Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

In 1939, Gurs was constructed as an internment camp for refugees Spanish Republicans, seeking refuge from retaliation from Francisco Franco's regime.
In 1940, after the Vichy government signed an armistice with the Nazis, Gurs was used as an internment camp for Jews of any nationality except French, administered by the Vichy regime, before transport to Drancy and Auschwitz.
The Vichy government used camp de Gurs to intern:
* political dissidents
* Jews who were not French nationals
* German Jews deported by the SS from Germany
* persons who had illegally crossed the border of the zone occupied by the Germans
* Spaniards fleeing Francoist Spain
* Spaniards who had already been in the camp, released in the fall of 1940, roamed around the country unemployed
* Spaniards coming from other camps that had been condemned for being inhabitable or due to their scarce contingent
* stateless persons
* people involved in prostitution
* homosexuals
* Gypsies
* indigents

Prisoners of Gurs camp included:
* Hannah Arendt
* Maria Arning
* Bernhard Blumenkranz
* Ernst Busch
* Joseph Epstein
* Walter Hochmuth
* Maria Leitner
* Leo Lev
* Alexandra Ramm-Pfemfert
* Charlotte Salomon
* Ernst Scholz
* Thea Sternheim
* Luise Straus-Ernst

On May 10, 1940, prisoners, mainly Jews were transferred to camp de Gurs. by the Belgian authorities.

On October 22, 1940, 28 Jews were transported from Bühl to camp de Gurs.

On October 25, 1940, it was decided to evacuate between 6,500 and 7,500 Jews from Baden to camp de Gurs, as part of Operation Wagner-Bürckel.
During the year they remained in camp de Gurs, more than a thousand fell victim to typhus and dysentery.
Of the survivors, 700 escaped and almost 2,000 obtained visas to emigrate, while the rest, several thousand, remained interned in the camp, and males in the good physical condition were imprisoned in French work gangs.
In December, 1940, humanitarian aid organizations, the Basque government in exile, the Swiss Humanitarian Aid Unit, Jewish French organizations tolerated by the Vichy regime, and Protestant organizations such as the Quakers, La CIMADE, and the YMCA.
Even though camp de Gurs was located in a region where the great majority of the population was Catholic, not one Catholic organization offered to help the inmates.
In February, 1941, l'Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) installed a medical post, and obtained permission to take numerous children away from Gurs, and house them in private homes throughout France.

From January to December, prisoners were transferred to camp de Gurs from camp des Milles, pending emigration to the United States, Bolivia, Cuba and other destinations.

In August, 1942, Jewish prisoners were transported in convoys to Drancy, and later to extermination camps, such as Auschwitz.

After the liberation of France, camp de Gurs housed German prisoners of war and French collaborators.
Before final closure in 1946, the camp was used to held former Spanish Republican fighters, who participated in the Resistance against the German occupation.

In 1944, after the liberation, the French Association of Jewish communities of the Basses-Pyrénées took charge of Gurs' upkeep, and erected a monument to the camp's victims.

In 1957, the mayor of Karlsruhe, which that had deported their Jewish citizens to Gurs, took the initiative to have his city assume responsibility for the conservation of camp de Gurs, supported by the Jewish associations of Baden.
The French state gave the federation of Jewish organizations of Baden the right to control the cemetery for the next 99 years, and the cities of Karlsruhe, Freiburg, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Pforzheim, Konstanz and Weinheim now pay the cemetery's upkeep.