Emmanuel Macron denounced, Monday, December 5, “one of the most complete perjurers of the Republic” during a trip to the Milles internment and deportation camp in Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône), where 10,000 prisoners were held between 1939 and 1942. The Head of State spoke on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the inauguration of a memorial on this site, where the Vichy regime interned thousands of Jews – 1,800 of them were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp .
The red brick buildings of this former tile factory are now a place of memory that welcomes thousands of young people to help them discover the mechanisms that tip a society towards totalitarianism and mass crimes.
“The camp des Milles, these were the crimes of the French state”hammered Emmanuel Macron, recalling that “France in the hands of Pétain and Laval[y] is lost” in “crossing out the principles of 1789”. “It is at Les Milles that [la République] knew, as at the Vél ‘d’Hiv, one of his most complete perjuries”in “reminding us that there were camps on our soil” and “the deportation happened [aussi] organized » in the area that “Marshal Pétain’s regime was then administering in his name”said the head of state.
Legion of Honor awarded to Alain Chouraqui
“Camp des Milles was not an accident of history but the result of a deliberate slide into crime”also insisted Emmanuel Macron, stressing that “the Jews were the deliberate victims of the French state”. “Here is sedimented every renunciation, every fault, every crime of the French authorities”he added.
He praised the action of the memorial which “restores a political climate and dismantles the springs of the genocidal enterprise: it says why the same causes produce the same effects in other places at other times”pointing out that “Anti-Semitism, racism, any form of rejection carries with it the annihilation of all humanity”.
Emmanuel Macron notably underlined the ” perseverance “ former deportees and resistance fighters to prevent the disappearance of the site and its transformation into a foundation, today chaired by Alain Chouraqui, to whom he presented the insignia of Knight of the Legion of Honor.