For the few of us who knew of the name of the camp of Gurs prior to October 22nd 1940, it is inevitably associated with an exceptionally terrible tragedy…. October 22nd 1940. The high holydays were over. My wife and I had very recently, after much effort, received our papers to leave for South America. On October 20th 1940 we went to Karlsruhe to an aid organization in order to inform our parents who were abroad and to ensure the reservation of our boat tickets for November. When all the formalities were in place, we went with relief to the small neighboring village of Ettlingen with the intention of spending the night with my wife’s parents before heading to our home in Freiburg. Everything was to go otherwise, however. On Tuesday morning of October 22nd, we were having breakfast. We heard the tramping of boots outside our house and immediately afterwards, a knock on the door. In response to our “Come in!”, six policemen entered one after the other, and stood before us, and we asked what they wanted. Their reply ushered in a new fate with the words: “We have bad news for you, you must get ready to leave, you must be ready in an hour”. To our questions: “Where are we going? Why?” we received a scowl and the stereotypical answer “orders from above”. Naturally my wife and I put up opposition, imploring with our hands raised to the sky that they allow us to go back to our house in Freiburg. But our questioning and pleas were to no avail. The head of the group of policemen simply said “there’s nothing you can do, get ready, in an hour you must be ready with all your affairs in order”.
At the same time we were told: “from now on, all the Jews are liable to be deported”. Everyone was to take what they could carry and 100 Reich Marks. In particular we were to take warm clothes and food for three days. The policemen stayed where they were. We packed our bags in much urgency and haste, and took whatever came to hand. An hour and a half later we had left our home under the watch of the policemen. We were taken to the police station with an elderly couple of around 75 years of age. In the evening after hours of agonized waiting we were taken by van to Karlsruhe station with the other Jewish inhabitants of the small town. There, we saw a scene of indescribable abomination. Hundreds of our fellows were standing in the street, old ladies in wheelchairs, old men with bundles on their backs, women with children and elderly parents, all restless and with terrified expressions. What was going to happen to us? Once we had all been counted we had to go onto the platform through a second entrance. Our fellow believers were already waiting in the train from the Baden region. When we got on the train, they met us with anxious gazes. Once we had managed to find a place to sit, one way or another, in the corridors, on the ground, the train slowly started moving in the direction of Freiburg. We arrived at this town at 5 o’clock in the morning the next day. There, too, the platforms were crowded with baggage and with people laden with suitcases. The news spread that we were to be deported to France. We crossed the Rhine at Breisach. The next stop was Mulhouse in Alsace. There, the money we had taken was seized to be converted into francs. The policemen threatened us with execution and signaled to us that all extra money and all gold and silver jewelry must be handed over to them. At the same time a ray of hope appeared as we were served a good soup with bread for everyone, as much as we could eat.
After half an hour the train set off again, accompanied by platoon guards in the direction of the French border. We crossed the Rhone valley up to the boundary point we had crossed on the morning of October 24th. We were able to notice that the German guard had given way to the French guard. With this change, the unrelenting order to close the windows and the increasingly terrifying pacing of the German soldiers came to an end. Traveling through Lyons, Nimes, Toulouse etc we headed for the western Pyrenees. Finally, after three days and nights of travel without assistance or drinking water, the train of misfortune stopped at a station we didn’t know: Oloron Sainte Marie.
“Everyone get off!” We gathered our belongings and then alighted, it was pouring with rain and we had to wait in front of the station until everyone was more or less in order. The mobile French guards with open and covered lorries were waiting for us. The boarding onto the inaccessible lorries began straight away, old grandmothers, old men and children were thrown on like parcels onto the lorries. Lying down, sitting, standing in the lorries, it was about 14km in the storm and the driving rain. All our courage left us. What was waiting for us? Where were we being taken? On everyone’s faces one could read the unspeakable “now it’s all over!”
There, after a turn in these mountainous surroundings, a camp with innumerable barracks appeared before our eyes (the camp of Gurs). We asked ourselves what kind of work camp this could be. Suddenly we were ordered: “The men get off! Only the men!” My wife and I stared at one another, looking for help. As soon as the men were off, the lorry filled with women set off. We were standing under the pouring rain, in front of us to the left and right were barracks surrounded by barbed wire. The mobile guards took us behind the barbed wire to the barracks.
What we saw demoralized us further still: there were empty dormitories comparable to giant dog kennels, measuring 30 meters in length and 4 to 5 meters in width. We were to choose a place and soon our barrack was filled with around 60 men aged from 20 to 85 from all over Baden and the Palatinate. Little by little the 25 barracks filled with human beings who, three days ago, had been living peacefully in their homes. We were interned. Complaining was pointless, we immediately realized that from now on, only work and our life as a community could save us. What is the Gurs camp? Hutting composed of 14 sectors, each with 27 barracks. Each barrack contained 60 people crammed in against one another. The barracks were in open countryside, constructed on potter’s clay and surrounded by mountains. Around thirty kilometers further to the south was the chain of Pyrenees with its snow-capped peaks. Here was our new home, placed behind barbed wire like animals.
The next day on the order of the camp commandment, a leadership committee composed of prisoners was established for each sector. Each sector committee had the sole right to communicate requests to the camp leadership. Everything was lacking, mattresses, blankets, bolsters, and particularly in the sector kitchens there were no cookers, there was nothing but the immense barracks over which would cross the lashing storms from Biscay.
The sticky clay mud reached up to our ankles. We sunk into it on leaving the barracks and some of our comrades in misfortune had to be pulled from it because they were unable to get out of it alone. The few clothes we possessed wore out all the more.
In the camp, this was the food: coffee in the morning, soup at lunchtime, tea or coffee in the evening and from time to time vermicelli soup. For seven prisoners around 2½ kg of bread per day was distributed. As long as everyone still had supplies everything was alright. After that the shortages began. Everyone could well understand the Lord’s Prayer “Give us this day our daily bread”. Each crumb, whether of bread, cheese or something else, even if it had fallen in the mud, was carefully cleaned and eaten or saved.
Where had the women and children gone? We didn’t know whether they were in the barracks too, and hoped that they were in a better state, but we were greatly disappointed. When the first people from our sector visited the women’s barracks, we were in a state of disarray because their conditions were worse than ours: the women’s sectors were even dirtier and the barracks even worse. Women and children were barely capable of crossing the thick layer of mud. I saw parents and friends again for the first time, dirty and with dark rings under their eyes.
We could only speak to our wives from behind the barbed wire, watched by the guards for five minutes at a time, ten minutes maximum, and then there would be a loud whistle and we were driven away without any consideration. That was our goodbye. Each day brought new recommendations, new orders, but no improvement of our living conditions. In our sector, French officers made a role call every morning at eight o’clock, but luckily it was over in a few minutes. On the whole the French guard platoons were reasonably understanding of our situation.
The management of the sector opted for a type of dictatorial interior management in order to prevent illnesses arising from the lack of sanitary installation. But one day our morale was sapped by rumors that one of the sectors had been contaminated by an epidemic. We were called for the first burials and soon a new Jewish Community was born, only this time a community of the dead for which a cemetery in the commune of Gurs was put in place. Day after day the number of burials increased. Some days there were 13, 17, even up to 21 burials.
The sadness and human despair that was felt can only be grasped by someone who has experienced it themselves. Sometimes one would learn on the tomb of a relative, during the mass burials that other relatives were also going to be buried. Elderly parents lost their descendants, children became orphans. 800 to 1,000 Jews from Baden and the Palatinate found their final resting place in the hastily assembled wooden constructions that took up large clefts, far from their former homeland. There were soon no more barracks where one or two people weren’t saying the Kaddish prayer for a loved one. By mid-January the epidemic had lessened in intensity and the death rate decreased again.
In spite of all this, in all this pity, we found the courage and energy to recover. When we saw that our detention was going to last, educational barracks were set up so that the children could continue their education. Volunteer teachers taught as best they could, without books. At the same time, the camp authorities allowed children to have daily excursions outside the camp. For us, behind the barbed wire, it was a joy to see the children walking in the streets of the camp singing their songs. With time, we also set up cultural barracks where we discussed politics, Judaism, economics, etc, to make our existence more bearable. The celebration of Hanukkah began in dignity and several festivities brought us joy such as birthdays and golden wedding anniversaries.
Two Bar-Mitzvahs were celebrated in these unusual conditions. There were also barracks for sick people. When I entered for the first time in this sector I was so shaken by its terrible state that I couldn’t calm down. The invalids were lying in their clothes, coats, hats and bonnets on their heads on wooden frames reinforced by metal wire and covered with straw. Pitiful, they needed help and medicines that they could only be littlely supplied, or not at all. Each patient went with repugnance to this barrack that was called the infirmary.
The dedicated work of the doctors and nurses should not be forgotten. In these primitive conditions they committed themselves voluntarily day and night and relieved so much suffering. These men should be thanked for their determination, as well as the aid committees who provided medicine, blankets, food, allowing a reorganization of the infirmary.
With time the first parcels arrived containing presents and money. Those who received them could take the most urgently needed items from the sector canteen that had by then been built. In other sectors there were Spanish refugees who provided us with food at prices that were practically unaffordable. Only a few people could rely on this source. After a while, this aid was interrupted because of the rationing that was introduced in France. Instead of this aid, we received an invasion of rats and mice into our barracks. When I left the Gurs camp a lot of the refugees asked me, in the case that I should arrive on the other side of the Atlantic that I should not abandon them and alert the aid committees of the terrible conditions in the camp. Each sum of money, each package brought a ray of hope to those who were still in Gurs or other camps and it’s a duty for those who have a parent or a loved one there to help them before it’s too late. Max Dreifuss
We publish opposite the testimony of Max Dreifuss.
In a box
In 2001, René Armand Dreifuss, professor of political sciences at Rio de Janeiro discovered a box whilst he was putting in order the belongings of his mother Irma who had died the previous year in Uruguay. This box contained documents on Gurs and a statement by his father Max on his arrest and deportation. Max and Irma Dreifuss were married in 1937 and since 1938 had been of the opinion that they had no future in Germany. Abraham Dreifuss, Max’s father had been arrested in 1938 and interned at Dachau. He died there on November 22nd after Crystal Night.
Two years later in November 1940, after many arrangements the couple was supposed to leave for South America. Several weeks before their departure, they were taken in the roundups organized in the Baden region and deported to Gurs. Only the intervention of the Secretary General of the Republic of Uruguay in Vichy allowed the couple to leave Gurs in the spring of 1941. The Secretary General had retrieved their immigration dossier from the Consulate of Uruguay in Hamburg and obtained their release from the camp.
