How it is, but how it should be: An Imagined Life Outside of Gurs

Volunteer Overview Sheet

What is the show about?

·  Features a rare artifact from our permanent collection

·  Offers vivid depictions of life in the Gurs internment camp (France)

·  Vision of life “as it should be” offers insight into the minds and hopes of internees

·  Allows us to tell the story of two woman survivors

So ist es, aber, so soll’s sein

·  One of several copies designed by artist Trudl Besag in Gurs

·  Given as a gift to Rosa Hirschbruch for her sixty-fifth birthday (July 20, 1941)

·  Seventeen two-page spreads: the left-hand pages depict life in the Gurs camp, the right-hand pages envision life “as it should be” (i.e., in freedom)

How was Gurs different from Nazi-administered camps?

·  Gurs was an internment camp: the goal was to keep the inmates imprisoned, not worked (at least not initially), starved (at least not intentionally), or murdered (until the deportations of 1942).

·  Gurs was administered by French gendarmes: They collaborated with Hitler, but they had no stake in the “Final Solution.”

·  There were aid workers in the camp: This supported its development as a cultural center, as they held programs, taught classes, and supplied inmates with paint, paper, etc.

·  Inmates could communicate with the outside world: See the postcards in Karkomi “Movement West” Gallery.

·  Inmates could leave through several avenues: paid liberation, “temporary release” by social-work organizations (OSE, etc.), and escape.

Timeline of Gurs internment camp (“Camp de Gurs”)

Summer 1939: Gurs opens by the French Republic to imprison Spanish refugees and foreign fighters escaping Spain after the civil war.

September 1939: France and Germany go to war.

November 1939: German Jews in France are imprisoned in the Pyrenees camps as enemy aliens.

June 1940: France falls to Nazi Germany. Marshall Philippe Pétain negotiates an armistice with Hitler to establish unoccupied (Vichy) France.

October 22, 1940: Wagner-Bürckel Operation commences: Gestapo forces arrest nearly 7,000 German Jews from Baden, Saarland, and Pfalz. They are deported into Vichy France and imprisoned in Gurs and other camps.

Winter 1940-1941: Nearly 700 Gurs inmates die from disease and malnutrition.

July-August 1942: Many Jewish inmates are deported to Drancy and then Auschwitz-Birkenau.

November 1942: Germany invades Vichy France.

November 1943: Germany successfully occupies all of France. German forces administer the remaining internees in Gurs.

Summer 1944: Allied forces liberate Gurs. There are four dozen Jewish inmates remaining, among others.

Trudl Besag (artist)

·  Born on March 22, 1916, in Frankfurt am Main; grew up in Baden-Baden

·  Before the war, got engaged to an American engineering student who lived in Germany, George Healy

·  Her grandmother, aunt, mother, and three sisters were also deported with her to Gurs

·  George, cousins, and a Benedictine monk worked to get her out of the camp in late 1941

·  Most of the family escaped to Switzerland, helped by French Protestants; one sister (Ida) and an aunt (Anna) sent to Auschwitz Birkenau in 1942

·  She came to New York, married George, lived in Niagara Falls, then Pennsylvania, then Utah

·  She climbed mountains, wrote books, edited a magazine, and had six children

·  Died in 2000

Rosa Hirschbruch (recipient)

·  Born Rosa Oppenheimer on July 20, 1876, in Dossenheim; grew up in Mannheim

·  Married Samuel Hirschbruch, had a daughter in 1919 named Ella

·  Apartment was ransacked during Kristallnacht; Ella went to Minneapolis, married Lewis Froman

·  Rosa, Samuel, and Rosas siblings Emil and Bertha were all deported to Gurs in October 1940

·  Samuel died in Gurs on June 29, 1941; Emil also died that year, and Bertha was deported in 1942

·  A little unclear what happened between 1941-1946, but came to Chicago in that year

·  Lived with Ella and Lewis; became a very involved grandmother when Michael Froman was born

·  Had a small group of woman survivors who met in Hyde Park

·  Died in 1962