Art from the Concentration Camp Gurs (Satis Shroff)

ART FROM THE CONCENTRATION CAMP GURS (Satis Shroff)

Julius C. Turner: Männer im Morgenrot vor dem Stacheldrahtzaun.

Julius C. Turner: Warten auf die Abendsuppe, 1941. Archiv für Zeitgeschichte ETH Zürich/Elsbeth-Kasser-Stiftung

Kurt Löw & Carl Bodek: Französischer Gendarm, der einen Internierten tritt. Archiv für Zeitgeschichte ETH Zürich/Elsbeth-Kasser-Stiftung

'Ceux de Gurs' : art by Max Lingner

The place was the Mecklenburg Hall of the Sparkasse in Freiburg. On exhibit were 40 sketches, portraits, water-colour paintings, landscape drawings and greeting cards. The art work was done by the Jewish prisoners of  concentration camp in Gurs (France).

 I was so moved by the artistic works of the prisoners that I couldn’t resist the temptation of writing my thoughts in the visitor’s book.

What did the prisoners do during the day? They were forced to do nothing. Did they suffer from hunger, cold, fear? How did the emaciated mothers and sick people survive the time of imprisonment at Gurs? Despite the lack of hard life behind the barbed wires of the camp there are small signs of hope in the drawings. The prisoners are shown being kicked into the cell, how green the garden was inside the camp, a lonely bird sitting on the high barbed wire or male prisoners peering out to freedom behind the inhuman barbed wires. The art work was done by Mac Linggner, Leo Breuer, Julius Turner and Carl Bodek.

The art work was collected by Elsbeth Kasser (1910-1992) and she had worked as a Red Cross nurse in Gurs between 1940 to 1943. Just as Florence Nightingale was called the Lady with the Lamp during her work in the military field hospital in Scutari (Turkey), Elsbeth Kasser was called ‘The Angel of Gurs’ by the Jewish prisoners because of her humanitarian engagement in helping the prisoners.

After the Gurs concentration camp was closed, she was able to rescue around 200 works of art and took them to Switzerland and kept them for half a century under her bed. ‘Ceux de Gurs’ is the most famous of this collection, which depicts a mother with her baby, painted on a piece of yellow newspaper. This painting was done by a prisoner named Max Lingner in Gurs.

Elsbeth Kasser kept silent when she returned to her home in Switzerland because she felt she couldn’t help the prisoners. In her testament she written that the pictures should be shown to the public after her death.

Today, there’s an Elsbeth-Kasser-Stiftung that takes care of her property. It might be mentioned that between 1939 and 1945 around 60,000 people were interned in Gurs (Southern France). Among the prisoners were soldiers from the Spanish Civil War, political prisoners and Sinti and Roma (who were called ‘gypsies’) and Jews.

On October 22, 1940 circa 375 Jewish men, women and children were rounded up and sent to Gurs, and from deported from there to Auschwitz and other concentration camps where they were gassed with Zyklon B. In August 1942 3,907 prisoners, who had survived hunger and illness were sent from Gurs to Auschwitz, by the German National Socialists with the collaboration of the French, where they were murdered.

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