page_title: Gurs internment camp
section_title: Deportations to the East
hierarchical_section_title: Gurs internment camp / Internees / Deportations to the East
caption_attribution_description: Euskara: Itxuratutako barrakoi bat, Gurseko esparrua, Bearno
context_page_description: Gurs internment camp was an internment camp and prisoner of war camp constructed in 1939 in Gurs, a site in southwestern France, not far from Pau. The camp was originally set up by the French government after the fall of Catalonia at the end of the Spanish Civil War to control those who fled Spain out of fear of retaliation from Francisco Franco's regime. At the start of World War II, the French government interned 4,000 German Jews as "enemy aliens", along with French socialists political leaders and those who opposed the war with Germany.
  After the Vichy government signed an armistice with the Nazis in 1940, it became an internment camp for mainly German Jews, as well as people considered dangerous by the government. After France's liberation, Gurs housed German prisoners of war and French collaborators.
  Before its final closure in 1946, the camp held former Spanish Republican fighters who participated in the Resistance against the German occupation, because their stated intention of opposing the fascist dictatorship imposed by Franco made them threatening in the eyes of the Allies.
context_section_description: Once the program for the eradication of the Jews was put into motion in the camps in German occupied Poland, the Vichy regime turned over the 5,500 Jews who were located in Gurs to the Nazis. On July 18, 1942, the SS captain, Theodor Dannecker, inspected the camp and then ordered that they prepare themselves to be transported to Eastern Europe. Beginning on August 6, they were sent in convoys to the Drancy deportation camp, on the outskirts of Paris, and later many were murdered in extermination camps. The majority of them were sent to Auschwitz.
caption: Replica of internment barracks
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