie, 173. Steinbach, ‘Challenging European Colonial Supremacy’, 175. C Miga sent a bulky report on his treatment to the prime minister, but to no avail. He sued the Dutch state for unlawful detention without proper investigation, for he had never been a member of the NSB. He lost the case: De Tijd, ‘Proces tegen de staat’, 22 March 1949, 2; Het Nieuws: Algemeen Dagblad, Miga verloor proces’, 15 April 1953.

Chapter 5

The Detention of Social Outsiders between Social Reform, Annihilation and Custody: The Municipal Workhouse and Prison of Berlin-Rummelsburg from Weimar Republic to GDR Thomas Irmer

A

mong the historic sites whose structural remains were rediscovered after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 were the vestiges of a former workhouse in the south eastern district of Berlin-Lichtenberg. The largely preserved complex consisting of more than twenty brick stone buildings had been used as the central prison of East Berlin during the communist era. In October 1879, when the newly built workhouse complex in Rummelsburg was put into operation by the municipal administration of Berlin, it was regarded as the ‘largest and most modern’ institution of its kind in Prussia and Germany.1 Nevertheless only little is known about the history of the workhouse of Rummelsburg, named after the part of the district where it was located. This view of a single institution over a long period of time allows special insight into the role or influence of regime change

Notes for this chapter begin on page 123.

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on incarceration. When considering the history of one example – the case of Rummelsburg workhouse – one faces the question as to whether there were differences or similarities between such antagonistic regimes as the first German democracy of Weimar, the Nazi regime and the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR), in dealing with the deviant poor, as well as with fringe populations such as beggars, the homeless or prostitutes. To discuss these questions, specific characteristics of each epoch are outlined. Of particular interest are the different definitions of deviant behaviour and how the role of work was conceived. After a brief look at the historical research to date, I focus on the history of Rummelsburg and the role it played in policies towards social outsiders and the deviant poor during three different regimes, ranging from Weimar Republic to communist East Germany.

Introduction It is remarkable that the history of the workhouse and prison of Rummelsburg is largely unexplored. One reason for this may be the lack of a comprehensive social history of the Berlin poor and its underrepresentation in German scientific discourse. In contrast, however, the subject of poverty in Berlin is relevant even today: in 2014, almost 20 per cent of the city’s population was depending on social benefits.2 German scholars have been studying the history of German workhouses only since the early 1990s. Wolfgang Ayaß’s pioneering study on the history of the workhouse of Breitenau, near Kassel, discussing the role of workhouses as an element of a social policy towards marginalized groups and deviant behaviour, was followed by a number of other regional studies.3 The history of workhouse of Benninghausen, east of Dort­ mund, can now be considered as the most researched and discussed case.4 Recent articles about the history of the Rummelsburg workhouse are mainly related to the Nazi era.5 The first contribution on Rummelsburg in the Nazi era was delivered by historian Götz Aly in the 1980s, through his non-academic, groundbreaking re-

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search about the Nazi euthanasia program.6 According to Aly, the Nazi euthanasia plans, developed in 1942, were not implemented. Based on new findings, it can now be shown that Nazi euthanasia crimes related to Rummelsburg actually began one year earlier and were directed against all Jewish inmates.7 Regarding the communist era, there are only a few contributions about the history of the then Rummelsburg prison.8 A basic study is still required. Jennifer Evans has pointed to the importance of divergent and deviant behaviour in post-war Berlin.9 It seems to be a specific part of the DNA of this metropolis. Accessible sources on the history of Rummelsburg workhouse are very fragmented. Original documents of the former workhouse administration were probably lost during World War II. Only a few files of former workhouse inmates can be located in other records such as those of the public social services, the city’s welfare administration and of prisons. However, we do not have any eyewitness reports or other oral history sources. It must be noted that no efforts have been made to conduct interviews with former inmates or employees of Rummelsburg workhouse. One of the last former inmates of Rummelsburg died in 2012, without having been interviewed.10 Against this background, it is very difficult to draw any conclusions about everyday life within Rummelsburg workhouse or about the personal perspective of the inmates. This chapter is mainly based on an evaluation of archival records of the municipal welfare authorities and of secondary literature. Revealing details were discovered in administrative reports that had hardly been analyzed to date. Most files related to Rummelsburg prison in the GDR period are scattered in several Berlin-based archives and still need to be evaluated. Prisoners’ personal files, which had been saved until after reunification, were destroyed later. Only a reduced selection of more than 300 files has been secured by the Landesarchiv of Berlin. Because of the protection of privacy, they are not accessible to the public. It remains unclear whether this selection can be taken as a representative collection. Former inmates and employees of the GDR prison have not yet been systematically surveyed. Sources for this study include holdings of the former East German secret service, the Stasi.

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Improvement through Forced Labour? – The Role of Work in the Rummelsburg Workhouse The workhouse of Rummelsburg was put into operation on 1 October 1879 as a newly built complex at the ‘Rummelsburger Bucht’ in the district of Lichtenberg in the southeast of Berlin. The construction consisted of twenty-three buildings of one to four storeys. The inmates were beggars, homeless and prostitutes predominantly aged between forty and sixty years. Most of them were committed to the workhouse because of a court decision. Courts could order the commitment to a workhouse following a prison sentence. The commitment could last between six months and two years. Everyday life of the inmates was characterized by simple physical work. In this way, an improvement (‘Besserung’) was aimed at, which consisted in the ‘accustomization’ (‘Gewöhnung’) to a regular life. Therefore the workhouse administration organized deployments of labour at a large scale, primarily for state orders. Work on sewage and other state farms became the main labour for male inmates of Rummelsburg workhouse during the German empire. But instead of personal improvement, the work of the inmates served the preservation of the workhouse itself. In 1882 a third of all revenue came from work of male inmates on the sewage farm.11 The inmates working on the sewage farms received no payment at all.12 In 1905 the workhouse administration described Rummelsburg as a ‘Zwangsarbeits-und Besserungsanstalt’, both a forced labour and reform institution.13 Forced labour seemed to be the operative word.

A Decade of Reform? – Rummelsburg in the Weimar Republic: 1919–33 Work on the sewage farms was stopped around 1930, probably due to the lack of labour resources. In the Weimar Republic, there was a strong decrease in numbers of inmates in all Prussian workhouses.14 Rummelsburg, too, saw a decline, as a consequence of war, a post-war amnesty and drastic austerity politics. The number of inmates in Rummelsburg workhouse decreased to about

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500. In the mid 1920s, at times, police authorities were referred only a handful of beggars and prostitutes from Berlin courts.15 Also the character of work changed, similar to the workhouse of Breitenau, towards a greater emphasis on educational elements. Payment of the inmates was introduced.16 The district of Lichtenberg, where Rummelsburg was situated, even became the scene of a visionary reform experiment in youth work. In 1896, male juvenile inmates who had been accommodated in one of the pavilions of the Rummelsburg complex were transferred to a newly founded ‘Zwangserziehungsanstalt Berlin-Lichtenberg für Knaben’, also located in Lichtenberg. After World War I, this coercive reformatory became the national centre of a vanguard attempt of educational reform led by the then director Karl Wilker (1885– 1980), a pedagogue influenced by the German ‘Wandervogel’ youth movement.17 Between 1917 and 1920, Wilker and his team tried to fundamentally change the strongly disciplinary character of the reformatory, which was renamed ‘Lindenhof’ (Lime tree garden) by the juveniles. Wilker established new rules for education, advocated self-government and living in residential groups. He also ordered the abolition of corporal punishment.18 By 1920 Wilker had failed, left Lindenhof and continued his work in Thuringia and Saxony before immigrating to Switzerland when the Nazis came to power, and later to South Africa.19 Still, Wilker had prominent supporters, among them the painter Käthe Kollwitz and the industrialist and later foreign minister Walther Rathenau. The outstanding example of Lindenhof also illustrates a fundamental shift of opinion on how to deal with the deviant poor and social outsiders in the Weimar Republic. After World War I, workhouses were regarded as relics from the German Empire.20 In the reform debates of the Weimar Republic, some advocates of a social and criminal law reform demanded to delete detention in a workhouse from the criminal justice catalogue and to decriminalize prostitution and vagrancy, while the majority favoured a long-term accommodation for different reasons. Representatives of welfare organizations demanded that workhouses be converted into institutions for long-term custodial accommodation. The planned ‘Bewahrungsgesetz’ (preservation law) never came into existence, however.21

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But the debate about a preservation law and the new welfare scheme was also highly ambivalent. For example, the preservation law assumed that some social outsiders could no longer be integrated and suggested de facto that they should be isolated in a cost-effective manner. Another example of a more repressive tendency in the Weimar Republic is the case of the ‘Reichsfürsorgepflichtverordnung’ (Reich Welfare Duty Regulation) of 1924, which allowed the welfare officers to commit self-determined welfare cases to workhouses. The regulation referred to recipients of social assistance who refused to accept work or to comply with maintenance obligations. These regulations would later become easy entry points for the drastic worsening of the conditions under the rule of the National Socialists.

A Municipal Centre for Persecution of ‘Antisocial Elements’ – Rummelsburg in the Nazi Era: 1933–45 In the Nazi era, the function of workhouses was defined not only as disciplinary but as constantly repressive. With the establishment of a so-called preservation house (1934) and plans to include the workhouse in the Nazi euthanasia program (1941–42), Rummelsburg became the scene of a ‘double radicalization’, in municipal as well as nationwide policies, towards social outsiders. During the war, forced labour became central to the daily lives of nearly all inmates. Karl Spiewok (1892–1951), a Nazi activist and new director of the municipal welfare administration of Berlin until 1938, wanted to turn the workhouse of Rummelsburg into a ‘reservoir for all types of “Asoziale”’ (anti-socials), as he wrote.22 Ostensibly, Spiewok took part in the debate on a preservation law, which he hoped would soon be implemented by the Nazi party. In fact, he wanted to anticipate repressive individual measures in Rummelsburg and in Berlin. In the following years, the number of ‘preservation’ cases in Rummelsburg increased dramatically. In 1934, several laws against ‘antisocial elements’ were put in place at the national level, which also influenced conditions in workhouses like Rummelsburg. The Nazis popularized the term

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‘asozial’ in common language use. And they turned this aggressive, abusive word into a category of persecution of deviant behaviour. Among these laws was a fundamental change of the statutory provisions that could lead to detention. Under the ‘habitual criminals law’ (Gewohnheitsverbrechergesetz), inmates who were repeatedly admitted to a workhouse could be detained ‘as long as necessary’ and therefore, as historian Wolfgang Ayaß has pointed out, even for life.23 In the summer of 1934, the municipal welfare administration took over the workhouse, which in 1938 was subjected to the administration of the district of Lichtenberg. In 1935, Spiewok introduced a so-called ‘Bewahrungshaus’ (preservation house). The preservation house in Rummelsburg was the first of its kind in the Reich24 and actually preceded the introduction of a ‘preservation law’. There, Asoziale above eighteen years of age, who were considered unsuitable for employment, could be interned without trial. In addition, the preservation house was used for handicapped inmates.25 Formally, internment in the preservation house happened on a ‘voluntarily basis’ or through a declaration of incapacity by a legal guardian. In fact, the municipal social welfare offices tried to put pressure on their clients, for example by withdrawing financial support.26 In Rummelsburg, the number of inmates officially rose from 932 to 1,191 in the months from mid 1934 to mid 1935. Most of the inmates were men and women older than sixty years and juveniles younger than twenty-one years.27 Among them were child beggars, women accused of sexual misconduct or ‘people in self-inflicted need of public welfare’ (selbstverschuldete Hilfsbedürftige der öffentlichen Fürsorge). These examples also illustrate how categories of so-called antisocial behaviour were arbitrarily expanded. In 1938, the city administration defined Asoziale as persons who, ‘due to a non-temporary state of physical, mental or moral shortcoming’, do not fit in community life or are a threat to their families or themselves. Evidence of ‘deviant behaviour’ could be poor health, incapacitation, inefficiency, drunkenness or the state of one’s apartment. Men were pursued in connection with misconduct at work, and women were predominantly accused of misconduct in sexual and family life.28 By late 1939, the population of Rummelsburg, including its satellite locations, had increased to more than 2,000. This led to

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massive overcrowding, as Rummelsburg had been built for a capacity of 1,000. By 1941, the workhouse officially accommodated 1,850 persons, all based at Rummelsburg. In 1937, by the order of the municipal welfare administration, all Jewish inmates were identified and isolated. Homosexuals and so-called psychisch Abwegige (psychologically deviant) inmates were separated as well.29 On 13 January 1941, all thirty Jewish workhouse inmates were taken away in a disguised ‘special action’ and murdered shortly afterward with poison gas in the Bernburg hospital, then one of the Nazi Euthanasia killing centres.30 In January 1942, all inmates of the workhouse Rummelsburg caught the eye of ‘euthanasia’ experts. A commission of high-ranking experts from various fields came to Rummelsburg for a ‘pattern evaluation’ on the basis of inmate records alone. They chose 314 inmates for immediate killing; in another 765 cases, at least one of the evaluators had advocated killing as well. That did not happen, because the Nazi policy had other priorities: commission members focused instead on the mass extermination of the Jews of Eastern Europe.31 In the Rummelsburg workhouse, the range of work was extended more than ever during the Nazi era, especially outside the facility. Until the beginning of the war, the inmates mainly had to work inside the workhouse.32 Men worked as shoemakers, tailors, carpenters or locksmiths, in bookbinding, upholstery or in a recycling station. Women worked in the kitchen, the bakery and the laundry. The institution’s bakery supplied approximately thirty-one local enterprises and institutions such as hospitals or an orphanage, and the laundry served approximately twenty. When the war began in 1939, the character of the work assignments in Rummelsburg changed fundamentally. Starting in 1940, about 270 men and 50 women were assigned to work details outside the workhouse for public and private enterprises and mainly the municipal administration. Male inmates worked in more than twenty so-called city work details: among them were eleven work details in community facilities performing such tasks as the cleaning of public parks, cemeteries and streets – jobs especially reserved for inmates over seventy years of age.33 There was also a work detail with eighty women who had to peel potatoes for the canteens of different enterprises and public administrations.34

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In six other work details, inmates were assigned to municipal utilities such as the famous Klingenberg power station close to the workhouse and a few locally based private companies such as ‘Knorr-Bremse’ and ‘Gast Signalbau’, both supplier companies for train and railway construction.35 The ‘Arbeitshäusler’, as one company called them, were part of a workforce otherwise consisting mainly of foreign forced labourers. The companies paid them very low wages. In a report, the then workhouse director August Rake stated that the performance of the inmates was very satisfactory to the companies they served. According to director Rake, the workhouse inmates were regarded as being more useful than free labourers. Although this can be interpreted as an exaggeration based on self-interest, the key point of his arguments could be found in his remark on the ‘productive work’ that workhouse inmates would deliver to a greater extent. His words suggest that ‘productive work’ as performed even by the elderly would not only reduce the costs but also provide further arguments for the existence of the workhouse in general.36 His remarks also express a certain crisis of legitimacy of the workhouse in the Nazi era. The workhouse of Rummelsburg increasingly became a detention centre for the elderly, while the Nazi regime pursued other aims and used other methods to persecute many of so-called Asoziale. In 1938, the deportation of work-able social outsiders to a concentration camp took priority over the commitment in a workhouse.37 Following two nationwide campaigns called ‘Aktion Arbeitscheue Reich’ in spring and summer 1938, ten thousand ‘Asoziale’ were arrested and deported directly to the concentration camps.38 Until the outbreak of the war, ‘antisocial elements’ were among the largest groups of prisoners in concentration camps in the Reich.39 In August 1939, the administration of Rummelsburg stated that ‘the remaining asocial . . . increasingly [include] people whose viability is greatly reduced by age and physical defects … or persons whose operational capability is reduced due to mental deficiencies’.40 The culmination of this development was an undated cable probably issued by SS leader Heinrich Himmler, ordering the ‘transfer all male inmates capable of working … from work-

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houses to the concentration camps’.41 These decisions seemed to fundamentally question workhouses as places of detention. But in the case of Rummelsburg, the consequences were possibly very modest. The majority of the male inmates of the Berlin workhouse were at least fifty years old and therefore were of limited use for exploitation as labourers for the war machine. Shortly before the war ended, parts of the buildings of Rummelsburg workhouse were slightly damaged by Allied air strikes. The inmates were re-housed in two city prisons at Barnimer Strasse (women) and Lehrter Strasse (men). The reasons for this remain unclear. In symbolic terms, it illustrates that a workhouse inmate was always seen as someone who needs to be securely locked away.

The Central Prison of East Berlin – Rummelsburg in the GDR: 1951–90 After the liberation, Rummelsburg served again as a workhouse until 1951. The workhouse population included approximately 230 elderly inmates who had been there already during the Nazi period. Among them were probably also prostitutes, because of an order by the Soviet military government. It had demanded the imprisonment of prostitutes, ostensibly to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.42 In one security detention prison, there was also a girls’ boarding school, where a revolt took place in 1950.43 The authorities long debated as to whether the Department of Justice, the Ministry of Interior or the Ministry of Welfare should have control over the workhouses. A shocking fact is that the new Berlin welfare administration used the same definition of asozial that had been used in the Nazi era.44 As Jennifer Evans has shown, this was not just the case in Rummelsburg, but seemed to be typical for social politics towards social outsiders in post-war Berlin more broadly.45 In 1951 the communist ‘Volkspolizei’ took over Rummelsburg and converted it into the East Berlin central prison for men. A new building was erected on the compound for working commandos for state-run industrial companies.46 Rummelsburg became a hub to the prison system of the GDR.47 In the early 1980s, two-thirds of

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the inmates of Rummelsburg were citizens of the GDR; one-third were citizens from West Berlin, West Germany and from ‘nonsocialist’ foreign countries. All westerners were isolated in their own block and had no contacts with East German prisoners. As of the mid 1980s, the People’s Police and State Security planned to concentrate all foreign prisoners in the GDR, including West Germans and West Berliners, in Rummelsburg.48 Among the prisoners were many East Germans sentenced for crimes against property. Political prisoners from the GDR and the west were charged under criminal law for such crimes as ‘subversive agitation’, ‘anti-state human trafficking’ (assisting in escapes) or ‘flight from the republic’. When in 1968 the GDR introduced the offense of ‘asocial behaviour’ into its criminal code (§ 249, ‘Gefährdung der öffentlichen Ordnung durch asoziales Verhalten’), it simply took over the term asocial, which had been made popular by the Nazis. The criminalisation of deviant behaviour rose in particular during the Honecker era.49 In the 1980s, asocial behaviour was the second most common reason for incarceration in Rummelsburg; 13.2 per cent of all inmates had been arrested for this reason. In Grünau, a branch for women, more than 50 per cent of the female inmates had been sentenced because of ‘kriminelle Asozialität’.50 Work was central to the everyday life of the inmates. As in all other East German prisons, inmates in Rummelsburg had to work for industrial production. Analysis of this kind of prison labour is key to understanding the East German prison system.51 The prisoners of Rummelsburg and in Grünau had to labour in workshops within the prison and for state-run industrial companies, especially in the electrical industry. They worked for refrigerator production, shipbuilding and power plant construction, and had to produce parts of lamps for export to West Germany and to ‘Arab states’.52 The female inmates of Grünau worked for a big laundry that served East Berlin tourist hotels, kindergartens or private households.53 A month before the fall of the Berlin Wall, during the night of 7–8 October 1989, Rummelsburg became the central detention centre of the Volkspolizei in Berlin. Several hundred protesters, arrested at Alexanderplatz and in the district of Prenzlauer Berg, were transported to Rummelsburg. Representing a cross section

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of the East German population, they had demonstrated against the official fortieth anniversary state celebrations. Eyewitness reports contain hints about numerous verbal humiliations, beatings and sexual assaults by police officers.54 After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the former head of state Erich Honecker spent a night in the prison infirmary while in custody in January 1990. In September 1990, prisoners occupied the roof of a prison cell building and a chimney, demanding amnesty. In October 1990, the prison of Rummelsburg was finally closed. Since then, there have been numerous proposals for the use of the whole complex, which has served also as a film set. The plan to accommodate sections of the Berlin judiciary in Rummelsburg failed, due to the protest of justice department employees. In early 2007, the city of Berlin sold the bulk of the Rummelsburg buildings to a Berlin real estate group, which remodelled the buildings for private apartments and rental housing. In the same year, civil initiatives, historians, political activists and new inhabitants started to examine the history of the complex. In 2008, the historical site of Rummelsburg was the (only) location for a commemorative ceremony for the seventieth anniversary of the ‘Aktion Arbeitsscheue Reich’ in Berlin. The ceremony was attended by the then chief of the Berlin police, who condemned the arrest and deportation of so-called Asoziale by the police as ‘legalized state terror’.55 The local ‘Museum Lichtenberg’ opened a temporary exhibition in Rummelsburg that especially focussed on the GDR era.56 In 2012, the mayor of Lichtenberg district started a round-table initiative. Finally, a new, permanent outdoor exhibition has been opened in 2015 covering all epochs of the former workhouse and prison complex based on eighteen biographies of former workhouse inmates and prisoners.57 It was complemented by a history app for educational purposes including a plain language version and a guided tour for children.58 Slowly, the history of Rummelsburg seems to become a part of public memory in Berlin.

Conclusion The history of Rummelsburg traces stages of the custody of marginalized groups. Rummelsburg was not a model for restructur-

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ing social welfare or for a disciplinary organization of labour but, rather, an attempt at ‘limited modernization’ in dealing with social outsiders and deviant behaviour. The modern workhouse as represented by Rummelsburg was a result of the differentiation of custody through expansion and separation. But it never overcame the ambivalent character between detention and reintegration that dominated the history of workhouses and Rummelsburg and its predecessors from the start. The main contradiction or source of ambivalence was the idea that deviant behaviour could be changed through hard work or even forced labour. In fact, the work of inmates mainly served to reduce costs of the institution itself. This was especially true for first decades of the Rummelsburg workhouse in the German empire, while the workforce was exploited much stronger for other purposes during the Nazi and communist era. At the time of the Weimar Republic, the concept of the workhouse fell into a crisis of legitimacy. This is particularly evident in critical discussions, proposed new legislation or the search for new tasks or integrating pedagogic elements. This meant in effect that no longer work or non-work was seen as the solely solution or reason for individual problems. In Rummelsburg, the number of inmates decreased for the first time. The Nazis represent an absolute radicalization. They extended the term antisocial and expanded system of forced labour as extensive as never before. Workhouse inmates became servants of public services. Forced labour was the institution’s objective and the basis of its legitimacy, not the claim to change habits. In addition, the Nazis began to murder workhouse inmates. During World War II, the Berlin workhouse Rummelsburg caught the attention of Nazi euthanasia planners twice, in 1941 and 1942. Both the 1940 murder of thirty Jewish workhouse inmates and the abandonment of the ‘T4’ plans in early 1942 because of the mass murder of Europe’s Jews carried out in Eastern Europe make it clear that the anti-Semitic motivation took precedence, also when it came to rooting out antisocials. In contrast, the GDR did not intend to kill antisocials. Rather, they wished to punish deviant behaviour as criminal for reasons of disciplining workforce and society. However, it remains noteworthy that the GDR adopted the term asocial in its criminal law

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codes. Work in Rummelsburg prison meant deployment for unskilled industrial work. The prisoners were used (and needed) as cheap manpower for the industry of the GDR. The most sobering lesson that can be learnt from the history of Rummelsburg under regime change is that people whose deviant behaviour is considered as antisocial have no advocate. Instead, the discourse of exclusion can incorporate the option of systematic extermination, as it was planned and implemented in Nazi Germany. Thomas Irmer is a historian based in Berlin. He received a diploma in political science from the Free University of Berlin. He works as a researcher and curator for memorials and museums such as Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum, Nazi Forced Labour Documentation Centre Schöneweide or Rummelsburg Memorial. Recent articles are dealing with Nazi forced labour, the history of the electrical industry and with the history of the Rummelsburg workhouse.

Notes  1.

W Ayaß, Die ‘“korrektionelle Nachhaft”. Zur Geschichte der strafrechtlichen Arbeitshausunterbringung in Deutschland’, Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte 15(1993), 184–201, 195.  2. ‘Hartz IV, Sozialhilfe, Grundsicherung im Alter. Fast jeder fünfte Berliner braucht Mindestsicherung’, Der Tagesspiegel (2014), http://www.tagesspiegel .de/berlin/hartz-iv-sozialhilfe-grundsicherung-im-alter-fast-jeder-fuenfteberliner-braucht-mindestsicherung/11057080.html.  3. W Ayaß, Das Arbeitshaus Breitenau. Bettler, Landstreicher, Prostituierte, Zuhälter und Fürsorgeempfänger in der Korrektions- und Landarmenanstalt Breitenau, 1874–1949 (Kassel: Gesamthochschule Kassel, 1992).  4. M Gunga, Medizin und Theologie in der öffentlichen Sozialfürsorge des 19. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel des Landarmen- und Arbeitshauses Benninghausen, 1820–1945 (Tecklenburg: Burgverlag, 1984); E Elling-Ruhwinkel, Sichern und Strafen. Das Arbeitshaus Bennighausen, 1871–1945 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schönigh, 2005); E-M Lerche, Alltag und Lebenswelt von heimatlosen Armen. Eine Mikrostudie über die Insassinnen und Insassen des westfälischen Landarmenhauses Benninghausen 1844–1891 (Münster: Waxmann, 2009).

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 5.

T Irmer, K Nürnberg and B Reischl, ‘Das Städtische Arbeits- und Bewahrungshaus Rummelsburg – Zur Geschichte eines vergessenen Ortes der Verfolgung von “Asozialen in der NS-Zeit”’, Gedenkstättenrundbrief 144(2008), 22–31; C Steer, Rummelsburg mit der Victoriastadt (Berlin: Bebra Verlag, 2010), 132–34; E Weber, ‘“Berlin, die Stadt ohne Bettler” – Die Verfolgung “Asozialer”’, in M Wildt and C Kreutzmüller (eds), Berlin 1933–1945. Stadt und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Siedler, 2013), 325–40. G Aly, Die Belasteten. ‘Euthanasie’ 1939–1945. Eine Gesellschaftsgeschichte (Frankfurt: MS Fischer, 2013), 220–24. T Irmer, ‘“… die sogenannten asozialen Elemente ebenfalls zur Vernichtung reif machen” – Das Berliner Arbeitshaus Rummelsburg zwischen Anfang und Ende der NS-Euthanasie’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung in Norddeutschland 17(forthcoming 2015). H Hoffmeister, ‘Arbeitshaus der Stadt Berlin zu Rummelsburg. Strafvollzugseinrichtung I Berlin. Wohnen an der Rummelsburger Bucht: 1877 bis heute’, Zeitschrift des Forschungsverbundes SED-Staat 31(2012), 3–16; C Steer, Rummelsburg mit der Victoriastadt (Berlin: Bebra Verlag, 2010), 135–45. JV Evans, Life among the Ruins. Cityscape and Sexuality in Cold War Berlin (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). D Ensikat, ‘Kurt Wanski, geb. 1922. Mag sein, dass er anderen die Show stahl, aber er meinte es ja nicht so’, Der Tagesspiegel 21501(2012), 14. Landesarchiv (hereafter: LAB) A Rep. 000-02-01, Nr. 1385, Verwaltungsbericht 1882/83. LAB A Rep. 000-02-01, Nr. 1385, Verwaltungsbericht 1882/83. LAB A 000-02-01, Nr. 1385, Verwaltungsbericht 1905. Elling-Ruhwinkel, Sichern und Strafen, 133. Ayaß, Das Arbeitshaus Breitenau, 250. Ayaß, Das Arbeitshaus Breitenau, 255–56; V Büchner, ‘Die Insassen des Arbeitshauses, des Hospitals und des Wanderarbeitsheims Rummelsburg 1925’, Mitteilungen des Statistischen Amts der Stadt Berlin 5(9) (1931), 2. DJK Peukert, Grenzen der Selbstdisziplinierung. Aufstieg und Krise der deutschen Jugendfürsorge von 1878 bis 1932 (Cologne: Bund-Verlag, 1986), 200–6. K Wilker, Der Lindenhof. Fürsorgeerziehung als Lebensschulung (Frankfurt: dipa, 1989), 233–37. Wilker, Der Lindenhof, 219–20. Elling-Ruhwinkel, Sichern und Strafen, 132. M Willing, Das Bewahrungsgesetz 1918–1967 (Tübingen: Mohr, 2003); Ayaß, Das Arbeitshaus Breitenau, 245–51. LAB 003–02, Nr. 95, Bl. 35–37, Aktenvermerk Karl Spiewok v. 13.10.1937. Ayaß, Das Arbeitshaus Breitenau, 269; Irmer, Reischl and Nürnberg, ‘Das Städtische Arbeits’, 22–31. Willing, Das Bewahrungsgesetz, 169–70; Weber, ‘Berlin, die Stadt ohne Bettler’, 325–40. Irmer, Reischl and Nürnberg, ‘Das Städtische Arbeits’, 22–31. Weber, ‘Berlin, die Stadt ohne Bettler’, 325–40. Weber, ‘Berlin, die Stadt ohne Bettler’, 325–40. Irmer, Reischl and Nürnberg, ‘Das Städtische Arbeits’, 22–31. Irmer, Reischl and Nürnberg, ‘Das Städtische Arbeits’, 22–31.

 6.  7.

 8.

 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

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32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48.

49.

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Irmer, ‘… die sogenannten asozialen Elemente ebenfalls zur Vernichtung reif machen’. Gotz Aly, “Medizin gegen Unbrauchbare,” in Gotz Aly et al., Aussonderung und Tod, die klinische Hinrichtung der Unbrauchbaren (Berlin, 1985), 9–74; Irmer, Reischl and Nürnberg, ‘Das Städtische Arbeits’, 22–31; S Berger, ‘Die Vernichtungslager der Aktion Reinhardt. Ein Zusammenspiel zwischen “T4” – Erfahrungen, Lagerstrukturen und Besatzungspolitik’, in B Greiner and A Kramer (eds), Die Welt der Lager. Zur ‘Erfolgsgeschichte’ einer Institution (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2013), 203–23. Weber, ‘Berlin, die Stadt ohne Bettler – Die Verfolgung “Asozialer”’, 325–40. LAB, A. Rep. 003–02, Nr. 95, Bl. 131–132, Bericht über die Entwicklung des Arbeits- und Bewahrungshaus seit Kriegsbeginn. Aly, ‘Medizin gegen Unbrauchbare’, 47. Irmer, Reischl and Nürnberg, ‘Das Städtische Arbeits’, 22–31. LAB, A. Rep. 003–02, Nr. 95, Bl. 131–132, Bericht. LAB A Rep. 047-08, Nr. 113, Bl. 39-47, 45, Schreiben Städtisches Arbeitsund Bewahrungshaus –Arb. 2.– an Allgemeine Verwaltung Lichtenberg v. 17.08.1939, Betr.: Bildung eines Verwaltungsarchivs. Weber, ‘Berlin, die Stadt ohne Bettler’, 325–40. Later during the war, the largest group consisted of forced labourers. LAB, A, Rep. 047-08, Nr. 113, Bl. 45, Schreiben Städtisches Arbeits- und Bewahrungshaus – Arb. 2 – an Allgemeine Verwaltung Lichtenberg v. 17.8.1939. Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS19/1542, Fernschreiben des Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler o.D. Bundesbeauftragte für das Stasi-Unterlagengesetz (hereafter: BStU), Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), Bezirksverwaltung Berlin, Abt. VII 1957, Über die Vergangenheit der STVA Berlin I, Bericht v. 7.11.1957; Irmer, Reischl and Nürnberg, ‘Das Städtische Arbeits’, 22–31. LAB C Rep. 303, Nr. 275, Bl. 157–161, Bericht über das Mädchenheim in Rummelsburg v. 3.6.1950. LAB C Rep. 118, Nr. 395, Protokoll einer Besprechung im Hauptsozialamt zur Bewahrung von Asozialen v. 27.11.1950. Evans, Life among the Ruins, 213–15. BStU, MfS BV Berlin 1963. Struktureller Aufbau der STVA Berlin I. Bericht v. 25.2.1963. M Bath, Elfhundertsiebenundneunzig Tage als Fluchthelfer in DDR-Haft (Berlin: Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, 1987); A Rosenbaum, Die DDR feiert Geburtstag und ich werde Kartoffelschäler. Als Arzt und ‘Agent’ im ‘Kommando X’ des MfS (Berlin: Lichtig-Verlag, 2006). BStU MfS HA VII, Nr. 606, Bl. 2–3; Verwaltung Strafvollzug Abt. Vollzugsgestaltung v. 23.01.1987, Konzeption zur Vorbereitung inhaltlicher und organisatorischer Absicherung einer konzentrierten Unterbringung aller Strafgefangenen aus nichtsozialistischen Staaten und Berlin (West) in der StVE Berlin. S Korzilius, ‘Asoziale’ und ‘Parasiten’ im Recht der SBZ/DDR. Randgruppen im Sozialismus zwischen Repression und Anpassung (Cologne: Böhlau, 2005), 706– 10; Derselbe, ‘Arbeitsethik, Sozialdisziplinierung und Strafrecht in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone und in der DDR – Kontinuität oder Diskontinuität?’,

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51. 52.

53. 54.

55.

56. 57.

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in A Allex and D Kalkan (eds), ausgesteuert – ausgegrenzt … angeblich asozial (New Ulm: AG Spak Bücher, 2009), 209–22, 213–14. BStU MfS BV Berlin Abt. VII, Nr. 16, Bericht der Hauptabteilung VII v. 29.4.1981, Einschätzung der gegenwärtigen politisch-operativen Situation der Strafvollzugseinrichtung (StVE) Berlin und der Strafvollzugsabteilung (StVE-Abt.) Berlin-Grünau. T Wunschik, Knastware für den Klassenfeind. Häftlingsarbeit in der DDR, der OstWest-Handel und die Staatssicherheit, 1950–1989 (Göttingen: V&R, 2014). BStU MfS BV Berlin Abt. VII, Nr. 16, Bericht der Hauptabteilung VII v. 29.4.1981. There is no evidence on the question of which Arab states were meant. BStU, MfS BV Abt. VII, MfS BV Nr. 16, Einschätzung. BStU, MfS Hauptabteilung (HA) II. 1989 Information zu den Vorgängen in der Untersuchungshaftanstalt Rummelsburg. IM-Bericht über Schikanierung und Misshandlungen von Frauen durch Wachpersonal; MfS HA II, Nr. 20922. Berlin; MfS HA VII. 1989. Bericht über Misshandlungen um den 7./8.10. an Frauen. MFS-HA VII Nr. 388, Berlin; MfS HA IX /AKG/AB AK v. 25.10.1989. Bericht über die Situation am 7./8.10.1989 im Zentralen Zuführungspunkt (ZZFP) des PdVP Berlin in Rummelsburg. BStU (MfS HA II 1989; MfS HA VII 1989; MfS HA IX /AKG/AB AK 1989). D Glietsch, ‘Ausgrenzung und Verfolgung und Verstrickung der Polizei’, in A Allex and D Kalkan (eds), ausgesteuert – ausgegrenzt … angeblich asozial (New Ulm: SPAK Bücher, 2009), 145–49. Steer, Rummelsburg mit der Viktoriastadt. T Irmer and RE Klemke, ‘Der Gedenkort Rummelsburg – Berliner Arbeitshaus und DDR-Gefängnis, 1879–1990’, Gedenkstättenrundbrief (175) (2014), 22–28. Informations- und Gedenkort Rummelsburg, App, Available from .

Chapter 6

A Triumph for the Protectional Model? How Belgian Institutions for Delinquent Children Dealt with Young Collaborators (1944–50) Aurore François

Introduction The judicial decision-making process plays a key role in periods of redemocratization, notably by the ‘trial and punishment of those who collaborated with the occupying force so as to strip them of all remaining letitimacy’.1 In Belgium, the end of World War II was marked by the settling of collaboration affairs, including affairs involving minors. With some exceptions,2 this very specific population has been little addressed by the extensive literature on the treatment of collaboration with the enemy after World War II. Indeed, from September 1944 to the end of 1947, Belgian juvenile courts had to treat cases of collaboration, a phenomenon they had never had to deal with before. Established in Belgium in 1912, the juvenile justice system was substantially different from the adult criminal justice system. Its goal was rehabilitation and not punishment. Its action was centred on the delinquent children Notes for this chapter begin on page 140.

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and also on their families. Its form was judicial, but its substance social. All these specificities give new insights into the way the problem of collaboration can be addressed. As Luc Huyse mentioned, transitional justice is associated with different choices: to punish or to ‘close the books’, to exclude or to reintegrate the perpetrators of state crimes, to privilege a perprator-oriented policy or a victimcentred attention, etc.3 This chapter examines that short part of child protection history from these different points of view and adds some other ones: how to define ‘collaboration with the enemy’ when the collaborators are young people? What measures were taken by the Belgian government regarding minor collaborators? Were these measures in line with the protectional model, which primarily investigated the personal situation of the minor his social and family environment, often relegating the offences committed to a secondary level? Since 1912, juvenile judges rendered their decisions on the basis of enquiries. How did the juvenile justice system’s key players incorporate the political dimension into their evaluation framework? And, lastly, what were the available means for re-educating young offenders in the institutions for young delinquents, and how did the re-educational establishments and their staff handle this specific population, which strongly differed from those usually frequenting juvenile courts? To deal with these questions, seventy-nine dossiers of the juvenile courts of Brussels and Namur were collected and analysed. These personal records have allowed us to reconstruct the trajectories of these young collaborators, how the justice system has assessed their personal and familial situation and, finally, the measures taken against those specific offenders.

The ‘Protectional’ Model and World War II Examining the fundamental features of the Belgian juvenile courts allows us to properly grasp the originality of these institutions, enabling us to understand their post-war practices. Starting in 1912 and the first Child Protection Act,4 Belgian delinquent children were no longer tried as adults. The Child Protection Act set up juvenile courts, presided over by a single and professional

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judge (juvenile judge). This new institution realized a wish that had been expressed in the nineteenth century by philanthropists and reformers:5 to handle cases of delinquent minors outside the penal system, to treat them and to re-educate them, instead of punishing them. This ambition was typical of the défense sociale doctrine (end of nineteenth century) that the juvenile courts implemented, which called for greater involvement of the state in the prevention of social risks that had emerged with the industrialization process. The re-education of young offenders – tomorrow’s adults – was one of the more emblematic aspects of this model, whose main goal was the preservation of social, economic and political order.6 Indeed, the 1912 Child Protection Act broke with the classical economy of penalties in renouncing the principle of proportionality of criminal offences and penalties and favouring a decision centred on the child rather than on the acts he had committed. Decisions were rendered by a professional judge, described as ‘paternal’ or ‘benevolent’.7 Officially, his goal was no longer to punish but to treat and re-educate. Although all of the juvenile judge’s decisions preliminarily required that the facts of the offense be established, the latter were then relegated to the background in relation to the child’s situation. Thus, the judge attached great importance to the child’s personality and the quality of his home environment, which became the subject of an evaluation carried out by the délégués à la protection de l’enfance. These new auxiliaries of justice played an important role in the operation of the juvenile courts.8 Their function was claimed to be inspired by probation officers in the United States.9 These probation officers led enquiries into the families concerned, to facilitate the judge’s decision and to supervise children who were to stay with their families following a judge’s decision. Their mission was of two sorts: proceeding to a social investigation into the minor and his family in order to provide the judge with information necessary for the assessment of the case; and supervise the child on probation, by submitting a report to the judge on schooling, work, frequentations and behaviour, and other relevant aspects. Gradually, that social expertise was joined to another, medicalpedagogical vocation, centred on the child and his/her personality.10 Initially intended for supposedly abnormal children, this second

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field of expertise quickly widened its spectrum, organizing a medical-pedagogical observation of minors placed in state institutions. Whereas the social investigators stuck to describing the child in his milieu, with a view to evaluating his reciprocal adaptation, placement in medical-pedagogical observation involved isolating the minor from his normal environment with a view to classifying and determining the appropriate treatment. Organized by the judicial administration managing the state establishments, this observation was regarded as one of the gems of the Belgian system, an image that was widely trumpeted in order to forge the reputation of an innovative system on the international as well as on the national level, taking advantage of new information acquired by the social as well as psychological sciences (even if, in practice, the initiating of social and medical-pedagogical investigations was not always as systematic as descriptions would have us suppose). Armed with this potential recourse to a twofold expertise, the judge pronounced either acquittal (this decision was very rare because of the filtering done by the court preliminarily and the possibility of reprimanding children whom they did not want to withdraw from their families), or a measure ‘of guardianship, of safeguarding and education’. There the judge had to decide on the following, double alternative: institutionalizing the minor or returning him to his family by pronouncing a reprimand or a conditional sentence and, given the possibility of a placement, choosing a foster home, a private institution or a state establishment. It is worth noting that the juvenile court magistrate is an enforcement judge: he can continually modify his decisions, without ever assigning them a duration (they are valid until he changes his mind or until the youth reaches adulthood). This dimension confirms, if need be, the paramount role of child protection delegates in charge of supervising the minors released after a stay in an institution or left on their own after the delivery of a measure releasing them, or a reprimand. In applying the law, it was not rare for minors released under surveillance to be the subject of an internment following an unfavourable report from their probation officer. The ordeals of World War II marked the functioning of these courts, in consecrating the ‘protectional’ ambitions of the law.

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During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II, the grave economic and food crisis led to a multiplication in the number of cases the juvenile courts had to deal with: double that of peacetime, and that despite the organizational difficulties involved, given the context of occupation (difficulties in organizing the inmates’ transfer and supplying institutions, occupation or requisition of buildings by the troops, bombing, etc.).11

A New Phenomenon for Juvenile Jurisdictions: The Repression of Collaboration Belgian courts had already dealt with collaborators or ‘incivics’12 at the end of World War I. The phenomenon was unprecedented for juvenile courts, however.13 This was partly due to the ideological dimension of the collaboration during World War II, involving whole families and, particularly, youth, who were the target of the occupants’ and collaborationist organizations’ special attention. Let us note from the start the extent to which the phenomenon is relatively difficult to define. A decade after the war’s end, the sociologist and lawyer Aimée Racine estimated that 1,812 minors had been referred to juvenile jurisdictions, accused of incivic behaviour, one-third of whom were girls. But this number is an underestimate, because other young collaborators were prosecuted for other offenses, such as ‘lack of discipline’, for a technical reason. Indeed, the 1912 Children Act allowed juvenile courts to sue young offenders until sixteen years of age for all penal code offences (including collaboration) and until eighteen for ‘lack of discipline’ if denounced by their parents. The juvenile judges easily manipulated the legal categorization of the offenses so as to deal with cases that were no longer under their jurisdiction in theory, either because the child was too old or because of the difficulties posed in establishing the materiality of the facts. Several circulars of the Minister of Justice imply that this practice was encouraged by the administration. Issued during the winter of 1944–45, and above all designed to decongest internment centres, they exhort the investigators or presidents of advisory commissions14 to either release the youngest prisoners or to urgently refer minors over sixteen to juvenile judges, so that the latter might try

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and apply Article 14 (lack of discipline), by receiving a complaint from their parents.15 These circulars seem to have been rather closely followed, albeit not systematically: a 1950 list of incivic inmates in Belgian prisons shows that certain minors aged sixteen or seventeen at the time of the facts had been judged as adults.16 They had, however, committed acts of extreme severity, such as war crimes on the Eastern Front, and been heavily sentenced. Within the context of this research, I was able to analyse seventy-nine particular cases of young collaborators (fourteen from the Namur juvenile court and sixty-five from the Brussels juvenile court). If the number is undoubtedly exhaustive in the case of Namur (some of which, moreover, had already been treated in previous pieces of research),17 investigating the cases proved much more complex in the case of Brussels, these cases constituting no more than a negligible proportion among the thousands opened by the Brussels’ juvenile court between September 1944 and December 1947 – a date at which, according to Racine, the administration regarded the problem of incivism as settled. Recourse to the registers of judgements made it possible to compile a list of sixty cases, two-thirds of which were preserved. All of these cases, however, concerned minors under sixteen years of age at the time of the facts, yet really prosecuted for collaboration. The discovery of cases of incivism, which are not explicitly labelled as such (notably ‘misconduct’ cases) is particularly revelatory. Nevertheless, five could be listed and analysed, which is undoubtedly far from the total of cases of this type settled in Brussels. Notwithstanding, the series thus constituted has proven particularly rich. The profiles of the minors and the fate which the legal apparatus held in store for them have, notably, been compared with similar analyses on a broad corpus of other cases from both times of war and times of peace, seen in a perspective that has assuredly made it possible to reveal a series of specificities characterizing incivic youths.

The Collaboration of Minors: Profiles of the Authors and Natures of the Cases When we are dealing with youth, who is a collaborator? The cases suggest varied profiles. Some files were opened following deeds

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that had very serious consequences, in particular within the context of cases of denunciation. Aside from the denunciation of Jewish families18 – there were few cases, but with the most dramatic of consequences – a series of denunciations is presented as acts of revenge with respect to adults or other youths with whom these children or adolescents might have had altercations. These affairs began with simple taunts or mocking remarks and ended up with a night at the Kommandantur (local German military headquarters) or even deportation to Germany. Young Charles, for instance, asked some relatives he had at the Kommandantur to help him get revenge on people he had trouble with. A young man who addressed him with the Hitler salute and laughed at him was punished by twenty-four hours retention in the Kommandantur basement. A family man, who had initially reacted vigorously when Charles pushed him, and then reconsidered the situation and tried to get rid of a small paper containing transcripts of London communiqués, was later brutally beaten in the Kommandantur, judged and deported to Germany.19 But the vast majority of incivic youths had problems with the legal system following their membership in youth movements or youth sections of collaborationist movements (Rexist youth, Legionary youth, DeVlag, Organization Todt, Wachtbrigade, etc.).20 Thus, the files report on their participation in organized activities (parades, camps, propaganda, etc.) but also, for some, on humiliations or aggressive actions committed against private individuals. Some are singled out most particularly for having occupied relatively high positions in those hierarchical institutions, and several had had a stay at the Eastern Front. In contrast, others present more harmless profiles as very discrete members of those movements, almost always enrolled on parental instigation. They often were the children of collaborators who were themselves interned and for whom obviously no guardianship solution could be found. … Hence their being treated as delinquent children judged by the juvenile courts is, above all, a very pragmatic option – indeed, it was a question of their getting a roof over their heads in awaiting the release of one of their parents –, which was not seen as problematic by any of the actors or observers of that system. From the first years of its existence, the protectional system was set up on the basis of a particularly wide interpretation

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of the law, making the border between delinquent childhood and victimized, maltreated or abandoned childhood very permeable, those two fields of child welfare being, however, in the hands of different institutions. Moreover, these protectional cases allow us to get closer to the families who were mixed up ‘a lot or a little’ with collaboration, thanks to the social investigations of the délégués à la protection de l’enfance, who visited the families first-hand and tried to detect the reasons for the youths’ engagement. Thus certain investigators plunged into difficult and precarious milieux and immediately concluded that there was an obvious bond between family misery or moral abandonment and an engagement above all dictated by pure economic opportunism.21 Of course, this was the main argument that these families mentioned themselves. But this also reveals that in the experts’ view, it seems as if the lower-class families were not able to have real political convictions, as if all their political aspirations were dictated by the economic factors only. Once the absence of real political convictions was determined with regard to these milieus, which in ordinary times already provided the vast majority of children in the justice system, the delegates adopted a very stereotypical point of view, foregrounding concerns over hygiene and order in the home, the moral precariousness of the parental couple or the deplorable education the children received. However, many young collaborators came from average or privileged milieus, and for that reason found themselves in the thick of relatively unusual investigations from the viewpoints of the délégués, who had to evaluate different aspects of the personal and familial situation of former burgomasters or aldermen, doctors, merchants, company leaders, managers or teachers. Admittedly, many of these families had lost much of their economic status: their wealth had been seized or confiscated, while the incomes of the imprisoned fathers were henceforth non-existent. Yet the embarrassment, although temporary for some of the families, did not prevent manifesting their previously high social status through their education and the obvious signs of certain good manners – on the minors’ part too. And it appears from the outset, in reading their reports, that the délégués were not insensitive to the bourgeois atmosphere characterizing the hearths visited and

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on which they frankly struggled to form a distinct opinion. Some appear completely destabilized. The following description reveals this difficulty among social workers, in reconciling adherence to Nazi ideology as a real obstacle to the children’s education with the morality of the milieu: He is a courageous, hard-working and sober man, having always taken good care of his family and his children. Unfortunately, beginning with the German occupation of 1914–18, he acknowledges having been an activist and has since then been interested in Nazism and has directed his children towards these fanatical ideas … During the German occupation, this family stood out because of their incivic behaviour; they were anti-patriots, writing articles in the Flemish newspaper DeVlag. That, in summary, is what they are reproached with, because aside from those factors, the family milieu is of good morality …’22

Seen in comparison to a mass of reports wherein these same délégués pointed out the deleterious effects of certain thieving tendencies among the fathers and other, ‘easy’ manners among the mothers, and concluding that the most radical of solutions needed to be adopted, these remarks are particularly emblematic of their difficulty in reconciling the parents’ antipatriotic intrigues with an appreciation of their overall morality.

Protectional Justice in Action: The Judges’ Decisions Although taking a few shortcuts, this observation allows us to provide an explanation of the following reality: in the majority of cases, the young collaborators judged by the juvenile courts received relatively lenient treatment, insofar as their families were not evaluated as problematic by the majority of the experts or probation officers.23 Certainly the probation officers denounced their involvement, but they did not necessarily see it as a major educational problem. The conclusions of the social inquiries thus preceded the judges’ decisions. During the hearings, the judges had at heart a desire to have the minors leave their antipatriotic involvement in the past and pledge themselves to ‘leading a civic life’. But they always applied the protectional logic, as prescribed by the law of 1912, that being to relegate the acts committed to the

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background, far behind the situation of the minor and his family. Given the conclusions of the delegates, we can well imagine lenient decisions. Many of the minors judged had already spent more or less long time spans in institutions during the investigators’ work. Thus the judges released a non-negligible part of these youths and sentenced others to relatively short time spans, generally doing so because familial conditions, and particularly their parents’ internment, did not permit their return to family life. It should be noted here that the juvenile courts thus showed themselves to be in total rupture with a certain social demand, which serves to remind us of certain more current cases in the area of juvenile justice. Undoubtedly the most dramatic affair in this corpus, two young brothers’ denunciation of several Jewish children and then of their families, hidden by neighbours, illustrates this cleavage in more than one way. Those denunciations triggered the deportation of several people to the camps (certain documents put the figure at fifty people). Once again, the files advance both the satisfactory qualities of the two minors’ home environment and the way in which the occupant is thought to have taken advantage of the younger brother’s weaknesses: twelve years old and described by some as ‘slow-witted’. However, upon their release, the police immediately set the latter free and his brother, placed in semi-freedom, regularly revisited the scene of the incident, which the families at the origin of the complaint could not put up with, especially once the fate met by their friends and their children in the concentration camp had been confirmed.24 If, because of its dramatic consequences, this affair is not fully representative of cases of minors charged with incivism, it nevertheless does illustrate the population’s incomprehension faced with the decisions rendered by the juvenile judges: abandoning the principle of a proportionality of measures and acts and, rather, recentring their evaluation and court action on who the minor is rather than on what he does.

Disintoxicating and Rehabilitating: The Treatment of Incivic Youths The task of re-educating young collaborators was entrusted to educational establishments of the state, with, at least for the boys,

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the opening of special institutions at Moll and Ruysselede.25 Their re-education was described in a ministerial circular of 29 November 1944, inviting the personnel to use a two-step procedure: ‘for all of them, their false conceptions have to be destroyed; then will come the stage of constructive work’.26 A relatively unprecedented choice, aimed at minors reproached for membership in far-right youth movements, the procedures implemented were largely borrowed from the practices of traditional youth movements: ‘the formation of patrols designed on the scout model; elaboration of a Decalogue that they promise to observe in giving their word of honour; the examination of disciplinary cases by patrol leaders with the teacher presiding; publication of a review publishing the students’ literary essays; a harmonious balance between attending classes and manual work’.27 Rewarded for good conduct,28 a few young collaborators who were institutionalized had relatively short stays, at least compared with the usual durations.29 That was especially so for those whose judgements, often delayed due to the needs of the investigation and the military investigators’ reports, followed comparatively long stays in sections of state establishments for incivics or in ‘homes’ – in semi-liberty. Those minors coming from a favourable social environment, whose most salient features were discipline and education, contrasted sharply with the usual populace of those institutions. Administrative reports proposed softening the treatment for residents who appeared particularly docile. Reports on minors from the more favourable social environment were strikingly optimists when compared with the descriptions of the other inmates: ‘This adolescent has a sane and natural affectivity. He is demonstrative, generous, optimistic and kind to everyone’, reads Moll’s report on Charles, a former Rexist youth leader and the author of denunciations of the occupant. The young man appears to be not that gifted in class, but is easy to live with and has renounced any interest in politics, turning rather to manual occupations, which the evaluator congratulates himself on, continuing his report: A teaser but not spiteful, critical but generous, H goes about his daily routine, good-naturedly meeting the rule’s requirements and graciously obeying the orders he’s given. Open enough to suggestions, he accepts advice … and takes it. He seems to have received a good

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moral education. H is little concerned with political questions, which he doesn’t seem to worry much about. He’s an active boy whose preferences run in the line of manual tasks. Therefore, mentally balanced, basically unworried and unconcerned over controversies … this young man’s civic re-education would not seem to require rigorous treatment.30

It is not exceptional, moreover, that institutions declare themselves unsuited to the social status and morality of certain minors: [On the subject of Elisabeth, placed in a private establishment in Wandre:] she has been exemplary and the Superior has expressed the desire that she should be withdrawn as quickly as possible from this milieu – unsuitable for her.31 [About Bernadette, placed under observation at Saint Servais:] The young girl finding herself unsuited to our population, and where she could even be adversely influenced and, moreover, given the desire of [here] brother [a] priest, qualified to watch over his sister, we ask you, your honour, to grant your authorization for provisional release of Bernadette D.32

From the perspective of the civic re-education as such, the directors of the two institutions mainly concerned (Moll and Ruysselede) drew up an assessment of their actions with total confidence, describing certain acts and behaviours of their populace as signs of a successful (re)conversion to patriotic values: the enthusiasm that the incivics brought to organizing the commemoration of the country’s major dates – celebrations that even the released boarders came to join in on; the many letters these youths have addressed to the personnel after having been returned to their families; the eagerness they show in returning to the establishment. The director of Moll is emphatic in highlighting the fact that only two escapes are to be lamented, and yet his school had no fences.33

On 15 February 1947, however, in the Moll establishment, an incident occurred which might have tarnished the optimistic assessment. Surprised at seeing seven minors, who were usually ‘rather lukewarm in their religious practices’, attending Mass, the personnel made a discrete investigation and found out that it was a celebration of homage to a Rexist officer fallen on the Eastern Front on that exact date. ‘One should certainly not exaggerate the

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gravity of that collective demonstration’, states Edouard Wauters, the General Inspector of the Child Protection Office:34 ‘what circumspection makes us retain is that in these young souls too there are shadowy corners the light of patriotic re-education will find it hard to penetrate’.35

Conclusion In several aspects, the management of incivism constituted one more illustration of the protectional orientation of the 1912 law and its transformation into practice. This episode, at once short and focussed on the history of child protection in Belgium, shows the point at which the actors had adopted this dimension. Neglecting the sometimes serious character of the acts and a social demand for further repression, the majority of delegates, generally followed by the judges, stuck to their usual reflexes, faithful to the spirit of the law, evaluating the families’ social and moral situations, without the parents’ antipatriotic conduct seeming to be a major educational problem. At the current state of research, exceptions to such perception of young collaborators and their family are quite few, but notable. A recent investigation showed how Judge Scarmure in Mons, for instance, who was involved in the Resistance during the war, showed himself reluctant to isolate the effects of the ‘patriotic evaluation’ from other moral qualities in the assessment of such families.36 However, apart from these somewhat unusual cases, management of the population of incivic minors reveals in certain aspects a gap between governmental policy and the actors in charge of protection. Whereas the former integrated the activity of juvenile courts and re-education institutions into its implementation of a project for the repression of collaboration which sought to be coherent, the actors in the field held on to their own ways of functioning, centred not on the repression of an act but, rather, on families’ capacity to produce socially and morally successful youths. In the definition of such a project, the parents’ antipatriotic engagement, generally identified as the cause of their children’s antipatriotic intrigues, could certainly be the object of a most severe and vigorous reprobation on behalf of the actors in

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the field without, for all that, being regarded as a fundamental obstacle to their children’s upbringing. The institutions willingly lent themselves to the project of the patriotic sensitization and re-education of such youths. But following their own logic in their evaluation of the social and moral qualities of more privileged milieus, the placement of these children very quickly appeared to them, including from the viewpoint of some of the institutions themselves, to be of rather compromised interest, if not prejudicial to their morality. In all likelihood, the establishments feared the contamination which might result from intermingling this ‘crème de la crème’ of judicially protected children with the others, confirming, if need be, their essential vocation: to educate and reform proletarian youths. Aurore François is an associate Professor at the Université catholique de Louvain (history) and at the Université de Liège (political science). She received her PhD in history from the Université Catholique de Louvain, with a dissertation on Guerres et délinquance juvénile (1912–1950). Un demi-siècle de pratiques judiciaires et institutionnelles envers des mineurs en difficulté (published by Die Keure, 2011). Her main research interests include child protection, juvenile delinquency and its treatment (measurement, discourses, practices), and methodological developments in social science research.

Notes  1.

 2.

L Huyse, ‘The Criminal Justice System as a Political Actor in Regime Transitions: The Case of Belgium, 1944–50’, in I Deák, JT Gross and T Judt (eds), The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 158. M Simon, Jeunesses rexiste et légionnaire (1940–1945). Du feu de camp … au coup de feu (France: La Gleize, 1995; E Kongs, De misleide generatie. De bestraffing van jeugdcollaborateurs na W.O.II (gerechtelijk arrondissement Gent, 1944–1949 (master’s thesis, Ugent, 1996); M Peltier, La justice des mineurs en temps de guerre. La pratique du Tribunal pour enfants de Namur durant les années 1940 (master’s thesis, Université catholique de Louvain, 2003).

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 3.  4.

 5.

 6.

 7.

 8.

 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

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L Huyse, Transitional Justice after War and Dictatorship. Learning from European Experiences (1945–2010), Final Report (Brussels: CEGES-SOMA, 2013). ‘Loi du 15 mai 1912 sur la protection de l’enfance’, Le Moniteur belge, 27– 29(1912), 3457–67. On the law’s development process and its orientation, J Christiaens, De geboorte van de jeugddelinquent, België 1830–1930 (Brussels: VUB Press, 1999); F Tulkens and T Moreau, Droit de la jeunesse. Aide, assistance, protection (Brussels: Larcier, 2000); M Dupont-Bouchat, De la prison à l’école. Les pénitenciers pour enfants en Belgique au XIXe siècle, 1840–1914 (Kortrijk-Heule: UGA, 1996); M Dupont-Bouchat and É Pierre (eds), Enfance et justice au XIXe siècle, Essais d’histoire comparée de la protection de l’enfance 1820–1914. France, Belgique, Pays-Bas, Canada (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2001). M Dupont-Bouchat, ‘Du tourisme pénitentiaire à “l’internationale des philanthropes”. La création d’un réseau pour la protection de l’enfance à travers les congrès internationaux (1840–1914)’, Paedagogica Historica 38(2–3) (2002), 233–63. About the defense sociale doctrine, which inspired the 1912 Child Protection Act, J Trépanier and F Tulkens, Délinquance & protection de la jeunesse. Aux sources des lois belge et canadienne sur l’enfance (Montreal-Ottawa-Brussels: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, De Boeck Université, 1995); F Tulkens, Généalogie de la défense sociale en Belgique 1880–1914 (Brussels: E Storia Scientia, 1988). M Dupont-Bouchat, ‘Une figure paternelle de la justice: le juge des enfants en Belgique (1912–1965)’, in A Deperchin, N Derasse and B Dubois (eds), Figures de Justice. Études en l’honneur de Jean-Pierre Royer (Lille: Centre d’histoire judiciaire, 2004), 101–15. A François, ‘Une phalange de collaborateurs pour “une tâche de cœur” : Les délégués à la protection de l’enfance (Belgique, 1912–1949)’, Histoire et Sociétés. Revue européenne d’Histoire sociale 25–26(2008), 212–25. Chambre des représentants. Documents. Session de 1911–12, Séance du 31 janvier 1912, 504. D Niget, ‘De l’hystérie à la révolte. L’observation médico-pédagogique des jeunes délinquantes en Belgique (1912–1965)’, Champ pénal/Penal field 8(2011); D Niget, ‘De l’impossible violence aux troubles du comportement. L’observation médico-pédagogique des jeunes délinquantes dans la Belgique des années cinquante’, in L Bantigny and J Vimont (eds), Sous l’œil de l’expert. Les dossiers judiciaires de personnalité (Publications des universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2011), 105–22. A François, Guerres et délinquance juvénile (1912–1950). Un demi-siècle de pratiques judiciaires et institutionnelles envers des mineurs en difficulté (Bruges: La Charte-Die Keure, 2011). ‘Incivism’ is a Belgian term, used by media and sometimes administration from World War I, to describe crimes against the security of the state. G Baclin, ‘Les ‘traîtres’ devant la justice militaire. L’activité du conseil de guerre de Mons au sortir de la Grande Guerre, 1918–1919’, Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent 20(2008), 15. About the repression of collaboration in Belgium after World War II; J Gillissen, ‘Etude statistique de la répression de l’incivisme’, Revue de droit pénal et de criminologie (1951), 513–628 ; J Gotovitch and C Kesteloot (eds), Occupation,

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14.

15.

16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

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répression : un passé qui résiste (Brussels: Labor, 2002); L Huyse and S Dhondt, La répression des collaborations, 1942–1952. Un passé toujours présent (Brussels: CRISP, 1993); J Campion, Le rétablissement de la légalité policière après la Seconde Guerre mondiale : les gendarmeries belge, française et la Koninklijke Marechaussee néerlandaise (PhD thesis, Université catholique de Louvain/Paris IV Sorbonne, 2009); S Horvat, ‘Le déroulement des procès d’inciviques devant les juridictions militaires en 1944–1949’, Bulletin du Ceges 38(2003), 3–23; H Grevers, ‘De opsluiting van collaborateurs als proeftuin voor penitentiaire vernieuwing. Het Belgische en Nederlandse gevangeniswezen tussen 1946 en 1950’, Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent 24(2001), 209–32; K Aerts, ‘De bestraffing van de collaboratie na de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Beeldvorming en onderzoek’, Bijdragen tot de Eigentijdse Geschiedenis 21(2009), 55–92. Created in autumn 1944, these commissions were in charge of assessing the appropriateness and suitability of administrative detentions. G Elaut, De Consultatieve Commissies (1944–1946) binnen de repressie. Een onderzoek naar de Consultatieve Commissie van Ieper (master’s thesis, VUB Bruxelles, 2005). Archives Générales du Royaume (hereafter AGR). Ministère de la Justice. Direction générale des Etablissements pénitentiaires. Service des Grâces (hereafter GRACES), 816. Circulaire de l’Auditeur général aux auditeurs militaires, le 16 novembre 1944; Circulaire du ministre de la Justice aux présidents des commissions consultatives pour internés à raison de leur attitude antipatriotique, le 8 février 1945. AGR, GRACES, 824. Recensement des inciviques détenus en 1950 dans les prisons belges, ordonné par la dépêche ministérielle du 23 juin 1950 (Administration des établissements pénitentiaires – Bureau d’étude). M Peltier, La justice des mineurs en temps de guerre. La pratique du Tribunal pour enfants de Namur durant les années 1940 (Master’s thesis, Université catholique de Louvain, 2003). Archives de l’Etat à Anderlecht (hereafter AEA), Tribunal des enfants de Bruxelles (hereafter TEB), 1031/41, 642/44. AEA, TEB, 647/45. Auditorat militaire, dépositions de témoin, 20 et 21 avril 1945. REX was a political movement founded by Léon Degrelle in 1930. During the war, REX collaborated with the German occupier, creating the Légion Wallonie, a paramilitary organization, which sent volunteers to the Eastern Front, to fight against the Soviet Union along with the Wehrmacht. Organization Todt was a civil and military engineering group that led projects in Germany and later in occupied territories. The Wachtbrigade was an organization created in 1941 to monitor the Luftwaffe facilities. Huyse and Dhondt, La répression des collaborations, 316–23. About youth involvement in Rex and Légion Wallonie, M Simon, Jeunesses rexiste et légionnaire (1940–1945). Du feu de camp … au coup de feu (France: La Gleize, 1995). The Social report concerning René, whose father was an unemployed concierge, mentioned that he enlisted in Germany to work as a volunteer because the family was facing hardships. AEA, TEB, 622/46. Protection de l’enfance. Enquête au sujet d’un enfant (Modèle J), le 11 octobre 1946. AEA, TEB, 886/44. Kinderberscherming. Onderzoek aangaande een kind (Model J), 27/01/1945.

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23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

32.

33. 34.

35. 36.

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Only fourteen of the sixty-five minors of our sample were sentenced to custodial measures, which represents a lower proportion than usual. AEA, TEB, 642–44. The consulted literature does not provide information about the establishment of such wings in the centre for delinquent girls of Saint-Servais. É Wauters, Le droit pénal des jeunes délinquants (Brussels: Larcier, 1950), 185. Wauters, Le droit pénal des jeunes délinquants, 185. A Racine, La délinquance juvénile en Belgique de 1939 à 1957 (Brussels: Centre d’étude de la délinquance juvénile, 1959), 70. While the total duration of internment may reach an average of two or three years for other inmates (estimation made on 535 cases from 1914–18, 1925, 1930, 1935 and 1940–44), the internment of young collaborators only reached such durations when the children were unable to return their families, due to the incarceration of their parents. AEA, TEB, 647/45. Établissement d’éducation de l’État à Mol. Groupe des mineurs inciviques. Rapport d’observation, le 20 novembre 1945. AEA, TEB, Dossier n°815/45. Rapport du délégué à la protection de l’enfance, le 7 février 1946. Élisabeth et sa sœur seront confiées par jugement à leur tante, qui s’est illustrée comme résistante pendant le conflit. Archives de l’État à Namur, Tribunal des enfants de Namur, 1303. Établissement d’observation de l’État à Saint-Servais. Rapport d’observation, le 20 juin 1945. Quoted by Peltier, La justice des mineurs en temps de guerre, 182. Wauters, Le droit pénal des jeunes délinquants, 186. The child protection office was an important division of the Department of Justice. It was responsible for, among other tasks, the management of institutions dealing with young offenders. E Put, Het ministerie van Justitie (1831– 1988). Deel I. Organisatiestructuur van de centrale administratie en de adviesorganen (Brussels: AGR, 1990), 90–91. Wauters, Le droit pénal des jeunes délinquants, 186. C Bourguignon, ‘Une infime poignée de traîtres’? La répression de la collaboration des mineurs d’âge dans l’arrondissement judiciaire de Mons, à la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale, 1944–1948 (master’s thesis, Université catholique de Louvain, 2012).

Chapter 7

The Ambiguities of Gendarmeries’ Relationship to Internment around World War II (Belgium, France, the Netherlands) Jonas Campion

A

gendarmerie is a national military force charged with judicial, administrative and military police missions. They are soldiers, who are primarily tasked with tasks usually associated with the police. First organized during the French Revolution, the institution saw an expansion with the European Wars. By the end of the nineteenth century, Belgium, France and the Netherlands had a gendarmerie force at the heart of their police organization. As agents of public order, the gendarmes have a structural relationship to judicial detention and deprivation of freedom. In line with their legislation (from 1903 in France, 1815 in the Netherlands and 1830 in Belgium), they are in charge of carrying out warrants of arrest, convicts’ transfers and red-handed arrests. In crisis periods, as in wartime, their skills extend to various forms of administrative internment. This must be understood as a measure taken without any judicial decision, but only by administrative authorities. According to the new rules passed by frightened authorities of the second half of the 1930s, the foreigners, the enemy nationals, the displaced populations or those considered as presenting a risk are therefore handled and framed by the gendarmes.

Notes for this chapter begin on page 159.

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Even if detention, here defined in general as deprivation of freedom, is closely linked to the functions legally and usually carried out by the gendarmes, the particular conditions of World War II proved disturbing for the gendarmeries. During the conflict, an ideological seclusion added up to administrative and judicial detentions. Considered to be the guarantors of detention, the gendarmes also became hostages and were arrested or interned for political, resistance and collaborationist motives. In the framework of this paper, my goal is to chronologically shed light on the stakes of the gendarmes’ role in the detention processes and the ambiguities they were confronted with in Western Europe at the time of World War II. Therefore, I explore the specific experiences of gendarmes related to these questions, trying to characterize them in comparison with the traditional values and missions of their institutions. I analyse gendarmes, gendarmeries and hierarchical authorities’ reactions towards the realities of detention in wartime. How are the detention situations in which the gendarmes lived breakdowns in terms of legality, legitimacy or professional values of European gendarmeries? In this chapter I will compare the experiences of three fairly similar gendarmeries (Belgium, France, the Netherlands), all confronted with wartime circumstances like occupation, liberation, political transitions or changed sociopolitical circumstances.1 By taking the gendarmes’ situations as the focus of the comparison, I analyse the detention mechanisms and the relations between the police, seclusions and politics in a stressed period. The gendarmes’ difficulties facing internment are clear: between 1940 and 1950, as they went through multiple regime changes in Western European countries, they were successively and sometimes simultanously, executioners and victims of internment policies. How could a state’s servant deal with this ambiguous reality?

Kriegsgefangene: The Gendarme as Soldier Gendarmes are charged with judicial and police functions as well as military missions. These three functions in turn determined the diversity of the detention realities they were confronted with

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around World War II, either as guards or internees. During the Bliztkrieg, the military character of gendarmeries was relevant. In Belgium or in France, gendarmes were both members of fighting units and provostal groups in charge of policing the army. While they were at the front, other gendarmes were still in territorial units, employed in the mobilization and militarization of society as part of their police functions. Gendarmes in the Netherlands, the Koninklijke Marechaussee, never constituted fighting units, but they were mobilized for provostal and security missions. Their service as soldiers includes them in the same situation as the national armies. Chronologically, the first form of seclusion the gendarmes experienced during the war was related to their pre-war military identity and their functions up to the summer 1940. After the campaigns of summer 1940, because they wore a uniform, and some of them were fighting, all the gendarmes in these three countries were regarded as military by the Germans. The Germans did not hesitate to arrest gendarmes as prisoners of war, irrepsective of whether they served in territorial brigades (for police missions) or in fighting units.2 Gendarmes were therefore ‘drowned’ in the mass of prisoners waiting for a general decision on their fate. It was difficult for them to present themselves as ‘policemen’. Nearly 5,000 French gendarmes were interned in Germany out of about 50,000 men3 after the end of hostilities. In October 1940, out of 8,200 men, around 100 Belgian gendarmes were still detained by the Germans.4 Insofar as Dutch Marechaussees were arrested after the capitulation of national army, they were subjected to the same German policies as the Dutch army. This was fortunate, since all Dutch prisoners of war were liberated or demobilized before the end of summer 1940.5 After the armistice or capitulation, although the Germans had agreed to maintain the gendarmeries as a force in the occupied territories, these prisoners became a stakes in a game of power play. The decision to release or not to release the gendarmes arrested as soldiers, in order to let them carry out police functions, provided the Germans with an important way of putting pressure on the defeated states to ensure that they would cooperate in the occupied territories. To this end, German authorities fragmented the liberation processes of gendarmes. Throughout occupied Europe,

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there was an unequal struggle regarding the interned gendarmes’ future. The occupying authorities had to keep a difficult balance in order to ensure that the gendarmeries would be neither too powerful nor too weak, while occupied authorities wanted their indigenous gendarmeries to remain as large as possible. The occupied authorities tried to maintain national laws and national order system in order to avoid a German monopoly on these issues. In Belgium and in the Netherlands, most gendarmes returned home to work before the end of 1940. Some of them, officers or non-commissioned officers, remained in captivity, sometimes for the duration of the war.6 The early liberations resulted from the gendarmes’ usefulness in maintaining order, their language (Flemish prisoners in Belgium) or, in the Dutch case, the decision of the Germans to release the army. In these two countries, the occupant’s plans with national police institutions and the future of the defeated countries, played an important role in the timing of the releases. In France, the process was slower, due to the complex Franco-German relationship and German pressures on the Vichy regime. Though the French obtained the release of more than 3,000 gendarmes in spring 1941, insisting on their necessary presence in the occupied territories, they never obtained any collective measure for the 2,000 other captives. In spite of the Vichy government’s efforts, only a few individual releases took place after the second half of 1941.7 The gendarmeries were part of the European armies because of their military identity. In France, Belgium or the Netherlands, the defeat of 1940 put them in an uncomfortable situation. They were considered to be primarily soldiers by the Germans and sent to prisoner of war (POW) camps, rather than being considered policemen, and as such necessary to maintain law and order in the occupied territories. Later the Germans agreed that the gendarmes exercised police functions, but used their release and return to national territories as a part of their strategy to gain the collaboration of occupied authorities. Differences can be observed between the three countries, linked with the nature of national authorities in occupied territories and the German projects for the future of Europe. The French case is very different from the Belgian or Dutch realities. This transnational situation illustrates the specific place occupied by the gendarmeries in the state service. It

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also shows the difficult consequences of wartime on the gendarmeries’ plural identities (both military, police and state service institutions), phenomenon that we observe later around the World War’s events.

Facing an Unknown Situation: The Gendarmes and the Occupation The decision to keep the gendarmeries in the occupied territories led to the cohabitation of occupied and occupying institutions in the same space. The German decision to uphold these institutions was of a strategic nature. Because of their functions, the gendarmes played an important part in public policies. By using the gendarmes, the Germans ensured that public order would be maintained cheaply, which obviated the need for them to deploy their own soldiers for that task. Consequently, the gendarmes had to – both individually and collectively – define a modus vivendi that took into account the pre-war legislation, the nature of the occupied authorities and the missions for occupied institutions set by the Germans. In this framework of presence, the risk of sanctions increased towards those gendarmes whose actions contravened German interests. For the first time in all three countries, it created a break with the traditional disciplinary logic of gendarmes. As described by a French officer in a post-war pro-domo pleading, threats of arrest were central to the control and framing policy of the gendarmeries by the occupying forces: In many circumstances, Gendarmes and Guards have risked prison, labour camps, deportation and even execution. Disobeying Vichy’s government was probably any patriot’s duty, but it also was a constant threat of serious, relentless, inhuman and cruel sanctions: Dachau, Buchenwald or execution by firing squad.8

In this context, before the end of the summer of 1944 disobedience remained an individual decision. After the Normandy landing, groups of gendarmes, sometimes coming from the same units, decided to refuse to serve and joined the Resistance.9 France, where the provisional government of the French Republic gave orders

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for a national uprising to help the liberation, is clearly a specific case in this respect. There, disobedience sometimes took on significant proportions: on 15 August 1944, the entire Gendarmerie Burgundian Legion joined the maquis.10 During the uprising in Paris, units of garde républicaine joined the police and the resistance movements in the fightings.11 Collectively, gendarmes lived under the constant threat that their presence in the national territories would be questioned. This polymorphic threat was exerted by both the Germans and the collaborationist authorities. Both in France, where the French State remained a political regime, and in Belgium and the Netherlands, where the power was exercised by administrative authorities, this risk was highlighted. High-ranking officers mentioned how dangerous it was for gendarmes to refuse to serve.12 As the saying went in France, the gendarmerie ‘does not have to scrutinize its conscience’13 but must act efficiently to avoid retaliatory measures. Taken to the extreme, this policy’s logic brought about the risk of a massive internment of the gendarmes, as illustrated by various ‘crisis’ episodes. Sometimes gendarmes were arrested once again, no more as POWs but as political prisoners or hostages. For example, nearly all pre-war high-ranking officers of the Dutch Koninklijke Marechaussee were sent to Germany in May 1942.14 On a wider scale, because they symbolized the defeated national state, the gendarmes were also used as hostages. Belgian high-ranking officers were interned in 1942–43 in the citadel of Huy,15 in order to ensure increased cooperation from the Belgian gendarmerie and authorities. Gendarmes of various ranks were also affected by this measure throughout the occupation.16 Other Belgian gendarmes were deprived of their freedom of movement and mobilized to accompany trains of German soldiers on leave, with civilian hostages, to prevent any resistance action.17 Furthermore, individual arrests of gendarmes by German police forces for patriotic motives (Resistance members, disobedience) also multiplied throughout the units. In the face of such a reality, gendarmeries’ hierarchies reacted powerlessly. They clearly acknowledged the risk inherent in the situation, in both the short- and midterms, regarding the means of action (fewer gendarmes available for policing) but also and mostly in terms of the symbolic weakening of their authority and

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social permanence. Officers of all ranks intervened frequently in order to obtain the release of gendarmes or in order to avoid any collective measure towards them. This underlined the tricky situation in which gendarmes were put in order to enforce public order, as demanded by the Germans.18 From a corporate point of view, the interventions answered the need for institutional cohesion. In order for them to keep on doing their job effectively, the gendarmes needed to feel that they belonged to an organisation in which solidarity prevailed. Therefore, the headquarters were always attentive to locating the arrested gendarmes, improving their detention conditions and to ensure contact with their families.19 The phenomenon was peculiarly striking in France, where a small gendarmerie administration based in Paris was in charge of negotiating these questions with German authorities.20 But the effects of these interventions often remained symbolic. The Germans remained those who decided the fate of the gendarmes. The case of the gendarmes who were deported to Germany is to be considered separately: here institutional solidarity had to deal with an unknown situation. Although these gendarmes formally remained part of the organizational structure of the institutions, their actual whereabouts were unknown until spring 1945 and the liberation of the camps. The tragic fate of the gendarmes who had been previously considered simply as the German captives was scrupulously reported in the institutions’ administrative accounts. In Belgium, the post-war administrative yearbooks reveal that six officers died as ‘political prisoners’ between 1943 and 1945.21 In other cases, the end of war reveals criticisms about some gendarme’s attitudes in Germany, because they individually took part of internment violence characteristic of wartimes. The occupation also represented a break as it saw the emergence of practices of gendarmes’ internment by their compatriots. Some gendarmes were detained by either collaborators (arrests made by the French ‘Milice’ who gained more and more responsibility in order policies after the beginning of 194422 or, in French-speaking Belgium, by paramilitary units of Rex, one of the main collaborationist groups23) or resistants. This was a late phenomenon (1943–44) that occurred in the civil-war context between the Resistance and the collaborationist institutions, in some areas

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of France, Belgium and the Netherlands.24 According to this perspective, the gendarmes were seen at the same time both as agents of repression, and as supporting the Resistance. Consequently, they were prime targets of both sides. Such a situation further weakened the gendarmeries’ authority in the public sphere. At the same time, the gendarmes took part in the German repression in the occupied territories. The judicial or red-handed arrests carried out in the framework of everyday service created a feeling of insecurity: petty crimes and resistant actions were not separated and the gendarmes had to make difficult choices.25 How could they make the distinction in a context that was often violent? How to anticipate a colleague’s reactions when it came to either arresting a civilian or letting him ‘get away’? More fundamentally, the gendarmes were more and more often under the Germans’ command and arrested Jews, communists, resistants or refractory people. Between local conflicts, acceptances and general protests, the answers they gave to these questions were diverse. The part the gendarmes played in repression could be taken to extremes. In spring 1944, the ‘mobile gendarmerie’ near Paris created several firing squads in prisons for resistants condemned by Vichy’s ‘special sections’.26 As during the interwar period, gendarmes were then mobilized in order to guard internment camps or prisons. In the Netherlands, the camp of Westerbork that was used as a transit camp for Jews was placed under the Marechaussee’s exclusive responsibility, answering German authorities. In France, several camps were likewise guarded by gendarmes, as in Drancy.27 From a professional point of view, the situation was experienced as dangerous for upholding internal discipline. The gendarmes were neither familiar with such functions nor trained to perform them. The mobilized detachments were often temporary, and hierarchical control was weaker. Black marketeering and smuggling by gendarmes, as well as mistreatment cases, multiplied, sometimes necessitating disciplining the detachments in place.28 At first during the war, then before the judicial courts and at last the military tribunals, trials took place until 1950 to judge and denounce the faults of Drancy’s guards, by mixing patriotic and professional expectations.29 The opposition arguments were more of a disciplinary than political

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nature. The gendarmeries’ archives show clearly that what drew the officers’ attention was the impact of these guards’ behaviours on general gendarme discipline. During the occupation, although continuity with the pre-war period was formally preserved, the legal basis of the gendarmeries was increasingly distant from the organizational texts of the gendarmeries. Both the exceptional administrative measures aimed at arresting people on grounds of race, and judicial arrests or resisters, were largely controlled by the occupation authorities, overriding the laws of war and the gendarmes’ relationship with the law. The occupation represented, for the gendarmeries, a new paradigm of policing European societies. As gendarmes’ relations with internment show, they were in an unchartered territory, both victims and perpetrators. During the occupation, the definition of seclusion evolved, between judicial, administrative and ideological arguments but also in terms of scale, times, publics and consequences. For gendarmes, it was difficult to deal with this evolving situation, and to deal with the risk with which they lived. The impact of these new conditions of policing on gendarmes’ values and work is obvious. With the liberation, the troubles remained within the gendarmeries because the political context stays, in a first stage, challenging for the democratic authorities.

Still in Troubles? The Liberated Gendarmes The liberation was at once momentary and prolonged. In some respects, occupation realities continued. This becomes immediately clear from the gendarmes’ relationship to postwar internment, from summer 1944 until the early 1950s. Within the three gendarmeries – as in all freed countries – the period that followed the liberation was characterized by massive internments and arrests of those considered to have been collaborators, or regarded as dangerous for the political transition.30 Internments could be a preventive measure, a security measure and a sanction. Carried out in an emergency atmosphere in each of the three countries, they were essentially local initiatives, that went beyond what had been planned by the authorities in charge of the purge.31

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In all three countries gendarmes were interned, either by colleagues or by Resistance groups. As an internal phenomenon, the internment of gendarmes resulted in a major questioning of how the gendarmeries worked. Vertical hierarchical frameworks were overridden: some gendarmes arrested colleagues and superiors; men were suspended out of the regulatory framework. Traditional units were disrupted due to the arrest of some gendarmes for collaboration, while othershad sided with the Resistance. The phenomenon of gendarmes’ internment took place behind closed doors and spaces. The measures were mostly carried out within the garrison houses and the barracks. Therefore, little information leaked out. Nevertheless, they had a very strong internal impact in each institution, because of the hierarchical and professional troubles they brought.32 Insofar as it was external to the gendarmeries, this internment movement was far blurrier. Political and military authorities, administrative instances, police or intelligence forces and Resistance groups all took part in arresting gendarmes. Along with patriotic motives, this was also a political or competitive process to gain control over the main police forces after liberation. It was a violent process, and dangerous for the individual and collective security of the gendarmes. Some were kidnapped, then had to face physical aggression and violent interrogations.33 In France, some gendarmes were executed after having been arrested by resistants.34 The situation reflected a disfavourable image of the gendarmerie and confirmed their powerlessness to enforce order. The gendarmes faced criticism and were far from able to enforce the law. A symbolic example was the temporary deprivation of freedom the gendarmes experienced when they were forced to take part in popular and vindictive processions.35 This phenomenon was part of a many-sided movement contesting the gendarmeries’ role in the liberted countries. Officers gave clear orders to identify, locate and release secluded gendarmes as soon as possible, even if they had to face institutional sanctions afterwards.36 This measure, which was a difficult one, avoided further ruin of the legitimacy of the institutions on the one hand, and that of the central state, on the other. It guaranteed the legitimacy of the gendarmes’ presence in the national territory and convinced them to act firmly.

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Conflicts multiplied between Resistance movements and police institutions concerning the gendarmes’ ‘control’.37 In the mid term, the situation stabilized: it can be estimated that, by the end of 1944 for all already liberated areas (France, Belgium and the southern Netherlands), all interned gendarmes had been reintegrated into a legal and institutional process of administrative internment, and no longer isolated in camps, prisons or private jails. It is revealing that, at the time of German capitulation, although the gendarmes were still targeted, they were no longer subject to new detention measures. From spring 1945 onwards – and a bit later in the northern part of the Netherlands, just liberated – the nature of these detentions changed. The gendarmes were now interned following a judicial or legalized decision (they were convicted for collaboration). There were far fewer measures of this kind, and they were largely individualized. However, they still drew the attention of the gendarmeries’ leaders, who insisted that the condemned gendarmes had been expelled from the gendarmerie and did not have to be particularly heeded anymore (the Netherlands, Belgium).38 By contrast, in some cases, the gendarmeries developed a dynamic of institutional solidarity, which took the form of support for pardon requests or early release.39 The gendarmes’ internments were perceived as an opportunity to protect the gendarmes’ integrity and that of their institutions. Yet over time, criticisms multiplied. The gendarmeries’ lack of authority, partly resulting from the internments, was criticized by several officers. Some of them underlined the difficulty of going back to work for any previously interned gendarme. The latter had to face the population’s criticisms regarding patriotism, which often resulted in transfers.40 For the gendarmes, internment as such was a first psychological trauma. Later, gendarmes complained about the length of their internments. They especially underlined the resulting difficulties and financial losses,41 as well as the health issues caused by bad hygienic conditions.42 Lastly, they denounced the repressive nature of the measure, for they considered that they had only done their duty during the occupation.43 The institution partly agreed with this point of view by considering, in some purging procedures, the internment period as a sufficient sanction for actions during the war.

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Gendarmes, as a group, experienced seclusion on a large scale during and after liberation. During the autumn of 1944, the situation evolved daily. Internment was a frequent and often collective phenomenon. In France, the whole nineteenth Legion bis (Haute-Savoie) was laid off by the Resistance in the beginning of September 1944.44 On 18 September, forty-three officers and gendarmes were interned in Limoges by resistants.45 The link between these practices and the functions carried out by the gendarmes is obvious. Undoubtedly, gendarmes’ internment was one of the battlefields of the national authorities’ contestation and of their reaffirmation after the occupations. Ultimately, the political and institutional mobilization in favor of the gendarmes, even when they were proven collaborators, confirms the peculiar status of this socio-professional category in the political transition process of the liberation. This ‘particularism’ is related to the gendarmes’ role in the repression of wartime collaborators: they carried out arrests and enquiries, worked as guards in courts and tribunals and, in Belgium, even took care of executions of collaborators.46 The gendarmes had to struggle against extra-legal revenge processes, while also taking part in the legalization of seclusion processes while framing the resistance movements. The gendarmeries’ high degree of mobilization, their direct dependence on the central hierarchy and their geographic mobility were factors explaining their usefulness for these missions, which aimed at affirming the state’s authority. The gendarmeries were mobilized, as military forces, to guard various places of detention for collaborators, displaced persons or even German prisoners of war. This was not a simple task. The report of a gendarme affected to the camp of Casteau (Hainaut) leaves no doubt on the initial difficulties of the situation: Appalling scenes of brutality have taken place … Any intervention of the gendarmes with the staff I currently lead (32 men) could only result into a conflict I have managed to avoid until now … Through words and actions, the FI resistants are trying to weaken the guards’ and the gendarmes’ authority over the prisoners. We can clearly feel that they expect the opportunity to use their weapons against the gendarmerie, with whom many of them have a bone to pick.47

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The administration tried to extend its grasp on the various places of detention, in order to re-establish lawfulness and judicial order. This led to a particular organization of the surveillance of internment places. Inside, the gendarmes, as officials, had direct contact with the prisoners, whereas unofficial organizations had to keep some distance with the places of detention and had no direct contact with the interned people, staying outside the camps. In the Netherlands, the Militair Gezag’s48 officers had difficulties taking control of internment structures. In the middle term, the police (more precisely, the police units under direct supervision of Militair Gezag’s officers), who were largely mobilized, were among the keys to the success in legalizing the internment process.49 The gendarmerie’s leaders quickly started complaining about this energy- and time-consuming mission. In late September 1944, Lieutenant-Colonel Girard, head of the French gendarmerie, gave the following order: ‘every level of the gendarmerie is to immediately take the necessary steps towards responsible authorities to withdraw [the gendarmes] from these excessively numerous guard missions’.50 In Belgium, in February 1945, General Dethise indicated that 500 gendarmes were dispatched to guard the camps.51 The following month, this allegedly rose to 600.52 The officers’ reluctance to carry out this type of mission did not result only from staff issues. It also had to do with identity concerns. In addition to the actual tensions with some resistants or paramilitary forces, hierarchical considerations also had to be taken into account. Upholding the gendarmerie’s internal discipline was a major source of concern, because some gendarmes could be corrupted so as to provide better supplies, make mail exchange easier or arrange forbidden visits. For instance, one gendarme was expelled from the Belgian gendarmerie in November 1944. ‘Wearing his uniform, he went to an internment camp where his concubine was interned, and kissed her several times saying he loved her, in the presence of the camp’s employees, who were outraged.’53 With the political transition, the exceptional character of internment policies in European states continued (administrative versus judicial and ideological; official versus unofficial; in the national territory versus abroad …). Several types of seclu-

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sion measures were organized. Furthermore, the plurality of the groups involved in organizing internment or arrest is remarkable. Once again, gendarmes were at the heart of the events. The identity troubles coming from the role they played in guarding camps or from the internment some of them endured remained pronounced. It would take time to restore a formal normality in this matter.

Gendarmeries, State Service and Seclusion in Crisis Periods Around World War II, the Western gendarmeries were, in different roles, at the heart of deprivation of freedom and state seclusion processes. In a period of massive arrests, during which some categories of the population were discriminated against on grounds of nationality, race or political convictions,54 the gendarmeries were a tool. Their tasks went beyond the gendarmes’ traditional role. In view of the plurality of seclusion forms in war periods (administrative seclusions versus judicial seclusions, seclusions ordered by the state versus seclusions ordered by the Germans, diversity of places of detention), this characteristic is to be understood from the point of view of the functions carried out by the gendarmes in contemporary society: acting both as servants of the state and as the armed wing of the state, gendarmes were easy to mobilize. Their assets were their centralized commandment, their military nature, their duty to obey and their assumed political neutrality. Emergency management, national affirmation and transition towards legality shaped the gendarmerie’s role within seclusion policies. The gendarmes were mobilized whenever existing structures proved insufficient. During the years around World War II, their mobilization underlined the practical, material, logistical and political issues that resulted from seclusions. At the time of the liberation, they carried out guard missions that made them participate in the restoration of the rule of law and the national and unifying justice. Yet their presence testified to the limits of the state, which had difficulties affirming its presence and authority. During the occupation, the gendarmes’ presence enabled the occupied authorities to strengthen the national interest and achieve

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a better balance with the German authority. Resorting to the gendarmes probably enabled them to avoid some reluctance of the judicial authorities or specialized groups such as prison guards towards some ‘extreme’ forms of seclusion. Resorting to the gendarmes for managing seclusion policies was not supported unanimously. An opposition between individual gendarmes and their institutions led to tension between them and the Resistance or the Germans. From an individual point of view, the refusals (that is to say, when the gendarmes acted according to their free will) are difficult to reconstruct, to document and to explain. From a hierarchical point of view, the refusal expressed itself by reluctance to make arrests. This reluctance was not interpreted as moral in nature, related to the reasons for the arrests or the identity of those who were interned, but was seen purely in relation to disciplinary consequences. These missions implied the distortion of the hierarchical bond, material temptations, risks of abuse and corruption, while preventing the gendarmes from performing their traditional missions. In the three countries studied, concerns focused on perpetuating the gendarmerie’s values, rather than on the issue of the legitimacy or legality of the assigned missions. These stakes of institutional cohesion beyond regime transitions were linked to the legality and legitimacy crisis that the gendarmeries went through during the war. For the first time in their history, the gendarmes were also victims of the seclusion processes: as prisoners of war at first, then as hostages and finally as collaborators. These massive internments had a major impact on the place of the gendarmes in society, as well as on their morale. In order to fulfil their missions, the gendarmes had to feel supported as members of a specific and protected group. Beyond issues related to public order, the officers’ efforts to identify, locate and protect interned gendarmes limited the impact of the violence to which they were subjected. Between the mid 1930s and 1950, the gendarmes’ relationship with seclusion was ambivalent: disciplinary, identity and hierarchical aspects as well as legitimacy, legality and obedience issues combined to create a context in which the normality and abnormality of the practices were mixed. These ambiguous relationships were a determining element in the crisis through which the

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gendarmerie went during the war, torn between service to the state and to the nation. Yet, in the end, the situation went back to normal. Regime changes had no long-term influence on gendarmerie’s relationships to internment. More than the ideological background of seclusion policies, the situation focused in exceptional or normal periods on ‘technical’ factors around internment or seclusion. After the war, the demobilization of the gendarmerie redefined the gendarmes’ relationship to detention. However, in crisis periods, the gendarmes were likely to be mobilized throughout the twentieth century to face ‘emergency’ situations. In recent years, the role they have played in managing migration flows undoubtedly provides food for further thought around these questions.55 Jonas Campion is Associate Researcher to IrHis, U. Lille SHS – Lille 3 and Invited Lecturer in history at UCLouvain. From 2011 to 2015, he was FRS-FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher attached to the Centre of Law and Justice History (UCLouvain, Belgium). He was working on a project entitled Military Police Institutions in XXth Century: A ‘State in the State’? Sociopolitical Stakes, Structural Changes and Professional Practices of Belgian Gendarmerie (1918– 1957). He gained his PhD in history at UCLouvain and Paris IV Sorbonne (2009) on European Gendarmeries after World War II (especially the purges), published in 2011 by André Versaille Editeur (Les gendarmes belges, français et néerlandais à la sortie de la Seconde Guerre mondiale). He is also working within the research programme Justice and Populations. The Belgian Experience in International Perspective, 1795–2015. (Interuniversity Attraction Pole P7/22, Belgian State – Belgian Science Policy).

Notes  1.

German military administration in France and Belgium versus German civil administration in the Netherlands. ‘Native’ administrative authorities who were granted more or less defined political powers in Belgium and in the Netherlands, as opposed to the political regime of the French State. The rhythms of liberation were also different in each country: from June to Sep-

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 2.

 3.  4.  5.  6.

 7.  8.

 9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

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tember 1944 in France, in September 1944 for Belgium and in two phases (September 1944 and May 1945) for the Netherlands. It is also due to the unknown situation lived in 1940. In 1914, German army has no choice to make about gendarmerie in occupied Belgium, because the institution followed the retreat of the Belgian military power, as part of the national army. C Cazals, La gendarmerie sous l’Occupation (Paris: La Musse, 1994), 24–25. W Van Geet, La gendarmerie sous l’Occupation (Braine: Collet, 1992), 23. L de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog: deel 4 : mei ’40–maart ’41, eerste helft (Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1972), 259–64. Like Capitaine H, who only came back to Belgium in June 1945. See Collection privée du colonel Claessens Jambes (hereafter Claessens), file capitaine H, doc 580/01–02, extrait de matricule, s.d., and déclaration du capitaine H, 21 June 1945. L Thyes, La Gendarmerie française face à l’occupant allemand 1940–1943 (master’s thesis, Paris IV-Sorbonne, 2005), 55–57. G Delage, ‘Ministère de la Défense nationale. Définition des services accomplis en opérations de guerre ou sur le pied de guerre à partir du 26 juin 1940’, Le Progrès de la gendarmerie, organe de défense des intérêts de la Gendarmerie et de la Garde républicaine 36(23) (1947), 4–5. Around forty men in the Belgian gendarmerie just after D-Day. Van Geet, La gendarmerie sous l’Occupation, 185–88. In the Netherlands, we can estimate that 1.3 per cent of the staff was missing in the summer 1944. J Smeets, De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse politie. Verdeelheid en eenheid in het rijkspolitieapparaat (Amsterdam: Boom, 2007), 377. See E Chevet, ‘Les logiques du passage au maquis dans la gendarmerie. Réalités et limites de la désobéissance’, Force publique. Revue de la société nationale histoire et patrimoine de la gendarmerie 2 (2007), 123–40. F Govin, ‘La garde républicaine à l’heure de la Libération de Paris’, Sous le plumet rouge 106(2004), 20–27. See the case of colonel Feenstra in Arnhem (Nationaal Archief Den Haag; hereafter NA), Centraal Archief Bijzondere Rechtspleging 1945–83 (hereafter CABR; 2.09.09, n°65259) or Colonel Van Coppenolle’s speechs in Belgium (Service historique de la police Bruxelles, hereafter SHP), Fonds Tervueren, 2, compte-rendu de la visite du colonel Van Coppenolle à Arlon, 04 March 1943; Archives du Palais du Royal Bruxelles, Secrétariat Léopold III, compte-rendu de la réunion des commandants de compagnie au bureau du colonel Van Coppenolle, 12 February 1943. ‘Ne doit pas scruter sa conscience’. Archives Nationales Paris, GPRF, Quatrième et Cinquième République. De Gaulle avant 1959, 3 AG, n°346, ‘la gendarmerie ne doit pas scruter sa conscience’. Copie d’un ordre du 09/06/1943, 27 July 1943. W Van Den Hoek, De geschiedenis van het wapen der Koninklijke Marechaussee (Den Haag: Stichting Ons Wapen, 1990), 419–20. SHP, file lieutenant-général Dethise, extrait de matricule, s.d.; SHP, Fonds Tervueren, 1, lettre du général Leroy à l’auditeur militaire, 24 January 1948. SHP, file maréchal-des-logis Q., rapport de l’officier du service des enquêtes, 21 January 1947.

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17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26.

27.

28. 29. 30.

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Claessens, file major B., doc 425, note n°094/03 du général Leroy au général Bourguignon, 10 October 1944. Service historique de la défense – département gendarmerie Vincennes (hereafter SHD-DGN), Direction générale de la gendarmerie nationale, 1A 188 (hereafter 1A), n°105, fiche de renseignements, s.d.; Claessens, file major T., doc 546/25, note de renseignements, 9 October 1945. Police fédérale, direction générale des personnels Bruxelles, file gendarme S., lettre du général Dethise au ministre de la Défense, 16 February 1946. Cazals, La gendarmerie sous l’Occupation, 69. SHP, Registres utilisés à la gendarmerie (hereafter Registres), Annuaire des officiers, 1944, 1945–46. P Giolitto, Histoire de la Milice (Paris: Perrin, 1997). É Alary, ‘Les années noires du maintien de l’ordre : l’exemple de la gendarmerie nationale entre omnipotence allemande et emprise de la Milice’, in S Martens and M Vaisse (eds), Frankreich und Deutschland im Krieg (November 1942 – Herbst 1944). Okkupation, Kollaboration, Résistance. La France et l’Allemagne en guerre (novembre 1942–automne 1944). Occupation, Collaboration, Résistance (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 2000), 555–70; J Delplanque, Les fusillés de Charleroi : un aspect de la répression des collaborations par la Justice militaire belge, conseil de Guerre de Charleroi et Cour militaire de Bruxelles, 1944–1948 (master’s thesis, Université catholique de Louvain, 2001), 75–77. SHD-DGN, 1A 427, note n°346/2, s.d. In this context, some arrests were also carried when units of gendarmerie go to Maquis after Normandy landing. See E Chevet, Gendarmerie et Maquis sous l’Occupation en France, 1943–1944 (PhD thesis, Université de Bourgogne, 2011), 542–50. SHP, file gendarme A; NA, Bureau Juridische Zaken. Zuivering van de Afdeling Politie (further Juridische Zaken), 2.09.54.01, n°5541. P Dubois, ‘La garde républicaine de Paris dans le jeu trouble des forces de l’ordre sous Vichy’, Force publique. Revue de la société nationale histoire et patrimoine de la gendarmerie 2 (2007), 60–65. V Tordjman, Le rôle des gendarmes en poste au camp de Drancy (master’s thesis, Paris I, 2001). See also D Epelbaum, Obéir. Les déshonneurs du capitaine Vieux, Drancy 1941–1944 (Paris: Stock, 2009). SHD-DGN, 1A 242, n°689, gendarme M. SHD-DGN, 1A 208, dossier n°2842 ; 1A 197, n°1585, lieutenant P. ; 1A 198, n°329, adjudant L. About internment during purges see L Huyse and S Dhondt, La répression des collaborations. 1942–1952. Un passé toujours présent (Brussels: CRISP, 1993), 23–57; M Conway, ‘Justice in Post War Belgium: Popular Passions and Political Realities’, Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent 4 (2007), 7–34; F Balace, ‘Les hoquets de la liberté’, Jours de Guerre 19(2) (1995), 75–133; D Peschanski, La France des camps : l’internement 1938–1946 (Paris: Gallimard, 2002); AD Belifante, In plaats van Bijltjesdag. De geschiedenis van de bijzondere rechtspleging na de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1978); K Groen, ‘“Er heerst orde en rust” … Chaotisch Nederland tussen september 1944 en december 1945’ (Nijmegen: B Gottmer, 1979); H Grevers and L Van Haecke, ‘The Use of Administrative Internment after WWII. The Different Policies of the Belgian and Dutch Governments’, in D Luyten, M De Koster and X Rousseaux (eds), Justice in War-

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31.

32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

43.

44. 45. 46. 47.

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time and Revolutions: Europe, 1795–1950/Justice en temps de guerre et révolution: Europe, 1795–1950 (Brussels: AGR/PAI Just-His, 2012), 287–304. J Campion, Le rétablissement de la légalité policière après la Seconde Guerre mondiale : les gendarmeries belge, française, et la Koninklijke Marechaussee néerlandaise (PhD thesis, Université catholique de Louvain-Paris IV Sorbonne, 2009), 176–84. SHD-DGN, 1A 190, n°179, chef-d’escadron G., Personnel objet de sanctions. Notices individuelles modèle n°1, 10 November 1944. Archives de l’Auditorat militaire Bruxelles (hereafter AM), case lieutenant V, mémoire de défense, s.d. SHD-DGN, Compagnie de gendarmerie du Pas-de-Calais, 2E 34, note n°397/2, 04 November 1944. In Craon (France), when Americans arrived, a gendarme ‘was grabbed by civilians who took away his kepi, removed his stripes and decorations. Then, he was forced to take part in a procession on an uncovered American car in the streets around his house, and had to face the boos of the crowd’. SHDDGN, 1A 212, n°3352, maréchal des logis G., rapport de la CERAT au ministre, s.d. SHD-DGN, 1A 113, notes n°2087 et 2088/Gend/PE du directeur de la gendarmerie, 13 October 1944; SHP, Registres, notes de corps, dépêche n°SPM/ I/N.5.278, 19 October 1944. NA, CABR, 2.09.09, n°70536, Brief aan de Procureur Fiscaal van ’s-Hertogenbosch, 27 December 1947. See, for example, speeches of the corporatist journal Ons Wapen, for all Marechaussee’s members. For example, Colonel P, commander of the Lille Legion, helped by the gendarmerie when asking grace for his sentence to one year of detention. SHDDGN, 1A 58, note n°53099/Gend/PG du colonel Meunier au commandant de compagnie du Pas-de-Calais, 18 September 1945. SHP, file maréchal des logis M., rapport de l’officier inspecteur du Service des enquêtes, 19 April 1945. NA, Juridische Zaken, 2.09.54.01, n°2071, brief van G. voor het Fiscaal Procureur van Arnhem, 29 January 1949. AM, case lieutenant S, lettre au ministre de la Défense, 02 February 1945; NA, Juridische Zaken, 2.09.54.01, n°4212, rapport – MG ’s-Hertogenbosch, 13 July 1945. AM, case maréchal des logis D.R., lettre du député Tahon au ministre de la Défense, 10 November 1945; case maréchal des logis N., lettre de l’avocat de N. à l’auditeur militaire, 27 August 1946. SHD-DGN, 1A 484, rapport du lieutenant-colonel Girard sur la situation de la gendarmerie du territoire métropolitain, 29 September 1944. SHD-DGN, 1A 53, liste des gradés et gendarmes arrêtés le 18/09/1944, 18 September 944. Campion, Le rétablissement de la légalité policière, 149–53, 158. ‘Des scènes de brutalité révoltante ont eu lieu. … Toute intervention de la part de la gendarmerie avec les forces dont je dispose actuellement (32 hommes) n’aurait d’autre résultat que de provoquer un conflit, que j’ai jusqu’à présent réussi à éviter. … Par leurs propos et par leurs actes, les FI cherchent

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48.

49. 50.

51. 52.

53.

54.

55.

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à amoindrir l’autorité des surveillants et des gendarmes sur les détenus, on sent nettement qu’ils n’attendant que l’occasion de faire usage de leurs armes contre la gendarmerie, avec laquelle bon nombre d’entre eux ont eu maille à partir’. Service général renseignement et sécurité – archives Evere (further SGRS), Cabinet du ministre, G2 1945, rapport de l’adjudant Sandron (chef du service de surveillance du Camp d’Internement de Casteau) au commandant du district de Mons, 17 October 1944. Dutch Military Authority, representing the government in liberated areas, in charge of maintaining order, initiating purges procedures and ensure political transition. DCL Schoonoord, Het ‘Cirsus Kruls’. Militair Gezag in Nederland, 1944–1946 (Amsterdam: NIOD, 2011). ‘Arrestatie en vrijlating van politieke verdachte personen en organisatie der politieke politie’, Politieblad voor het bevrijde Nederlands gebied 2(1945), 4–12. ‘Chaque échelon de Gendarmerie d’entreprendre dès maintenant, les démarches nécessaires auprès des autorités locales responsables pour faire libérer [les gendarmes] de ces gardes trop nombreuses’. SHD-DGN, 1A 484, note du lieutenant-colonel Girard aux légions, 28 September 1944. SGRS, Cabinet du ministre, G2 1945, note du ministre de la Défense au ministre de la Justice, 02 February 1945. Archives Générales du Royaume Bruxelles, Fonds de l’activité du HCSE, AA 1311, n°1197, note du Haut commissaire au ministre de la Justice, 26 March 1945. ‘En tenue, dans un camp d’internement où sa concubine se trouvait enfermée, l’a embrassée à diverses reprises en lui adressant des propos d’amour, en présence et au grand scandale des employés du camp’. Claessens, notes de corps de la gendarmerie, doc 225, ordre n°126/bis, 29 November 1944. See J Kotek and P Rigoulot, Le siècle des camps: détention, concentration, extermination: cent ans de mal radical (Paris: JC Lattès, 2000); J Kotek, ‘Camps et centres d’extermination au XXe siècle : essai de classification’, Les cahiers de la Shoah 1(7) (2003), 45–85. N Fischer, ‘Jeux de regards. Surveillance disciplinaire et contrôle associatif dans les centres de rétention administrative’, Genèses 75(2009), 45–65.

Afterword

An Essay on Space and Time Jane Caplan

W

riting an afterword is rather like being asked to give a comment on a conference panel, but with the crucial difference that it lacks the accompanying dynamic of responses from the panellists and discussion with the audience. If I nevertheless approach this afterword in a similarly conversational spirit, it is in the hope that this book’s readers and contributors will see it as furthering the dialogue which the book has already opened – the more so since its subject is relatively novel, as the editors’ introduction explains. Like any introduction to a collection of thematically linked essays, theirs has a well-defined programmatic task to accomplish: to legitimize the theme and to situate the individual essays in relation to it. The writer of an afterword, by contrast, is allowed to range more freely and eclectically over the field of ideas generated by her reading of the book. I would like to use this freedom to elaborate the suggestive relationship between the empirical studies collected in this book and the current state of research into the theory and practices of incarceration. The title I have given this short essay may sound excessively ambitious, but it is intended to identify two core features of modern regimes of incarceration that have been the focus of both empirical and theoretical discussion. Let me begin by picking up where the editors’ introduction ended, with their comments on the new concept of ‘carceral geography’, a term associated in particular with the work of the British Notes for this chapter begin on page 171.

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historical geographer Dominique Moran and her fellow editors of the 2013 book Carceral Spaces.1 This is a particular version of ‘the spatial turn’ (a term I dislike, but it is an unavoidable shorthand) taken by human geographers who, under the banner of globalization, are concerned with the increases in and mounting overlap between the imprisonment of criminals and the detention of migrants, an overlap which has generated the portmanteau word ‘crimmigration’.2 These global processes are contemporary manifestations of the similarly large-scale changes studied by historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the international dynamics of imperialism and colonialism, the flows of indentured, slave and convict labour, and the varieties of coercion, confinement and surveillance that these engendered domestically and overseas. And, of course, both geographers and historians, including the contributors to this volume, consider space and mobility not only on a national or global scale but also down the successive rungs of the spatial ladder to the most intimate spaces of camp block or prison cell. Carceral geography as a concept originates in Foucault’s proposition of the spatial and institutional ‘carceral archipelago’ or ‘carceral continuum’ that radiated out from the point of condensation that he identified in Mettray. Foucault almost certainly borrowed the term from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago (1973), which we know he had read, although this title is not cited in the bibliography of Discipline and Punish. At any rate, in a first expansion of the term beyond its application by Solzhenitsyn to the Soviet system of labour camps, Foucault’s archipelago was composed of a ‘continuum’ of disciplinary sites and practices that exceeded the strict limits of penality defined in criminal law. They ‘diffused penitentiary techniques into the most innocent disciplines’ and created a ‘carceral network [which] reaches all the disciplinary mechanisms that function throughout society’.3 One impulse in social and cultural theory has been to reinvent or appropriate this term for ever-expanding disciplinary or exclusionary spaces – so, for example, in the concept of ‘transcarceration’ launched in the 1980s4 or in the more extreme case of Edward Soja’s application of Foucault’s carceral archipelago to the contemporary city as a whole.5 Against this, a more critical response to Foucault has frequently been urged by historians, including the

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editors of this volume.6 On closer inspection, the institutions and practices composing ‘the’ carceral archipelago or continuum reveal substantial differences that call into question a single model of exclusionary and disciplinary space. What about the axis of time? Zygmunt Bauman’s much-cited chronological characterization of the twentieth century as ‘the century of camps’ offers a neat chronological parallel to the spatial proposition of the carceral archipelago. Both are propositions about the character of modernity, although Baumann’s phrase can be read either phenomenologically or historically: to mean that the twentieth century is constitutively defined by its camps; or, alternatively, that camps are a product of the twentieth century, not any other century. In any case, as with Foucault, so too with Bauman a pithy characterization can either be adopted (contra Elias) as an intellectual signpost to the deformations of the modern, or alternatively critiqued as too schematic and ahistorical to serve more than a rhetorical purpose.7 But few of those who cite Bauman seem to notice that this phrase, the title of a short essay published in 1995, is not a declaration but, on the contrary, is followed by a question mark. And his essay ends not with an affirmative answer to the question but by gesturing towards a more optimistic if uncertain alternative: that critical reflection on the tendencies that produced the camps might yield a different label for the twentieth century, the ‘Century of Awakening’.8 The essays in this volume do not offer any clear answer to Bauman’s question, and in fact it is not entirely clear what his alternative – thrown up at the very end of his essay – might mean in practice. But they do complicate the question in interesting ways. Bauman’s topos is the ‘camp’, but not primarily as a site of detention, or at least that is not its main purpose. Bauman’s twentieth-century camp is an institution for systematically and physically disposing of people who stand in the way of improving visions of rationalized social order, and his models are therefore Auschwitz and the gulags. These are precisely not the institutions discussed in this volume, any more than its subject can be summarized as a carceral continuum. Research has, moreover, travelled well beyond the once common and misleading equations of ‘camp’ with ‘concentration camp’ and concentration camp with ‘extermination camp’.9 These differentiations would have been

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impossible without the intensive efforts of empirical research into the Nazi concentration camps undertaken since the 1990s, which restored these often forgotten or misunderstood histories to the light of day.10 But in a further step, the present collection is one of the relatively much smaller number of studies to date that examine sites and objectives of wartime detention that far exceed the concept of the camp. Although some of these essays do look at camps as sites of large-scale civilian internment, and although between them they range across Europe and into the colonies, the effect of the collection as a whole is to undo the monolithic character of the concepts of space and time discussed above. The editors do not want to vacate the theoretical terrain entirely, and it is no doubt for this reason that their introduction invokes, if rather cautiously, the possibility that Nazi-occupied Europe constituted ‘a single integrated system of internment, incarceration, and detention’. This does raise interesting questions about the ways in which one might analyse the range of institutions and objectives discussed in these essays – from workhouse to jail to prisoner-of-war camp to youth detention centre. To speak of a ‘single integrated system’ is not quite the same as proposing a ‘carceral continuum’ or a century of the camp. It suggests instead a structural alternative to these phenomenological propositions, one which is capable of being tested empirically and is therefore likely to be more persuasive historically. So far, the research embodied in these essays does not provide convincing evidence of this ‘single integrated system’. I am also doubtful whether further research will strengthen this particular claim, even though I agree that conceptual clarity and theoretically informed perspectives are integral to historical research. But a collection which has deliberately brought together widely differing perspectives on a very varied range of institutions, objectives, agents and practices is less likely to establish general patterns at this juncture than to expose readers to the scale of specificities and differences that the blind spots of research to date have neglected. From this perspective, I propose to emphasize some of the insights into the relationship between war, political violence and large-scale detention that I think are the core and the strength of this collection.

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One of the most striking of these is Alicia Quintero Maqua’s characterization of Franco’s political prisons as a ‘prolongation of the culture of war and persecution of anything considered antiSpanish’. This militarized concept of internal enemies suggests a specific explanation for the lawless retributive brutality of these prisons and is certainly borne out by the experience of political prisoners under other Fascist regimes. At the same time, it underlines a contrast with the detention of actual prisoners-of-war (POWs) in World War II, whose theoretically protected status was underwritten precisely by their withdrawal from the field of battle and, for them, the suspension of hostilities. Their treatment was also subject to international inspection by neutrals and the Red Cross, and to the reciprocal interests that in principle sustained a rough balance in belligerents’ treatment of their captured enemies. This could work both ways: it might deter systematic mistreatment, but it also could produce a reprisal-like race to the bottom as belligerents reacted, for example, to a reduction in standards of nutrition or delays in repatriation by their opponents with reciprocal measures. The status of POW has on occasion been something functionally if not juridically equivalent to that of the hostage, exposed to better or worse treatment depending on circumstances. As a figure of wartime detention, the hostage – whether privileged POWs, such as the British officers held in Colditz, or groups of high-status civilians, such as the so-called Austauschjuden – has attracted less systematic historical attention than one might expect and would be worth investigating further. Beyond POW camps, there was unlikely to be any external power to oversee the experience of detention under the conditions of war and dictatorship described in this volume. The mistreatment of civilian prisoners was, as the editors point out, legitimated by their status as internal enemies, and given the repression of civil society organs, its conditions were mitigated only to the extent that the camp or prison perimeters were porous to the family and friends of the incarcerated. Even after the end of the war, conditions might not improve immediately, as Christian De Vito’s essay shows, while Sarah Frank’s discussion of the politically motivated support for colonial POWs by the Vichy government appears as a wartime exception.

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Virtually all the essays discuss the inadequate provision for inmates, which ranged from deficient to intolerable, and can be regarded as a definitional element of mass incarceration. Whether held in camps or cellular prisons, inmates were tormented by overcrowding, insufficient food and inadequate or absent medical care. This can to some extent be explained as the effect of the improvisation that accompanied the sudden intake of detainees, whether the numbers were on the scale of mass political arrests or defeated armies, or the rather smaller scale described, for example, by Esther Zwinkels. Contemporary evidence suggests that even in experienced and well-regulated prison systems, comparatively small increases in daily intakes can cause big problems of logistics and morale,11 but the systems of incarceration described here far exceeded this kind of shortcoming. It was not just improvisation or incompetence that governed the situation of inmates but, rather, the fact that their welfare was not a primary concern, and that neglect shaded almost automatically into deliberate mistreatment. Following on from this, a number of more mundane but important questions about the organization and operation of these sites of detention call for further investigation. These include the behaviour of guards and the internal regulation of inmate behaviour that feature in some of the essays, but we also need more systematic attention to questions of design, construction, administration, financing, chains of command and staffing in relation to these institutions. The exploitation of inmate labour was a prominent and virtually universal feature of this calculation, and it figures in many of the essays, but it is just one element in the wider financial and moral economies of mass detention. The essays by Maqua and De Vito in particular show how important these economies are to a full understanding of the functioning of the prison system and the experience of inmates. What political, military or other institutional authorities were responsible in other cases? What premises governed the financial costs of detention: the assessment, allocation and supervision of the funds needed for the initial construction or conversion of the physical plant of prisons, detention centres and camps, for the everyday costs of inmate supervision and maintenance, and for the selection and training of

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guards, warders and other personnel? An assumption that it was not worth spending scarce governmental funds on essentially surplus populations surely acted as one of the pressures that forced standards down to the minimum; the reverse policy discussed in Frank’s essay stands out as anomalous in this company. And a related question is the contradiction between the disciplined regulation of inmate life that was the norm in theory, and the actual regimes of patronage and corruption that in practice governed relations among inmates and between inmates and guards, as evidence from the intensively studied German concentration camps and ghettos demonstrates.12 My final point concerns the chronology of regime change that the essays discuss. While not on the grand scale drawn up by Bauman, this tighter chronology has its principal logic in two trajectories: the transitions from peace to war and war to peace, and the effects of changes of political regime on the structures and personnel of incarceration. It is war that produces the distinction between civilian and soldier, yet as these essays show, it is also war that confounds this difference by militarizing many aspects of civilian detention, notably by the rhetorical conversion of political prisoners into enemies and by metastasizing that emblem of military organization, the camp. As far as regime change is concerned, the intricacies of collaboration among police and prison personnel, discussed most directly by Jonas Campion and Aurore François, can be juxtaposed to the imperviousness of the physical structures of incarceration that is featured in Thomas Irmer’s essay in particular, with buildings and sites moved effortlessly from the service of one regime to another. Here at this mundane level, it seems appropriate finally to speak of a ‘carceral continuum’ in time and space. Only a disruption enforced, if at all, by active challenge endows these vessels of exclusion with the memorial and monumental status they merit. Jane Caplan is Professor Emeritus of modern European history and Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford; Visiting Professor at Birkbeck, University of London; and Marjorie Walter Goodhart Professor Emeritus of European history at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. Her work on the documentation of individual identity in modern Europe includes Written on the Body.

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The Tattoo in European and American History (London/Princeton, 2000) and Documenting Individual Identity. The Development of State Practices in the Modern World (with John Torpey; Princeton, 2001), as well as numerous essays. She is currently working on identity and identification in Nazi Germany.

Notes  1.

 2.

 3.  4.  5.  6.

 7.

 8.

 9.

D Moran, N Gill and D Conlon (eds), Carceral Spaces. Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). The concept of legal geography, a somewhat earlier coinage, deserves to be brought into closer contact with this literature; see e.g. NK Blomley, Law, Space and the Geographies of Power (London: Guilford Press, 1994); NK Blomley, D Delaney and RT Ford (eds), The Legal Geographies Reader: Law, Power and Space (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001); and more recently, F von Benda-Beckmann, K von Benda-Beckmann and AMO Griffths (eds), Spatializing Law. An Anthropological Geography of Law in Society (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). JP Stumpf, ‘The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, and Sovereign Power’, in JA Dowler and J Xaver Inda (eds), Governing Immigration through Crime. A Reader (Stanford, CA: Stanford Social Sciences, 2013), 59–76. M Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth: Vintage Books, 1979), 297ff. See W Wesley Johnson, ‘Transcarceration and Social Control Policy: The 1980s and Beyond’, Crime & Delinquency 42(1) (1996), 114–26. E Soja, Postmetropolis. Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2002), 298–322. The historians’ critique is usefully summarized in M Gibson, ‘Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison’, American Historical Review 116(4) (2011), 1040–63. See e.g. the interview with Ulrich Herbert, in iz3w 239, ‘Jahrhundert der Lager’ (1999), in which Herbert formulates a historically specific account of the origins and trajectories of camps in the twentieth century. Z Bauman, ‘A Century of Camps?’, in P Beilharz (ed.), The Bauman Reader (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001), 266–80. This awkward question mark is perhaps the reason why the editorial introduction to this volume cites not Bauman but J Kotek and P Rigoulot, Le siècle des camps, as the source for this characterization. AJ Kaminski, Konzentrationslager 1896 bis heute. Funktion. Typologie (Stuttgart: Piper, 1982) pioneered many of the approaches that have now become commonplace. For the most recent research in this direction, see B Greiner and A Kramer (eds), Welt der Lager. Zur ‘Erfolgsgeschichte’ einer Institution (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2013), as well as C Jahr and J Thiel (eds), Lager vor

172

Jane Caplan

Auschwitz. Gewalt und Integration im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Metropol-Verlag, 2013). 10. Emblematic of this now flourishing literature are the multi-volume projects edited by W Benz and B Distel, Geschichte der Konzentrationslager 1933–1945 (Berlin: Metropol, 2001); W Benz, B Distel and A Königseder, Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager (vols. 1–9; Munich: Beck, 2005–9); and see also G Megargee (ed.), The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933–1945 (vol. 1; Washington, DC: Indiana University Press, 2009). 11. An example of the impact on resources is the transfer into custody of remand and sentenced prisoners at the rate of 100 a day after the 2010 riots in the UK; see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14583562 (consulted 30 July 2012). 12. For an overview, see F Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure. Korruption in der NSZeit (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2004).

Index

Names Abetz, Otto, 56 Aly, Götz , 111–112 Ayaß, Wolfgang, 111 Tomé, Amancio, 19 Ángela Cenarro, 21 Badoglio, Pietro, 33 Barker, A.J., 62 Bauman, Zygmunt, 166 Bettiol, Guiseppe, 38 Block, A.S., 92 Caplan, Jane, 5, 6, 50 Carlos, Gil , 22 Carretta, Donato, 34 Coppenolle, Emielvan, 160 De Gaulle, Charles, 58, 160 De Pietro, Michele, 48 Dethise, Oscar-Eugène, 156 Diponegoro, 82, 103 El Mouldi, Benahssen, 60 Elias, Norbert, 3, 166 Einthoven, Louis, 97 Evans, Jennifer, 112, 119 Feenstra, Jacob Eduard, 160 Felderhoff, H.A., 92 Foot, John, 39 Foucault, Michel, 3, 4, 165, 166 Fraenkel, Ernst, 50 Franco, Francisco, 15–29, 168 Garland, David, 26 Gnimagnon, 62

Gruchmann, Lothar, 50 Hattum, W.F.C. van, 92 Himmler, Heinrich, 118 Hitler, Adolf, 67, 84, 133 Hobsbawm, Eric, 16 Honecker, Erich, 120, 121 Huyse, Luc, 128 Ippoliti, Vincenzo, 40 Jackson, Julian, 56 Kielstra, Johannes Coenraad, 95 Kollwitz, Käthe, 114 Lambers, Bernard Jan, 100 Lawler, Nancy, 58 Leone Giovanni, 38 Levi, Primo, 25 Logemann, Johan H.A., 92 Lyautey, Ines, 61–62 Manci, Duilio, 40 Marracino, Guido, 34 Moran, Dominique, 165 Mosse, George.L., 30 Mussolini, Benito, 33, 35 Núñez, Mirta, 23 Pétain, Philippe, 53 Pisenti, Piero, 39, 41 Raccis, Eficio, 40 Racine, Aimée, 131–132 Rake, August, 118 Rathenau, Walther, 114 Rojas, Antonio, 23 Scapini, Georges, 55, 56, 66 Scarmure, M., 139

174

Césaire, Aimé, 61 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, 61 Soja, Edward, 165 Solzhenitzyn, Alexander, 165 Spierenburg, Pieter, 4 Spiewok, Karl, 115 Spoor, Simon Hendrik, 93 Tilly, Charles, 5 Tjarda van Starkenborch Stachouwer, Alidius, 85 Toeschi, Alessandro, 36 Togliatti, Palmiro, 43 Vinyes, Ricard, 25 Wachsmann, Nikolaus, 5, 38 Wauters, Edouard, 139 Wilker, Karl, 114 Wylie, Neville, 66

Geographic Algeria, 60, 61, 42 Ardennes (France), 58 Bali, 82 Bandung, 96 Benninghausen, 111 Bonaire, 108 Bordeaux, 58 Brittany, 58, 63 Craon, 162 Curacao, 108 Dortmund, 111 French Indochina, 53, 58, 61, 71 French West Indies, 53 Guinea, 61 Huy, 149 Indonesia, 82, 85, 89, 90, 99, 101 Japan, 58, 81, 89, 94–102 Kalimantan (Borneo), 82 Labenne, 63 Les Landes, 58 Lichtenberg, 110–123 Limoges, 155 Loiret, 63 Madagascar, 53, 61 Morocco, 61 Nitry, 70 Prussia, 111, 113

Index

Rummelsburg, 110–123 Saint-Jean sur Erve, 78 Saxony, 114 Selle-Craonnaise, 71 Senegal, 61 Surabaya, 92 Suriname, 95, 98 Switzerland, 114 Thuringia, 114 United Kingdom, 72 Upper Volta, 61 Verdun, 53 Vichy, 72–79, 147–151

Concepts Aceh war, 82 Air raids, bombing, 9, 35–36, 39, 47, 95, 119, 131 Aliens, enemy, 81, 86–87, 94–95 Amnesty, 44–47, 99, 113, 121 Annamite, 71 Anti-Social, 98, 115–123 Antisemitism, 85, 122 Armistice (Allied-Italian), 34 Armistice (Franco-German) , 54–55, 67 Atheism, 15 Austauschjuden, 168 Barbed wire, 55, 62, 88 Bewahrungsgesetz (detention law), 114–116 Bewahrungshaus (detention house), 115–116 Black Brigades (Brigate Nere) (Italy), 36, 42 Brutalization, 17 Camp, concentration-, 1, 4, 9, 18–19, 25, 40, 43, 53, 58, 81, 91, 118–119, 166–167, 170 Camp, Internment-, 8–10, 35, 42, 80–81, 87–102, 136, 151, 154, 156, 157 Capital punishment, 17, 23, 25, 29, 48 Carceri Mandamentali (district prisons), 18, 40 Catholic Action Youth (Spain), 19

Index

Catholic Church, 10, 16–17, 19, 22, 28 Child Protection Act (Belgium, 1912), 7, 128–129, 131, 135, 139 Children, 7, 27, 88, 92, 116, 121, 127–140 Chinese minorities, 85 Civil rights, 8 Collaborations/collaborators, 2, 7, 9, 19–22, 26, 28, 34–35, 42–43, 45–46, 53–57, 60, 66, 69–70, 72–74, 97, 99, 100, 101, 127–128, 131–139, 145, 147, 149–150, 152–155, 158, 170 Colonies, colonialism, 7, 10–11, 53–75, 80–102, 165, 168 Communism, 37, 41, 43, 44, 110, 111, 119, 122, 151 Concentrationary universe, 25 Convent-prisons, 20 Custody, preventive, 36, 47 Democracy, 16, 34–35, 41, 44–46, 111 Deportation, 9, 34, 37–38, 40, 43, 118, 121, 133, 136, 150 Detention, 2–3, 5, 6, 8–10, 45, 114, 116, 118–120, 122, 144–145, 150, 154–157, 159, 165–170 Diet, See nutrition Disintoxication (see rehabilitation), 16, 87, 93–94, 96–100, 102, 127, 136–139 Displaced persons, 2, 9, 55, 144, 155 Easter Revolt of 1946 (Italy), 44, 47 Eastern Front (WW2), 132–133, 138 enemies of the State, 7, 87, 95, 168 Enemy nationals, See Aliens, enemy Entangled history, 5, 10 Escape, 9, 21, 25, 26, 33, 37, 40, 41, 60, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 95, 120, 138 Ethnic minorities, 2 eurasians, 84–85, 88–90 Euthanasia, 112, 115, 117, 122 Execution, 2, 16, 21, 23, 25, 28, 148, 153, 155 Exorbitante rechten (exorbitant rights), 82 Fascism, 6, 16, 20, 29, 34, 35–38, 41, 43–46, 168 Forced labour, 8, 17, 18, 21, 26–27, 38, 40, 60, 113–115, 118, 122

175

Francoism, 9–10, 15–29 French Overseas Departments, 53 Gendarmerie, 6, 9, 36, 144–159 Geneva Convention (1929), 54–55, 59, 64, 66, 69–70, 75 Global history, 11, 81 Gulag, 4, 166 Habeas corpus, 8 Habitual criminal law (Gewohnheitsverbrechergesetz), 116 Homosexuality, 117 Hostage, 56, 92, 145, 149, 158, 168 Humiliation, 26, 29, 80, 89, 95, 100, 101, 121, 133 Hunger, See Nutrition, 23, 24, 26, 73 Hygiene, sanitation, 42, 43, 55, 134 Incarceration, 1–3, 7–12, 18, 22, 34, 35, 41, 45, 47, 81, 83, 111, 120, 164, 167–170 Incarceration, Mass, 8, 169 Incivics , 131–133, 135, 137–139 Indonesian Independance, War for, 99 Insurgency, 16, 19, 21, 26 International Law, 66 internment, 1, 3–11, 42, 58, 80–83, 86–102, 116, 130–131, 136, 144–145, 149–150, 152–159, 167 José Antonio (company), 20 juntas de depuratión, 18 Justice (reverse), 17 Juvenile courts (Belgium), 127–133, 135, 136, 139 Juvenile judge (Belgium), 128–131, 136 Juvenile Justice System (Belgium), 127–128, 136 Juvenile prison, 136–138 Juveniles, See Children Kriegsgefangene, See Prisoner of War Labour commandos, 119 Labour movement , 15 Liberalism, 15, 34, 35 Liberation, 1, 9, 34, 35, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 75, 98, 119, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155, 157 Malnutrition, See nutrition Marxism, 15, 22 Mental illness, 116, 118

176

Mental traitors, 93 Milice (France), 150 Militair Gezag (Netherlands), 156 Mortality, 135, 138, 140 National Socialism (Netherlands), 7, 80 Nazism, 135 New Imperial Histories, 11 Nipponnization, 95 NSDAP, 84 Nutrition, 8, 24, 63–64, 168 Overcrowding (of prisons, camps), 5, 22, 23, 29, 38, 39, 42, 43, 66, 117, 169 Pacific War, 98 Pacification, 44, 46 Penitentiary universe, 25 Politieke Inlichntingendienst (PID) (Political Intelligence Service), 84 Prison, provisional-, 10, 18–28 POW, See Prisoner of War Prisoner of War, Colonial (CPOW), 53–75 Prisoner, inmate, 2, 3, 10, 19, 23, 24, 26, 27, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 42, 112–123, 131, 132, 137, 169, 170 Prisoner, Internee, 2, 9, 80–83, 86, 88, 89, 91–101, 146 Prisoner, Irregular, 7 Prisoners of War , 42, 43, 53–56, 58, 63, 95, 145, 147, 149, 167–168 Prisoners of War, Polish, 75 Prisoners of War, Russian, 75 Prisoners, political, 2, 19, 21, 22, 23, 26, 28, 36, 40, 41, 83, 97, 120, 149, 150, 168, 170 Prisons, provisional, 10, 18–24, 27, 28 prisons, transit, 9 Probation, 129, 130, 135, 139 Prostitution, 111, 113, 114, 119 Psychiatric hospitals, 4, 40 Racism, 58, 72, 74 Redención magazine, (Spain), 18, 26, 27 Regime Change, 1–8, 11–12, 34, 41, 83, 100, 110, 123, 145, 159, 170 Rehabilitation, 16, 87, 93–95, 98–99, 100, 102, 127, 136

Index

Reichsfürsorgepflichtverordnung (Reich Welfare Duty Regulation), 115 Resistance, 1, 9, 16, 33, 40, 45, 72, 139, 145, 148–151, 153–155, 158 Rexism (Belgium), 133, 137, 138 Rights, prisoner’s, 3, 48, 59–60, 69 Scapini Accord, 56 Seclusion, 145, 146, 152, 155, 157, 158, 159 Spanish Civil war, 9, 15, 16, 18, 28 SS Van Imhoff (vessel), 95 Staat van Oorlog en Beleg (SOB) State of Siege and War, 86 Suicide, 25, 88 Surveillance, 9, 21, 33, 40, 84, 98, 130, 156, 165 T4 plans, 122 The Hague Accord, 66 Totoks, 84, 90 Transcarceration, 5, 165 Transitional justice, 6, 128 Transitional period, See regime change Transportation, 1, 8, 9, 11, 82, 88, 89, 91, 95, 100, 120 Vagrancy, 114 Valle de los Caídos, 18 Water, hydration, 55, 63 Women, 2, 19, 23, 24, 25, 27, 42, 69, 88, 92, 116, 117, 119, 120 Workers’ movement: See Labour movement Workhouse, 110–123

Institutions and organizations Afragola (camp), 42 Aktion Arbeitsscheue Reich, 118, 121 Ambarawa, 87–88, 93 AMSA (building company), 21 Army, amre forces, 22, 27, 36, 59, 74, 80, 84, 88, 93, 100, 101, 146–147 Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas (ACNdP), 26, 27 Atocha prison, 19, 24

Index

Auschwitz (concetration Camp, 166 Banús Hermanos (building company), 21 Banyu Biru, 88 Barnimer Strasse Prison, 119 Berlin-Rummelsburg prison, 110–123 Bernburg hospital, 117 Bologna prison, 40 Bolzano prison, 40 Breitenau (Workhouse), 111, 114 Buchenwald, 91, 148 Bureau for National Security (Bureau Nationale Veiligheid BNV), 97 Camp 211 (Algeria), 42 Carabanchel, 24, 27 Caselline (camp), 42 Casteau prison camp, 155 Chantiers de la Jeunesse, 67 Cisne prison, 19 Claudio Coello prison, 19 Colditz (POW camp), 168 Coltano Labour Camp (Pisa), 42 Comendadoras prison, 19, 20 Comité central d’assistance aux prisonniers de guerre (CCAPG), 61 Dachau (Concentration Camp), 148 De Vlag, 133, 135 Department of Justice (GDR), 119 Direction de Service des Prisonniers de Guerre (DSPG), 65 Directorate General of Prisons (Spain), 18, 19, 23, 24 Drancy (concentration camp), 151 Duque de Sexto prison, 19 Dutch east India Company (VOC), 82 Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista, 17 Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam (prison), 95 Fossoli di Carpi (camp), 43 Gast Signalbau, 118 Gendarmerie Burgundian Legion, 149 General Criminal Investigation Service (Algemene Rechegedienst ARD), 96 General Director of the Prisons (Itlay), 35, 36

177

General Inspector of the Child Protection Office (Belgium), 139 General Inspectorate of the Prison services (Ispettorato generale dei servizi carcerari) (Italy), 40 Government Publicity Service Regeerings Publiciteits Dienst (Netherlands Indies), 94 Grunau Prison, 120 Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana (Italy), 36 Hermanos de Nicolás Gómez (building company), 21 Herzogenbusch, concentration Camp, 1, 8 Italian Social Republic (RSI), 35–43, 45 Inspectorate General of prisons (Spain), 18, 23 Instituto-Escuela (women’s prison), 19 Italian Communist Party (PCI), 44 Kamp Jodensavanne (camp), 95, 98 Knorr-Bremse, 118 Koninklijke Marechaussee (Netherlands), 146, 149 Lawe Sgalagala, 88 Lehrter Strasse (women’s) Prison, 119 Lindenhof (Youth reformatory), 114 Maquis, 149 Marcor S.A (building company), 21 Mezilles (POW camp), 68 Militär Kommandanturen-Gruppi Lavoro , 37 Ministry of Justice (Italy), 35, 37, 41, 48 Ministry of Overseas Territories (Netherlands), 98 Ministry of the Interior (GDR), 119 Ministry of Welfare (GDR), 119 Miramare (camp), 42, 43 Moll (Youth reformatory), 137, 138 Movimente Sociale Italiano (MSI), 44 Museum Lichtenberg, 121 National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy (CLNAI), 41 Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service (NEFIS), 96–98 Ngawi, 87, 88, 93,94, 96, 98 Ngawi Contact Bureau, 96

178

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 59 Onesse-Laharie (POW camp), 64 Onrust, 87–89, 91 Organization Todt, 133 Padula (camp), 42 Perugia prison, 37 Porlier prison, 19, 20, 22, 23, 27 Príncipe de Asturias Reformatory, 20 Príncipe prison, 19 Quiñones, the Women’s Provisional Prison no. 1, 19 Regina Coeli prison, 33, 34, 37, 43, 44 Rehabilitation Committee (Netherlands Indies), 100 Rexist Youth, 133, 137 Riccione (camp), 42 Royal Netherlands Colonial Army (KNIL), 88, 89 Ruysselede (Youth reformatory), 137, 138 S Andrea Labour Camp (Taranto), 42 San Antón prison, 19, 24 San Isidro Women’s prison, 19, 27 San Lorenzo prison, 19–20 San Rossore (camp), 42–43 San Vittore Prison (Milan), 47 Santa Engracia prsion, 19

Index

Santa Rita Prison, 19, 25 Second Republic (Spain), 16 Scandicci (camp), 42 Service diplomatique des prisonniers de guerre (SDPG), 55 Stasi, 112 Third Republic (France), 54, 74 Torrijos prison, 19, 23 Turin-Le Nuove Prison, 36, 40, 43 Vicenza prison, 36 Vichy France, 7, 10, 53–75, 147–148, 151, 168 Volkspolizei, 119–120 Volksraad, 90, 93 Wachtbrigade, 133 Wanderfvogel (youth movement), 114 Wehrmacht, 38, 86 Weimar republic, 6, 16, 110–11, 113–115, 122 Westerbork (concentration camp), 151 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 59 Zwanbgsarbeits-und Besserungsanstalt Rummelsburg, 113 Zwangserziehungsanstalt BerlinLichtenberg für Knaben (BerlinLichtenberg), 114