The Mentally Ill Who Died of Starvation in French Psychiatric Hospitals during the German Occupation in World War II

International audienceOn June 10, 1987, an article appeared in the daily newspaper Le Monde under the headline “The Asylums of Death.” It brought to the attention of the general public the hidden drama of the “genocide of the lunatics” in French psychiatric hospitals during the occupation. This virulent text launched a violent debate in psychiatric circles. The controversy continues to today, continued by people outside those circles since the 1990s. A petition entitled “For the Pain to Subside” (Pour que douleur s’achève) launched on March 1, 2001, demanded that the French government acknowledge that it left mentally ill people to die and that this tragic story be included in textbooks. This article provides the chronology and the issues in a controversy in which historians participated without making a serious study of it. It also offers the main directions for a research project by the Psychiatric Hospital of Vinatier (Lyon/Bron), the Conseil général du Rhône (General Council of the Rhône department) and the research group “Enfermements, Marges, Société” (Commitments, Margins, Society)