Macron at the Milles deportation camp

Emmanuel Macron denounced "the crimes of the French state" during a trip to the Milles internment and deportation camp (Bouches-du-Rhône), where 10,000 prisoners were held between 1939 and 1942, "the one of the most complete perjuries of the Republic".

The Head of State spoke on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the inauguration of a memorial on the site of this former tile factory where the Vichy regime interned thousands of Jews, including 1,800 of them were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camps.

"The Milles camp, these were the crimes of the French state", hammered the president, recalling that "France in the hands of Pétain and Laval got (there) lost" by "crossing out the principles of 1789" .

"It was in Les Milles that (the Republic) experienced, as in Vél-d'Hiv, one of its most complete perjuries", by "reminding us that there were camps on our soil" and that "the deportation was (also) organised" in the area that "Marshal Pétain's regime was then administering in his name".

The President of the Republic emphasize that "anti-Semitism, racism, any form of rejection carries within it the annihilation of all humanity, as the cloud carries within it the storm".

He particularly underlined the "perseverance" of 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.