Le Vernet Internment Camp, or Camp Vernet, was a concentration camp in Le Vernet, Ariège, near Pamiers, in the French Pyrenees. It was built in 1918 as a barracks, but after World War I it was used as an internment camp for prisoners of war. From February 1939 to June 1944, it was used:first as an internment camp, first for Republican refugees fleeing Spain after Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War: in particular some 12,000 refugees, including soldiers of the Durruti Column and others of the International Brigades, under the legitimate French government; then, as of May–June 1940, under the Vichy government during German occupation in the Second World War. Starting in 1940, apart from the prisoners coming from the Spanish Civil War, the Vichy government used it to house prisoners considered suspect or dangerous to the government, including members of the resistance and opponents of the Hitler, Mussolini and Pétain regimes; then, from 1942 until June 1944, it was used as a holding camp for Jewish families awaiting deportation to other camps. The last transport out of the camp in June 1944 took the prisoners to Dachau concentration camp.

La Retirada was the exodus to France from Spain between 28 January 1939 and 15 February 1939 of nearly 500,000 Republican soldiers and civilians near the end of the Spanish Civil War. The exodus was caused by the conquest of Catalonia, including the city of Barcelona, by the right-leaning Nationalist army of Francisco Franco. With the capture of Catalonia, the Civil War soon ended in victory for the Nationalists.