The Camp des Milles, a former tile factory outside Aix-en-Provence in southern France, held over 10,000 foreigners and Jewish refugees between 1939 and 1942, and shipped many of the prisoners to Germany by train, with 2,000 being sent to Auschwitz. After the war, the building sat vacant and almost forgotten, until its unusual murals got the attention of preservationists. While it maintains the memory of a dark episode in France's past, the camp, which opened as a museum last month, also shows the artistic and creative energy of those who were once imprisoned behind its walls.

The Camp des Milles was unusual for several reasons. It held many notable writers, scientists, intellectuals, and artists, among them Max Ernst and Hans Bellmer. Although conditions in the camp were unpleasant and food was scarce, a certain degree of artistic and cultural freedom was granted to the prisoners. In a former oven where tiles were once fired, inmates set up a theater called “Die Katakombe,” after a cabaret in pre-war Berlin. There, plays and musicals were rehearsed and performed, and the building has many graffiti, drawings, and decorations that still remain from the era.

The museum has preserved the murals, made by prisoners, which were commissioned for the guards’ dining hall in 1940-41. The “Banquet of Nations” was created by Karl Bodek, an artist who died during deportation to Auschwitz. The walls also include surprisingly cheerful images of blue-clad figures carrying giant loaves of bread and rolling an oversized cask of wine — a sharp contrast with the deprivations endured during wartime. A couplet on the wall reads: “Si vos assiettes ne sont pas très garnies / Puissent nos dessins vous calmer l’appétit” (“If your plates are not very full / May our drawings calm your appetite”).

Odile Boyer, associate director of the Fondation du Camp des Milles, told ARTINFO France via email that Max Ernst was imprisoned at the camp for the last two months of 1939, before being liberated thanks to a letter written on his behalf by his friend, poet Paul Eluard, to the French president. He was then sent back to the Camp des Milles in May 1940 after being denounced by a local in the town of Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche who made the rather ridiculous claim that he was beaming light signals to the enemy. Ultimately, Ernst was taken to another camp, released, and then emigrated to the United States, via Spain and Portugal, with the help of his patron, and soon-to-be wife, Peggy Guggenheim.

While at the Camp des Milles, Ernst wrote a postcard to his gallerist, Jeanne Bucher, which reads simply “S.O.S.” According to Galerie Alain Paire in Aix-en-Provence, Ernst wrote another letter to Bucher in which he said that he had a hard time producing artwork at the camp. On the other hand, he wrote, Bellmer, with whom he shared a cramped room, “is working a bit and it’s not bad at all.” Ernst added that Bellmer was depressed and asked Bucher if she could get him “one or two certificates of loyalty to France.”

Bellmer had been held at the Camp des Milles since early September 1939. He would stay there until late January 1940, when he was sent to a French work camp. After the German invasion of France in June 1940, Bellmer eventually made his way to the southern French town of Castres, where a former guard from the Camp des Milles sheltered him, and made new identity papers for himself with the name Jean Bellmer. While at the Camp des Milles, Bellmer made a haunting drawing titled “Les Milles en Feu” (“The Milles On Fire”), as well as a portrait of Ernst with a face made of bricks, evoking the walls of the camp.

For a tour of the Camp des Milles, click on the slideshow.