Allocation of aid to the families of foreign workers, identity cards, liberation, 1944-1945

From 1939 onwards, the European context put the lives of the French on alert. In February 1939, after Franco’s victory, France took in many defeated Spanish republicans who had fled. On 3 September 1939, France declared war on Germany. After the Liberation, the decree of 2 November 1945 gave the National Immigration Office (ONI) a monopoly on the recruitment of foreign workers. The 15 W fonds concerns the departments managing foreign labour, rural work sites, reclassification centres and women’s workshops, the medical service of the provincial and then regional inspectorate, the car centre, the regional quartermaster’s office, the regional supply group and the labour inspectorate. In 2022, records relating to foreign workers were added to the collection. The CLC’s (Commissariat à la lutte contre le chômage) services extended to French and indigenous workers, foreign workers, rural work sites, women’s workshops, expellees and refugees and repatriated demobilised French servicemen. Many files report the requisitions and thefts on foreign workers, groups, Polish reception centres, their management, material and supply difficulties, staff numbers and how they were used, the family situation and lives of these foreign workers, their involvement in the Resistance (particularly the Spanish guerrillas), and the conditions of their liberation at the end of the war. Of particular interest are the files investigated by the Service social des étrangers (SSE), later Contrôle social des étrangers (CSE), which contain extremely important information and rare testimonies from foreign workers and their families, including women.