On 22 October 1940, more than 6500 Jews from the federal states of Baden and Saarpfalz were assembled and deported to a camp in Gurs, in the south of France. It was the largest mass deportation since the start of the Second World War. The Jews were taken by surprise as the event took place during the Feast of Tabernacles, a Jewish holiday.
The deportation began after the victory over France, when Nazi leaders from Alsace and Lorraine deported Jews to Vichy France. When Hitler heard about their actions, he ordered them to clear their territories of Jews and make it ‘Judenfrei’. This motivated them to pick up Jews from the border regions of Baden and Saarpfalz and put them across the border as well.
Jews from all villages and towns in the area were assembled at train stations. From there, they were taken by train to the unoccupied part of France. The French government was unable to refuse the Jews and it sent them on to the Gurs prison camp in the Pyrenees. The journey took four days. Some people were able to escape because the trains stopped frequently.
In camp Gurs, living conditions were very bad. People had to arrange for their own food. Men, women, and children lived in separate parts of the camp. One third of the deportees managed to survive by going into hiding in France or by fleeing abroad. In 1942, the remaining Jews were transferred to the Nazis and deported to concentration and extermination camps in occupied Poland.
The deportations from Baden and Saarpfalz were a test round for the deportations of Jews from Germany and the occupied territories that were to come.
Thousands of Jews were taken from Vienna to the General Government (part of the occupied Polish region) as early as 1939. In October 1941, the Nazis started deporting Jews from other parts of Germany as well. They took them to ghettos, labour camps, and concentration and extermination camps in the General Government in Poland and to newly conquered parts of the Soviet Union.
On 19 May 1943, the Nazis pronounced Germany to be ‘Judenrein’, free of all Jews. However, there were still about 20,000 Jews in Germany, including those who were married to Aryans or people living in hiding.
In total, the Nazis murdered approximately 165,000 German Jews.
