By Jun Wei Lee, Notre Dame, Class of 2026
For the village of Les Milles in Aix-en-Provence, France, the question of how to remember World War II is a thorny one. 21 August 2024 marked the 80th anniversary of liberation from Nazi occupation, an event immortalized as the myth, the quintessential expression of French unity against totalitarianism and the founding narrative of postwar France. However, such triumphalism is in tension with the memory of the Camp des Milles, a French internment and deportation camp operational in Les Milles from 1939-1942. During these years, the camp not only wrongfully interned 8,000 foreigners—many of whom sought legal refuge in France en route to immigrating elsewhere to escape Nazi Germany—but also participated in the Holocaust by deporting more than 2,000 Jews to Auschwitz. The camp closed in 1943 after these deportations, and its history was not officially recognized until 1982,. Since then, former deportee-led nonprofits like the “Fondation du Camp des Milles – MĂ©moire et Éducation” have worked to transform the camp into a memorial site, which finally opened for public use in 2012. To date,
How does Les Milles negotiate the legacy of French-Nazi collaboration alongside the triumphalism of liberation? I argue that the commemorative practices of the memorial site and the 80th-anniversary celebrations of liberation are best characterized as remembrance without blame. Resistance is valorized in extreme specificity—with individuals and particular events singled out for their significance—but collaboration is rendered an impersonal concept, devoid of perpetrators. This asymmetry highlights resistance while dissolving culpability: while the French resist totalitarian rule, no one person can be blamed for collaborating with the Nazis. Les Milles’ memory is thus indicative of the broader French memory of World War II: a story of only resistance, not blame.
The Camp des Milles foregrounds resistance while unintentionally downplaying culpability for collaboration. As the product of former deportees, the memorial site deliberately emphasizes how individuals resisted internment. We are, for example, given rich narratives on the lives of camp internees. An entire section highlights how the camp’s artists and intellectuals resisted dehumanization through creative expression. Individuals like Auguste Boyer are valorized for helping internees escape the camp; terminals play interviews of deportees recounting their experiences persevering through inhumane living conditions. A particularly touching exhibit displays traces left behind on the camp’s walls, a testament to the indefatigable spirit of resistance. The Camp des Milles remembers resistance with meticulous specificity. We are given endless insights into why and how individuals resisted, and who they were, their lives enshrined as liberation icons.
In contrast, there are few identifiable perpetrators for the camp’s atrocities. This framing arises by deliberate design. A pedagogical tool to instill a sense of public responsibility against fanaticism, the memorial explains its tragedy as the outcome of corrosive ideologies. For instance, xenophobia is held to be responsible for the camp’s internment phase from September 1939 to July 1942. How else could the French government have labeled all German citizens as “enemy subjects” and “undesirables,” failing to realize that most internees were refugees fleeing Nazi rule? Similarly, ultranationalism and anti-Semitism explain the camp’s role in Jewish deportation. The implicit argument in the museum’s design is that Nazi collaboration only occurred because Vichy ideology was built on exclusionary ideals of national regeneration and racial purity. Human culprits for France’s wartime atrocities (Vichy leaders Marshal Pétain and Pierre Laval) are presented as personifications of extremist ideologies; culpability is rendered completely abstract. Whereas individuals resist totalitarianism, only ideologies are responsible for French collaboration.
The museum’s “reflection space” exemplifies the dissolution of French blame. Intended to educate visitors on how to resist injustice, the exhibition presents contemporary research on how societies become capable of genocide. But as visitors learn about the three stages (intolerance, authoritarianism, and the extension of persecution) of societal devolution, the museum’s intended message becomes clear: France`s experience could happen to anyone, and any nation. Thus, the museum’s pedagogical intent incentivizes us to see the French as victims—at most passive bystanders—of extremist ideologies. We are encouraged by the museum’s design to remember the experiences of deportees without casting the French people as actively responsible for their suffering.
Les Milles’ 80th anniversary celebrations of liberation follow similar patterns of French memory. To commemorate liberation, Les Milles organized a military parade that reenacted the original scene of liberation. American military vehicles rolled down the village’s streets, accompanied by veterans dressed in their uniforms.
Why is liberation remembered as such Framing liberation as a single military event implies that the French nation was purified thereafter. It obfuscates the long-drawn-out and unsavory process of France’s attempt to purge itself of Nazi influence, which featured) and how the liberation demonstrated French patriotism. Focusing only on the moment of military triumph overwrites heterogeneous experiences of resistance.
80 years after liberation, French memory is still trapped in the °ůĂ©˛őľ±˛őłŮ˛ą˛Ôł¦ľ±˛ą±ôľ±˛őłľ±đ myth. The Camp des Milles acknowledges French collaborationism but extracts culpability through abstraction: extremist ideologies, not people, are responsible for injustice. Similarly, the framing of liberation as an instantaneous event obscures the diverse roles the French played before and after the Liberation, reinforcing nationalist notions of unity against fascism. The French memory of World War II has only resistors without perpetrators, of remembrance without blame. These tensions continue to exist in French memory today: how should France reconcile its nation-building narrative of °ůĂ©˛őľ±˛őłŮ˛ą˛Ôł¦ľ±˛ą±ôľ±˛őłľ±đ with the reality of wartime collaboration?
Works Cited
“30 ans de combat contre l’oubli et l’ignorance.” Camp des milles. <> [Accessed October 30, 2024]
Bergère, Marc. 2018. L’Épuration en France. Presses Universitaires de France.
Clark, Catherine E. 2016. “Capturing the Moment, Picturing History: Photographs of the Liberation of Paris.” The American Historical Review 121:3, pp.824-860.
“Roger Chaudon.” Musee de la Resistance 1940-1945, en Ligne <> [accessed October 31, 2024)
Rousso, Henry. 1994. The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944, translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard University Press.
“Useful informations [sic].” Camp des milles. <> [Accessed October 30, 2024]
is a student research project organized by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies beginning in the summer of 2024. Students who are traveling to Europe for research, study abroad, or other purposes are eligible to apply before they leave to participate in this paid research opportunity.
The students choose a site of contested memory—whether that be a monument, a religious building, a statue, a public space from a historic event, a significant piece of architecture, or other similar sites—in the location in Europe they are traveling. They then document the site through original photographs and write a reflective piece analyzing what makes the site and its memory contested. Those photos and essays are then compiled into a collection (that includes an interactive map) on the .Ěý
The institute looks forward to the second year of submissions, drawing on experiences during the summer of 2025.
Author Bio
Jun Wei Lee ’26 is a history and philosophy major, and he is part of the Glynn Family Honors Program, Kellogg International Scholars Program, and ECG Ethics Research Fellowship. He traveled to Aix-en-Provence, France, and wrote about the Camp des Milles alongside Aix’s 80th-anniversary World War 2 commemorations for the Sites of Memory in Contemporary Europe project. During the summer of 2024, he was traveling for French language immersion with a.
