Vichy Labor Camp at Foum Deflia, Morocco

Foum Deflia, Morocco

The Holocaust’s long reach extended even into the Sahara Desert, as the remains of this forced labor camp can attest. In the early 1940s, France’s Vichy regime established a series of labor camps in North Africa for Jews and others. Many of the Jews incarcerated were European, including a large group of Polish Jews. After being shipped across the Mediterranean, they were delivered to remote camps via a rail line that runs south through Morocco parallel to the Algerian border.

Description

Description: The camp at Foum Deflah served as a “discipline” center for certain prisoners from the larger detention camp at Bou Arfa, a town to the northwest. Set in a stark valley on the edge of the Sahara, the solitary camp seems to be in the middle of nowhere. Most prisoners lived in tents and slept on straw mats. Under the direction of an overseer, a certain Lt. Thomas, terrible torture was meted out against prisoners.

Foum Deflia

Torture: The most notorious was “the tomb” where prisoners were forced to dig a coffin-sized hole in the earth and lie in pseudo graves, sometimes for weeks. Some worked during the day and then returned to their grave beds at night. Others were forced to lie still the entire day, enduring scorching sun by day and freezing cold nights. Fed only bread and water, prisoners who dared move would be beaten. Some tried to escape. Others died in their open graves, amidst the desolate emptiness of the desert landscape.

How to get there: The apparent remains of the camp can still be visited via a dirt road off the main route leading to the town of Figuig. Head north along the dry riverbed of the Deflah river, which rarely flows. A few crumbling stone structures are all that is left of this forgotten Holocaust camp.