Château Fort : Le Bagne

Among the horrors that the Sedanese endured during the three successive occupations of the Ardennes by the enemy, the internment camp that the Germans operated from January 1917 to November 1918 in the Sedan castle is one of the worst memories of their tragic history. This camp run by torturers was a death camp, a sinister prefiguration of the Nazi extermination camps of the last war. This hell, ignored by public opinion outside the nearby region, was called "le Bagne" by the Sedanese when Belgians and French died there every day as a result of inhuman treatment. It was the crucial need for manpower that pushed the enemy into the criminal spiral of growing barbarity. In the occupied areas of Belgium and France, civilians between the ages of 14 and 60 were requisitioned into labour battalions (Zivil Arbeiter Battalion), but those who were somewhat recalcitrant were sent to the internment camp of the Sedan fortress or to the very tough Kommandos of Bazeilles or Mont Saint Martin.When they went out to the building sites, the prisoners could be recognized by their red armband on their left arm, their big hooves or their bare feet, but above all by their thinness and their haggard eyes. Denzin, the camp commander, Michelsohn, the doctor, and Holz, the chief guard, terrorized the prisoners, were primarily responsible for the appalling death rate in the camp. Deprivation, exactions, appalling undernourishment, appalling hygiene, general dysentery, slave labour, 5 to 600 prisoners crammed together for 400 possible places, everything was an accelerated march towards death.Le number of victims remains uncertain, but in less than two years it exceeded a thousand dead and probably significantly more. In 1919, the commander and the prison doctor were sought for trial as war criminals, but in vain ...!Aujourd 'Today, after 75 years of suicidal wars, let us make our own the last words of the commemorative plaque which is in the castle of Sedan :
 " Let us erase hatred, but let us keep the memory ".

DATAtourisme France