 During the 1943 Battle of Marseille and urban in the center of town, 20,000 people were expelled from their homes and interned during several months in military camps nearby Fréjus (La Lègue, Caïs and Puget).The camp of Struthof, or Natzweiler-Struthof, in Alsace, one of the concentration camps created by Nazis on annexed French territory, included a gas chamber which was used to kill at least 86 detainees (mostly Jewish) with the aim of forming a collection of preserved skeletons for the use of Nazi professor August Hirt.The Nazis also opened Struthof in Alsace (in the part annexed by the Reich).