Descendants of the 3,000 British internees and their families recount one of the war’s forgotten episodes
The soldiers and gendarmes came early – so early that some of the people they took were still wearing pyjamas. In the first days of July 1940, barely a week after the armistice, few had been expecting the first Nazi roundup of enemy aliens on French soil.
Aided by lists dutifully drawn up by French mayors, the occupying Germans seized 1,648 men in the départements of the Nord and the Pas de Calais in those initial raids, and the total would go on rising to 3,000 civilians including women and children.
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