Gurs - ein Internierungslager. Südfrankreich 1939-1943

A touching document of European history that we all have to face. "Swiss sister, tell it in your homeland, tell it to the whole world what is happening here!" The appeal of a deportee has never faded in Elsbeth Kasser's memory. Between 1939 and 1945, some 60,000 people were interned in the French camp of Gurs: first soldiers of the Republican army defeated in the Spanish Civil War, then women and children "undesirables" and "politicals" in France, and finally, during the period of state-fomented anti-Semitism, Jewish men, women and children. Lastly, there were Sinti and Roma who were imprisoned as undesirables before the Gurs camp was closed at the end of the war. For all of them, the camp was a hell where people died daily - at times dozens. Beginning in August 1942, the 3907 Jewish internees who had survived until then were deported to Auschwitz - and violent death. Elsbeth Kasser, a Red Cross nurse from Switzerland, experienced the deportations and cruelties day after day. This shaped the rest of her life. Powerlessness and shame in the face of what had happened kept Elsbeth Kasser silent for decades. Everyday life in the Gurs camp was a simultaneous juxtaposition of many realities that could not have been more contradictory. The pictures from Gurs bear witness to artistic activity in the camp. Elsbeth Kasser was able to save almost 200 drawings and watercolours for Switzerland. She kept the collection in a box under her bed - for almost half a century. It was not until the end of the 1980s that Elsbeth Kasser was able to show these documents to friends. It took many more steps out of seclusion before she was ready to bring the pictures from Gurs to the public's attention. In this catalogue, the works from the Kasser Collection are reproduced in their original size, so that their effect is immediate. Large,.