Most Popular PlacesRandom PlaceListsItinerariesAdd a PlaceDownload the App Tarrafal Concentration Camp Al Qasr Al Ghamedh (Al Qassimi Palace) Statue of Lord Laddu Gopal Giant MacAskill’s Grave Portugal’s dictatorship sent its political opponents to this remote Cape Verdean prison, known as the “Camp of Slow Death.” The camp opened in 1936, when the first group of about 150 prisoners arrived from Lisbon: communists, anarchists, trade unionists and sailors who had mutinied against Salazar's dictatorship. The location was chosen deliberately. It was isolated, hot, short on clean water and plagued by malaria.
Prisoners called it the "Campo da Morte Lenta," the Camp of Slow Death. More than 30 Portuguese inmates died here, among them Bento Gonçalves, secretary-general of the Portuguese Communist Party. The most feared place was the "frigideira" (frying pan), a windowless concrete punishment cell where temperatures soared under the tropical sun and men were held for days or weeks on bread and water.
International pressure closed the camp in 1954, but it reopened in 1961 under the name Chão Bom Labour Camp, this time to hold anti-colonial militants from Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. It was finally shut on May 1, 1974, days after the Carnation Revolution, when the last prisoners walked out to a crowd waiting at the gate. Today the complex is the Museum of Resistance.
Visitors can walk through the barracks, the cell blocks, the infirmary and the kitchen, with panels listing the names of those held and those who died. Get more unusual and extraordinary places each week with the Atlas Obscura Places newsletter. Your newsletter subscriptions with us are subject to Atlas Obscura's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The camp is in Chão Bom, about 2 km south of the town of Tarrafal and roughly 70 km from Praia. Shared minibuses (hiaces) from Praia to Tarrafal pass the entrance. There is a small entrance fee.
There is little shade inside, so bring water and sun protection. A red-brick former uranium-ore sorting facility, located within a communist-era forced-labour camp. The ruins of Illinois's first state penitentiary, and former Federal Military Prison, from 1833.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
