BOOKLET MADE IN THE GURS CAMP BY TRUDL BESAG,... Lot 60

BOOKLET MADE IN THE GURS CAMP BY TRUDL BESAG, A YOUNG GERMAN JEWISH ARTIST, IN 1941 So ist es aber so soll's sein - it is so but it should be so H_16 cm W_11 cm Exceptionally rare and important handwritten booklet with 14 double pages and 28 watercolor illustrations. Each double page contains texts written in rhyme in German and two illustrations that compare on the left side the sad reality of life in the Gurs camp, and on the right side the ideal life in freedom. Another booklet almost identical to this one - which Trudl Besag gave to Rosa Hirschbruch on the occasion of her 65th birthday - is in the collection of the Illinois Holocaust Museum in the USA. Trudl (Gertrud) Besag was born in 1916 in Frankfurt, Germany, lived in Baden-Baden, and was deported on October 23, 1940 with her mother and sisters to the camp at Gurs, a French town in the Pyrenees near Pau. 116 people, including the Besag family, were deported from Baden-Baden to this camp on the same day as part of Operation Bürckel-Wagner. The purpose of this operation was to empty southwest Germany of its Jewish inhabitants. About 6,500 German Jews were deported in total as part of this operation. The Gurs camp served as an administrative internment facility between 1939 and 1945, mainly for foreigners. The first year, the camp was used to intern Spanish refugees from the civil war. It then saw the arrival of Germans living in France, mostly Jewish refugees, and from October 1940, Jews from Germany and countries belonging to the Reich were sent there. The Gurs camp was placed under French administration from the beginning. The camp chief played an essential role in the administration of the camp and the daily life of the internees. René Gruel was appointed camp chief on September 1, 1942. He is remembered as a model civil servant of the Vichy regime. It was he who drew up the lists of deportees in 1942 and 1943. Several thousand men, women and children were interned there because of the state anti-Semitism practiced by the Vichy regime. From August 1942 to March 1943, six convoys transported three thousand nine hundred and seven Jews, men and women, to Drancy and then Auschwitz, where they were almost all exterminated. As the booklet testifies, the living conditions inside the camp were particularly difficult and unhealthy. Sixty people per barrack, rats, lice, cold, lack of food: this is how Trudl Besag describes and depicts the sad reality of his fate in the camp, comparing it to what normal living conditions should be. Disease struck many internees: about 15% of them died in the camp because of the poor hygiene and living conditions. The booklet begins with a dedication to a certain Richard and refers to the cultural activities that Trudl shared with him in the camp. Trudl Besag was liberated from the camp with the help of a Benedictine monk at the end of 1941. Most of her family was also saved. One of her sisters and an aunt were deported to Auschwitz. She emigrated to the United States and lived there until 2000. 30% of the sale price of this booklet will be donated to the "Foundation for the Welfare of the Holocaust Victims", Hamlacha 3, Tel-Aviv - Israel - www.k-shoa.org