August 1st, 1914, right after the order of mobilization is given, the Allies arrest, on sometimes doubtful legal bases, civil nationals of the central European Powers on their metropolitan and colonial territories. In France, the “concentration camps”, the official term used at the time, multiply, to accommodate these civil internees. The distance of the border predisposes the Atlantic coast to this function. Only in the department of Finistère there will be five camps: Crozon, Kerbénéat (municipality of Plunéventer), Lanvéoc, Ile de Sieck (municipality of Santec) and Ile Longue (municipality of Crozon).
The camp of the Long island, built by the prisoners themselves, from autumn, 1914, will see 5 000 men passing through, Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Ottomans, and people of Alsace- Lorraine. More than 500 of them were captured on September 2nd, 1914, in the English Channel, aboard the Dutch passenger ship “Nieuw-Amsterdam” which brings German and Austrian reservists from New York to the Netherlands (a neutral country). Among them are numerous artists who are going to make this small promontory of the natural harbor of Brest a center of the German culture.
This site, designed so that their families or the amateurs of history can reconstruct a part of what was their captivity, is dedicated to them.