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The situation of refugees in France during 1939Félix Chevrier Archive CDJC Shoah MemorialCCCLXIII-6 "1939 began with a new influx of refugees from Germany and Austria, who were fleeing their country following fresh persecutions against them, following the assassination in Paris of a German legation secretary by a young Polish Jew. In order to flee Germany these unfortunates didn’t hesitate to cross into France clandestinely or illegally, and we can confirm that the number of illegal entries was at least equal, if not superior to the number of regular entries. To understand the question of the refugees in France, it’s first necessary to recall that out of 42 million inhabitants, France counted at least three million foreigners in the most recent census. Out of these foreigners, the Government wanted to distinguish between those residing under common law and refugees benefiting from the right to asylum, meaning that they had been driven from their countries and taken residence in France; for these people, our country applies the principle: “whoever seeks asylum in France must commit to serve the country to the fullest extent of his capabilities and means”. The sheer number of foreigners residing in France and the fact that, at the start of 1939 there were 400,000 unemployed people in our country obliged the government to take the following measures in order to:
In fact, numerous refugees not only entered clandestinely, but also held transit visas allowing them a brief stay without remaining in France on a more or less legal basis; furthermore in many cases it was materially impossible for them to comply with the expulsions or refusal of residence applied to them and they were condemned to punishments varying from six months in prison and 100 to 1,000 francs fine. One of the major characteristics of the immigration of refugees in 1939 was their absolute destitution. Almost all of these unfortunates arrived without any resources whatever in France, having been robbed by the nazis, and they had to be taken care of by our committees. The activity undertaken by our charities during the first eight months of 1938 had three major goals: 1) Aid in the proper sense of the term. This was secured by the refugee aid committee and by a certain number of local committees, notably the committees of Nice and Strasbourg, who were responsible for several thousand refugees. This aid consisted of weekly or monthly financial allowances and meals that were distributed for free or at a minimal cost. In total the amount spent monthly by the refugee aid committee was from one million to one and a half million for the period up to September 1939. 2) We considered that it was insufficient to prevent the refugees from starving to death, but that it was necessary to readapt and reeducate them, to give them the chance of entering a paid profession. In this way, the Centre of Professional Rehabilitation (Centre de Reclassement Professionnel) placed hundreds of refugees in apprenticeship schools, who were then able to be employed as specialised workers in factories. The O.R.T also trained in needlework, autogenous welding, typewriter repairs and T.S.E. etc… In addition, along the same lines, and to allow refugees who had to emigrate overseas to familiarise themselves with their future line of work, we directed a certain number towards agriculture. In Martigny, a farm was rented and several dozen refugees were able to start an agricultural apprenticeship. The farm school at the Saumurois centre also ran for several months and on the eve of the war a new organisation came together for the agricultural apprenticeship of young refugees in the Corrrèze department. Apart from this farm, we favoured the individual placement of refugees in overseas countries, notably North America and certain countries in South America. In this way for the first eight months of 1939, 1,740 refugees were able, through the efforts of the HICEM to emigrate abroad as opposed to 1,260 in 1938. Despite our efforts with a view to developing overseas emigration, in the face of constant restrictions by overseas countries, a great number of refugees had to stay in France and the number who left to emigrate is far inferior to those who entered France during the first eight months of this year. The whole problem of the refugees was changed by the war and the data we presented above is not applicable to the last four months of 1939. The major act was the creation of “Centres for the foreigners’ regroupment” (Centres de rassemblement des étrangers): in other words, concentration camps. After a certain amount of hesitation, it was specified that all subjects from 17 to 65 years of age, from the Saarland, Germany and Austria, should as a rule be interned. Men aged from 18 to 48 could enlist in the foreign legion for the duration of the war. Furthermore, refugees benefiting from the right to asylum, meaning those from the Saarland, ex-Austrians and those holding a passport marked “refugee from Germany”, up to the age of 55 were taken as being in receipt of benefits: they were to carry out work for the National Defence and were assimilated into the military. The men unfit to live in the camp's conditions, can be released and an inter-ministerial commission was established to examine the files of internees, in order to decide the possible liberation of those showing the required guarantees of loyalty and morality. Furthermore, after numerous interventions, we were able to obtain that refugees with the necessary visas and tickets could to use their opportunity to emigrate overseas, and last December more than 250 interns were able to leave for the United States or South America; thanks to all these measures, the number of interns which could have been from 16 to 18,000 at the start of the war is now reduced by more than a half. The creation of the camps was far from relieving our committees; on the contrary they presented them with a considerable new burden. We have had to rescue the interns themselves, the camps were for the most part somewhat improvised and the interns arrived wearing only their town clothes without blankets, without spare linen, without work shoes, etc… The commission of the assembly centres which was established in November to help with the interned refugees spent more than 600,000 francs on blankets, shoes, pharmaceutical products, clothes, etc… But our committees’ increase in costs was principally due to the fact that the internment of working men led to their families being deprived of resources; hundreds and thousands of people who had never previously had to call on us came to ask for our assistance. Amongst the interns, a fairly large proportion had been in France for several years with regular work. The internment of these men was the cause of the poverty into which their families and children fell. Furthermore, not only the interns and the families of the interns were in our charge, but also the majority of the men liberated from the camp, who had to be rescued by our committees. Indeed, the men freed for health reasons were obviously not in a position to undertake paid work, and our committees regularly had to come to their aid. The burden on the refugee aid committee more than tripled after the start of the war. This is explained not only by the increase in the number of people rescued for the reasons explained above, but also because aid was now given in a constant and regular manner. Before the war, there were many refugees who would turn to the aid committee in a moment of need, and who then found more regular employment, or started a small business, or gave lessons etc…This allowed them to live without regular recourse to our committees. Today, their sole source of money is the aid committee, it’s no longer possible for intellectuals to give private tuition, small businesses are dead since the outbreak of the war and finally, refugees have faced great difficulty in finding work when, let’s not forget, in the eyes of the law they are “enemy subjects”. Today, every employer who provides or who wishes to provide work to a foreigner has to seek authorisation from the departmental employment office. Yet, we’ve seen it many a time; this authorisation is almost systematically refused if it’s a question of German or ex-German employees. It is therefore not surprising that the burden on our committees has increased to this extent, because we have not, so to speak, been able to secure the emigration of refugees during the first months of the war at a period when clandestine refugees are still arriving at the small ports of the Mediterranean. Furthermore, certain costs that were almost negligible until the war have become significant. Whilst refugees were benefiting from almost free hospitalisation, now they are taken in at the usual tariff, at 50 to 70 francs a day. In the provinces the situation has become even more serious because until the war it was relatively easy for refugees to find small jobs and to subsist by their own means. Since the war, provincial refugees, like those in Paris, have had to sign up to our committees, leading to considerably increased costs. Furthermore, not only are authorisations to work almost never granted, but we are now still witnessing the shunting of refugees from one department to another. These refugees have to sty in the department to which they are assigned, which obligates us to further costs to pay for tickets, the transport of baggage, etc… As for any lessening of burden that could have resulted from enlistment in the Foreign Legion or national service as a refugee, up until now this has been more or less inexistent. In fact, according to law, the families of the voluntary conscripts or people on benefits should have received military allowances, but they had to prove that the conscript or the person on benefits was their source of support. As this person was often already in receipt of support and didn’t have a worker’s card, families were told that nothing had changed in their living situation and that they were therefore ineligible for benefits. To resume, at the end of 1939 our committees faced a considerable number of newly rescued aided people who had already been in France for a long time, and it is likely that this will continue for a period of several months and that in any event, the situation is almost impossible to change. What we have the intention of doing is to try to place the greatest possible number of refugees in industry and a certain number of requests for manpower are coming through. However the demand is principally for our skilled workers, and it would be necessary to develop our apprenticeship and rehabilitation schools in order to place the greatest possible number of refugees. Furthermore, for the majority of them no immediate change can be envisaged because a tailor or a lawyer cannot become a metal worker or an electrical engineer in the space of a few months. The burden on our committees therefore seems heavier than ever, whilst the resources they are able to find in France are constantly diminishing. The French community made an unprecedented effort in 1939, but this effort could not be sustained in 1940, a year of wartime where all the activity and almost all the resources of our fellow-believers are dedicated to national defense; and where, as terrible as it is to say, there are amongst the refugees a certain number of suspect elements who are seen in an unfavorable light and where clandestine and illegal entries are out of control, and the lack of screening has allowed undesirables to stay in France; hence, there is a certain suspicion which means that any call for the assistance of refugees risks at the present time to be very badly received, and would in any event most likely be ineffectual. We look upon the start of 1940 with sadness because not only are the resources of the French community diminished, not only is the task of our committees greater and greater, but America does not seem to have realised the extent of the problem in France and the intention of the Joint to reduce the sums it has generously given to refugees in France seems to us to have heavy consequences, and risks compromising all the work we have undertaken for several years for the assistance of our unfortunate co-believers." Félix Chevrier |
Félix Chevrier
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