The Curse of Gurs: Way Station to Auschwitz

Gauleiters Robert Wagner and Joseph Buerckel, the German administrative heads of the States of Baden and the Pfalz/Saar, sought to be the first to make their territories Judenrein (free of Jews). They engineered a massive westward expulsion of over 6,500 Jews to Camp de Gurs, located in unoccupied Vichy France. The event became known as the Wagner-Buerckel Aktion and was offered by the Gauleiters as their gift to the Fuehrer in October 1940. The relocation of Jews to the Gurs internment camp became an intermediate step when the infamous ?Final Solution? was pronounced at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. This Nazi annihilation program triggered yet a second round of transports that would move the incarcerated Jews from Gurs to the Parisian suburb of Drancy, an assembly point where the victims faced a final deportation to the death camp of Auschwitz. The story of this little known tragedy is told by the author who delves into the background of the historical events that led to the Aktion. He recounts the impact of this cataclysm on the area surrounding his boyhood residence in Germany and relates the tribulations and ultimate fate encountered by nearly seven-hundred members of his widely located family in the State of Baden.