Gurs National Memorial

Mémorial National de Gurs

The Mémorial National de Gurs, located on the premises of the former Gurs camp at the foot of the Pyrenees, is currently one of three French sites of national remembrance to the victims of the German occupation and the French collaborationist Vichy Government. Built in the spring of 1939, the camp first served as an internment camp for refugees from Spain. From 1940 on, French authorities also held about 17,000 Jews at Gurs. Several thousands of them were deported to extermination camps from 1942 on, primarily to Auschwitz.

History

On March 15, 1939, the French Ministry of the Interior under socialist Marx Dormoy confiscated land in Gurs for the establishment of a camp for refugee combatants from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). The internees, socialists and Basques who had fled Franco's victorious troops, had hoped for the support of their neighbouring country. However, they found themselves behind barbed wire in Gurs. By the beginning of May 1940, almost all of the Spaniards had been released from the camp; after that, mostly members of the International Brigades who had fought in the Spanish Civil War remained at the camp. After the Wehrmacht had begun its invasion of France, new prisoners were brought to the Gurs camp. The French government now held thousands of »Undesirables« at Gurs, mainly refugees from the German Reich and from Austria. There were also numerous children at the camp. In June 1940, the German Wehrmacht forced France to capitulate. The north of France was occupied by German troops, while the south (including Gurs) was governed by the Vichy puppet regime. Supported by Vichy, the German authorities deported almost all of the Jewish residents of Baden and Palatinate to France; trains of the French national railway brought many of them to Gurs. From August 1942 on, over 3,900 prisoners of the Gurs camp, most of them Jews, were handed over to the German SS. Members of the SS brought the prisoners via Drancy near Paris to the death camps in occupied Poland.
The Gurs camp was finally dissolved on December 31, 1945, after it had served as an internment camp for German prisoners of war and French collaborators following the liberation of the south of France.

Gurs, 1940, View from the camp's water tower; in the foreground, »Block M«, to the right the camp road, Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine

Gurs, undated, Inmates of the internment camp, Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine

Victims

A total of about 60,000 people passed through the Gurs camp. The largest group comprised of 27,000 Spanish refugees and civil war combatants. Many of them were released in 1939, but in May 1940, 3,700 Spaniards were readmitted into the camp. Between 1940 and 1943, the French authorities also held over 17,000 Jews at Gurs. Prior to the capitulation of the French army on June 22, 1940, these prisoners were »Undesirables«, mainly Jewish women. Many of them, including philosopher Hannah Arendt, managed to come free by autumn 1940.
In October 1940, over 6,500 Jews from Baden and Palatinate were deported to Gurs. By summer 1942, over 1,000 of them had died due to the scarce supplies and catastrophic hygienic conditions at the camp. Between August 1942 and March 1943, six deportation trains departed from Gurs, headed for the Drancy transit camp near Paris. Almost all of the 3,900 deportees were Jews. From Drancy they were deported to extermination camps in occupied Poland, where most of them were murdered by the SS upon arrival in the camp's gas chambers. In November 1943, the French Ministry of the Interior shut down the camp, yet it was put to use once again in April 1944, when 80 »Gypsies« and a group of female prisoners from the Brens camp (Département Tarn) were interned here. When the region - which had been occupied by the German Wehrmacht since 1942 - was liberated, the camp was used to intern German prisoners of war and French collaborators.

With the defeat of the French army in June 1940 the country came under German control. Northern France was governed by the German military administration, whilst the south was initially unoccupied. A government under German influence was established in the spa town of Vichy in the south of France. At the beginning of the Second World War, there were around 300,000 Jews living in France. The exact number is not known as there were no records of religious affiliation in France. The first anti-Jewish laws were passed in northern France at the end of 1940. The Jews were forced to register with the authorities, excluded from society and stripped of their possessions. These policies were followed by systematic arrests by the French police. Jews without a French passport were the main targets of the German SS and police as well as the French authorities. In an attempt to deter growing French resistance, the German military commander General Otto von Stülpnagel (1878–1948) started to have those not involved in the resistance shot and to have Jews in particular arrested. Those arrested were among the first to be deported to the death camps in occupied Poland from March 1942 onwards. A total of 75,000 people were deported to their deaths in the course of over seventy deportation operations. Most of the French Jews survived, mainly in hiding in the south of the country. Around 600,000 people died in France as a result of war and persecution, including 270,000 civilians. There continues to be little distinction drawn between the different groups of victims. However, since the late 1980s there has been increased research into the murder of patients of care homes and clinics. It is now estimated that around 50,000 people fell victim to these operations. Both northern and southern France experienced persecution, collaboration and resistance during the occupation. After the war, remembrance of both the campaign of the »Résistance« as an expression of French patriotism and the suffering associated with the »Déportation« provided a way of bridging the differences between the Gaullist conservatives and the Communists affiliated with Moscow. Consequently, many museums and memorial sites are dedicated to the resistance or remember the deportations, for example the »Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation« (Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation) in Paris, inaugurated in 1956, and the »Centre Européen du Résistant Déporté« (European Centre for Deported Resistance Fighters), which opened in 2005 at the memorial site at the former Natzweiler concentration camp. Since the early 1990s a number of sites of memory have been established, such as the Maison d’Izieu (Izieu Home) memorial near Lyon, which remembers the deportation of 44 Jewish children, the national memorial site at the former camp at Gurs as well as a memorial centre in Oradour sur Glane – a village destroyed by the SS in 1944. The central memorial site dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust is the »Mémorial de la Shoah« in the centre of Paris, which was opened in 2005. French presidents have since then acknowledged shared French responsibility for the Holocaust in France. The memorial site in Caen,commemorating the Normandy landings of 1944, was opened in 1988 and extended in 2002, is the most-visited memorial site outside Paris. The annual national commemorations marking the victory over Nazi Germany take place here. In addition, there are numerous regional museums in France, where the exhibitions focus on the themes of persecution, resistance and deportation.

Remembrance

For a long time, Gurs was neglected as a memorial site. In 1957, the mayor of Karlsruhe and the leader of the Jewish community in Baden initiated the restoration of the prisoner cemetery at Gurs. Renovation work was begun in 1961 and took two years. In 1980, an association of former prisoners was founded. In 1994, Israeli artist Dani Karavan was commissioned by the French state with designing a memorial: The memorial consists of several large wood and concrete sculptures which depict the contours of the barracks and the camp area. A permanent exhibition, opened in 2004, displays documents and recollections of the camp's history. A memorial trail guides visitors across the premises.

Gurs, 2007, Nearly 1,200 prisoners who died in the camp are buried on the cemetery, Jean Michel Etchecolonea

Gurs, 2007, Reception building at the memorial, Jean Michel Etchecolonea

Possibilities

Educational activities, publications

Open

The former camp premises are accessible at all times.

Contact

http://www.campgurs.com

contact@campgurs.com

Mémorial du Camp de Gurs
64190 Gurs

Gurs, 2007, Sculpture by Dani Karavan depicting a barrack, train tracks in the background, Jean Michel Etchecolonea

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