Numerous internment camps and concentration camps were located in France before, during and after World War II. Beside the camps created during World War I to intern German, Austrian and Ottoman civilian prisoners, the Third Republic — opened various internment camps for the Spanish refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War — Vichy opened up so many camps that it became a full economic sector, to the extent that historian Maurice Rajsfus writes: "The quick opening of new camps created jobs, and the Gendarmerie never ceased to hire during this period.
Some were however used during the Algerian War — The first internment camps were opened during the First World War — to detain civilian prisoners mainly German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman. To these camps must be added the camps for the German prisoners in sometimes overlapping with those above , and those of the Colonial Empire , not well known in Europe. After when the Nazi Germany divided France in occupied and free zone, the camps were also used to imprison Jews, Gypsies, and sometimes gays, and the original prisoners were used as forced labor to make the camps larger.
As early as , the existing camps were indiscriminately filled with German anti-Nazis Communists , German Jews, etc. Following the defeat , and the 10 July vote of full powers installing the Vichy regime, these camps were filled with Jews, first with foreign Jews, then indifferently with foreign and French Jews.
The Vichy government would progressively hand them up to the Gestapo , and they would all transit by Drancy internment camp , the last stop before concentration camps in the Third Reich and in Eastern Europe and the extermination camps.
Beside Jews, Germans and Austrians were immediately rounded-up in camps, as well as Spanish refugees, who were later deported. Another category was created by the Vichy regime: the "transit camps" "camps de transit " , referring to the fact the detainees were to be deported to Germany.
