Detention centres

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Internment camps have been and are called different places of detention in different countries at different times.

The internees were often civilians, prisoners of war or soldiers of neutral powers.

First World War

United Kingdom
During the Boer War, Britain set up an internment camp for the internment of Boer prisoners in Ahmednagar in the Bombay Presidency in India. During the First World War, it served as an internment camp for civilians. In the spring of 1915, over 2000 German and Austrian civilians were brought there. They were mainly German civilians from the former German colony of German East Africa, but also from other countries. The camp still existed during the Second World War.

France
In France, Germans and Austrians were held in various camps, including the Le Vernet internment camp in the Pyrenees. In addition to conscripts, entire families came to Garaison internment camp, civilian nationals of the great powers that were at war with France. Other camps were located in Uzès in the southern French department of Gard and, the largest, on the peninsula Île Longue near Brest.

Austria — Hungary
In the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, the Defense Office had several internment camps set up, especially in Lower and Upper Austria, including Enzersdorf im Thale, Göllersdorf, Hainburg, Katzenau, Mittergrabern, Raschala, Sitzendorf an der Schmida, Steinklamm or Weyerburg. In the Waldviertel these were Drosendorf, Grossau, Illmau, Karlstein an der Thaya, Kirchberg an der Wild, Markl and Sittmannshof, in Styria near Graz the camp Thalerhof and others in Bohemia and Moravia. Citizens of anti-war states and nationals suspected of a friendly attitude towards an enemy state (e.g. ethnic Italians, but also refugees from Galicia) were interned.

Germany

In Germany, about 2.5 million foreign soldiers were interned in about 320 different camps by the end of the First World War. The internment camp Ruhleben became known, in which 4000 to 5500 mainly British civilians were held.

Interwar period

France
Towards the end of the Spanish Civil War, more than half a million refugees fled from Catalonia to the French border, the only way to escape from Franco’s advancing troops. Due to international pressure, the French government allowed the refugees to enter France from February 5. Then hundreds of thousands of civilians and the remnants of the Republican People's Army poured into France. Until February 15, 1939, 353,107 people fled to the French department of Pyrénées-Orientales, where about 230,000 inhabitants lived at the time. According to a report of the French government (Informe Valière) of the 9. Margin