The Shoah (1939–1945)
Wagner-Bürckel Action
22-23 oct. 1940·Bade, Palatinat et Sarre
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
Jews from three regions of the Reich are rounded up in two days and deported to the Gurs camp in southwestern France; many will die there or go on to Auschwitz.
On October 22 and 23, 1940, the Jews of Baden, the Palatinate, and the Saar were rounded up over two days on the orders of Gauleiter Wagner and Bürckel, without any decision having been made in Berlin. They had one hour to prepare, took only what they could carry, and were loaded onto trains that crossed the demarcation line and deposited them, to the astonishment of the French authorities, at the camp of Gurs at the foot of the Pyrenees.
Many were elderly. The winter in the wooden barracks, the mud, and dysentery killed people within the camp itself; the survivors would be transferred to Drancy and then deported to Auschwitz in 1942. The operation was the first deportation of German Jews outside the Reich, and the only one in which the Reich rid itself of its own by dispatching them to a neighbor.
- Period :
- The Shoah (1939–1945)
- Type :
- Shoah
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Allemagne
Archives du camp de Gurs ; documents des Gauleitungen de Bade et du Palatinat.