Through an Artist's Eyes: The Dehumanization and Racialization of Jews and Political Dissidents During the Third Reich 9780367621070, 9780367629984, 9781003111795

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THROUGH AN ARTIST’S EYES

This book offers visual, social-historical analyses of paintings and drawings of the outspoken German Communist activist-artist Karl Schwesig. It follows the course of Schwesig’s internments, but is dedicated primarily to the plight of foreign Jewish persons and Christians (of Jewish descent) who were interned at Camps Saint-Cyprien, Gurs, and Noé in the French free zone. The artworks created by Schwesig provide the themes investigated in each chapter. The works describe the dehumanizing treatment that contributed to and characterized the racialization of foreign Jewish and “mixed-race” Jewish persons in France’s free zone and the attempted elimination of political dissidents. The volume includes color plates. Willa M. Johnson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Mississippi. She has been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the International Institute for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem-The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Jerusalem, and the 2012–13 Cummings Foundation Fellow at the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.

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Latino Peoples in the New America Racialization and Resistance Edited by José A. Cobas, Joe R. Feagin, Daniel J. Delgado and Maria Chávez Women and Inequality in the 21st Century Edited by Brittany C. Slatton and Carla D. Brailey Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education Edna B. Chun and Joe R. Feagin Got Solidarity? Challenging Straight White College Men to Advocate for Social Justice Jörg Vianden Love Under the Skin Interracial Marriages in the American South and France Cécile Coquet-Mokoko Through an Artist’s Eyes The Dehumanization and Racialization of Jews and Political Dissidents During the Third Reich Willa M. Johnson For more information about this series, please visit www.routledge.com/NewCritical-Viewpoints-on-Society/book-series/NCVS

THROUGH AN ARTIST’S EYES The Dehumanization and Racialization of Jews and Political Dissidents During the Third Reich

Willa M. Johnson

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Willa M. Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Johnson, Willa Mathis, 1957– author. Title: Through an artist’s eyes : the dehumanization and racialization of Jews and political dissidents during the Third Reich / Willa M. Johnson. Description: New York : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2020037464 | ISBN 9780367621070 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367629984 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003111795 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Schwesig, Karl, 1898–1955—Criticism and interpretation. | Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945), and art. | Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945), in art. Classification: LCC N6888.S4156 J65 2021 | DDC 700/.458405318—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037464 ISBN: 978-0-367-62998-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-62107-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-11179-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To Curtis, Kirk, and Olivia

CONTENTS

List of Figuresx Acknowledgementsxii Prefacexvii Introduction Racializing Jews  2 Karl Schwesig’s Personal Troubles or Social Structural Issues?  3 1 “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . . Art”: Karl Schwesig, the Ethos of Düsseldorf, and the Weight of Stigmatization, 1933–1939 The Beginning of Woes  18 Schwesig in the Schlegelkeller 22 Schwesig’s Artist Colleagues  26 Jewish Persons in the Prewar Düsseldorf Region  28 Schwesig in Exile  30 Transport of Jewish Exiles to the South of France  32 2 “The Inferno or Hell of [Camp] Saint-Cyprien,” 1939–1940 Saint-Cyprien’s Origins  46 Saint-Cyprien 1939: First, a Camp for Spanish Republicans 48 Jewish and Political Refugees After the Evacuation  53

1

15

42

viii Contents

Structure, Agency, and Institutional Lapses at Camp Saint-Cyprien 54 Privacy, Liberties, and Hygiene  55 Diarrhea, Disease, and Death  58 Weathering Camp Saint-Cyprien  63 Religious Identity and Food at Camp Saint-Cyprien  69 Foodstuffs and Cans  74 Male Rape in Its Aftermath or at Saint-Cyprien?  76 Institutional Roles and the Closing of Camp Saint-Cyprien 79 3 “Many of These Unfortunate People Are Intellectuals”: Art, Culture, Illness, and Death at Camp Gurs Encountering Camp Gurs  100 The Men Cutting Firewood  103 Poverty, Dignity, and Status at Gurs  108 Art and Religious Celebrations  112 “The Barrack of Death”  116 Social Network at Camp Gurs  125 A Response to Life at Gurs  128 4 “They Are All Special Cases of Ill and Old People Who Need Better Care Than the Ordinary Intern”: Opening Our Eyes to Camp Noé Inside Out: An Introduction to Camp Noé (a French Camp-Hospital) 141 Vichy’s Camp Noé  147 The Structure of Camp Noé and Its Provisions  147 Noé Contraindicated for Tuberculosis Patients  149 Food as Arbiter of Health  153 Populations and Health  156 Defining Sickness: When Disease Is Not Illness and Epidemics Do Not Exist  173 Deportation of Foreign Jews From Camp Noé  175 5 “Cruelty . . . That Dehumanizes Its Victims Before It Destroys Them”: The Violence of Racialization What Threat Did Jewishness Pose to Vichy?  192 How Jews Were Racialized and Political Dissidents Silenced 193

98

139

190

Contents  ix

The Salience of Racialization and Dehumanization in the 21st Century  198 Karl Schwesig in Postwar Düsseldorf  200 Index203

FIGURES

1.1 Photograph of Gert Wollheim, Johanna Ey, Karl Schwesig, Elizabeth Kaufman, and Adalbert Trillhaase, ca. 1922 20 1.2 Vor dem Eingang zum Folterkeller (Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany) 23 1.3 Zweiter Abend (Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany)25 1.4 Photograph of SA men at an anti-Jewish boycott in front of Max Meyer’s store (Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany) 30 1.5 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 32 2.1 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 55 2.2 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 57 2.3 Photograph of Karl Schwesig on the beach at Camp SaintCyprien, 1940 58 2.4 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 59 2.5 Die Durchfall Krankheit (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 60 2.6 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 63 2.7 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 66 2.8 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 67 2.9 Juden Beins Gottes dismal (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 69 2.10 Émigrant du Mer (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 75 2.11 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 75 2.12 Les Zusammenbrechende (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 77

Figures  xi

Brennenholz Baracke (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 104 3.2 (Les inutiles) Brüderlich Hilfe (Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany) 106 3.3 (Les inutiles) Feldarbeit (Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany) 107 3.4 Ein Komponist und ein Philologue (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 110 3.5 Christmas program from Camp Gurs, December 25, 1940 (Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Pau, France)113 3.6 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 119 3.7 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 121 3.8 Mit Flaschen Waschen (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 121 3.9 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 123 3.10 Postage stamps (Leo Baeck Institute, New York, New York) 129 4.1 Noé (Haute-Garonne), 1941 (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 146 4.2 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 149 4.3 Jude im Lazarett (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 152 4.4 Spanier und Juden als Abfallessen (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 157 4.5 Le chien maigre (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 158 4.6 Spanien, Noé (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 159 4.7 Ilôt spécial séjour surveille (Noé) 1942 (sous l’autorité du gouvernement des [sic] Maréchal) (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 160 4.8 Untitled (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 162 4.9 Kirchen Katze [sic] (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)163 4.10 Badensee [sic] Jüdinnen at Noé (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 165 4.11 Badensee [sic] Jüdinnen, protestantische Kirche, Noé (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel) 166 3.1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Through an Artist’s Eyes was made possible through the generous funding and kind assistance of dozens of people on three continents. I am extraordinarily grateful to the late Dr. David Bankier, the former director of Yad Vashem-The World Holocaust Remembrance Center International Institute for Holocaust Research in Jerusalem and Dr. Bella Guterman, his interim successor. I am also thankful to Dr. Suzanne Brown-Fleming, the former director of the fellowship program at the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). In the spring of 2009, Dr. Bankier offered me the first substantial external financial support for this project by awarding me a four-month postdoctoral fellowship in Israel. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Brown-Fleming extended to me the Cummings Foundation Fellowship for nine months in Washington, DC. My heartfelt appreciation is extended to the late Dr. Peter Barth, Mr. Herbert Remmert, Mrs. Barbara Barth, and the staff at Galerie Remmert und Barth in Düsseldorf. Dr. Barth’s answer to an email in December 2010 changed the course of this project. Throughout the early years of the work, he responded to my inquiries about German art history generally, and the history of art created by German Communists in Düsseldorf, an area of his considerable expertise in art history. From 2011–2020, he, Mrs. Barth, and Mr. Remmert gave me unprecedented access to their private archive of Karl Schwesig’s artworks and his papers. Since these artworks were located in Düsseldorf and throughout the world, their willingness to go before me or write letters and emails on my behalf was astonishingly kind. Perhaps most significantly, I thank them for making these artworks available for publication in this book. I am tremendously grateful to the University of Mississippi for its unwavering support of this project, especially Deans Glenn Hopkins and Lee Cohen who

Acknowledgements  xiii

have three times awarded me both the Senior Fellowship for Significant Research or Creative Work in the College of Liberal Arts and Summer Research Grants. The College has also provided matching funds for three grants and subvention funds for the publication of more than 30 images for this book. The University of Mississippi’s Office for Research and Sponsored Programs awarded me a 2016 Incentive Grant (IG). The IG award enabled me to secure the rights and permissions for the artworks in this volume. There were other acts of generosity related to securing images for publication that I must acknowledge. Each organization in its own way made a significant contribution to the completion of this project. These include the Leo Baeck Institute in New York City, Beit Lohamei Haghetaot in the Western Galilee, and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, all of which allowed me access to artworks either gratis or at a reduced cost. I offer thanks to Mrs. Trudy Elbaum Gottesman of New York City, who, even before we met, reached across the Atlantic to friends at Beit Lohamei to help facilitate the exchange of study images of Schwesig’s artworks, gratis. I recognize with sincere gratitude the outstanding staffs at Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne (ADHG), Toulouse, France; Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Atlantiques (ADPA), Pau, France; and the Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westphalia (NRW) in Duisberg, Germany for their considerable effort to assist me during numerous visits for research from 2011 to 2020. Dr. Peter Klefisch and Ms. Elke Conrads-Wirth at NRW; Ms. Anne Goulet, the ADHG’s director of the archive; and Ms. Elisabeth Guchan at the ADPA all repeatedly made special efforts on several occasions over the years to efficiently provide large quantities of materials quickly, in order to maximize my visits at their archives. These colleagues and their staffs went above and beyond to assist me, sometimes lifting restrictions on data for research purposes. Similarly, two colleagues at the United States Holocaust Memorial Archive went to extraordinary lengths to help me gather important data: Mr. Ron Coleman and Ms. Jo-Ellyn Decker. Both provided key materials from the American Friends Service Committee and the International Tracing Service Digital Collection, respectively. In both cases, these bodies of materials added an important dimension to the study and my methodological attempts to triangulate the data. Colleagues at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, provided important 20th-century art historical journals and materials that were essential to developing an understanding of the art collective, Das Junge Rheinland, of which Karl Schwesig was a member; and the Gelsenkirchen Stadtarchiv provided important birth documents that were instrumental in helping me to discern between the Karl Schwesig who is the subject of this study and similarly named persons with whom the International Tracing Service Digital Collection has merged warperiod records. Numerous administrators, librarians, and colleagues around the world helped me by sending requested data via email or by snail mail. For these acts of

xiv Acknowledgements

generosity, I extend sincere thanks to Mr. Fabrizio Bensi, Archivist at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Basel, Switzerland; Ms. Valérie Jacq from the Météo France; Mr. Andre Gaudio, the Classics, Medieval, and Linguistics specialist at the United States Library of Congress; Dr. David B. Morris, the German area specialist at United States Library of Congress; Dr. Dirk Martin, Chief archivist and Mr. Gerd de Coster, archivist at Centre d’études de guerre et société in Belgium; Ms. Sylvie Vander Elst at Services des victimes de la guerre in Belgium; Mr. David K. Frasier and Mr. Zachary Downey, Public Service assistant at Indiana University’s Lilly Library; Ms. Michelle Chesner, the Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies at Columbia University; colleagues at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and colleagues at the American Joint Distribution Committee Archive all provided numerous very important documents and data that were essential to this study. Archivists, reference librarians, art curators, and other specialists provided remarkable support, including Mr. Eliot Orvieto, Mr. Niv Goldberg, Ms. Deborah Jacobs, Ms. Megan Lewis, Mr. Steve Feldman, Ms. Kyra Schuster, Dr. Elizabeth Anthony, and Ms. Kochi Levy. My special thanks to Associate Dean Stacey Lantagne at the University of Mississippi School of Law who pointed me in the right direction concerning obtaining rights for important photographs. I am grateful for colleagues who were also instructors to me during the early years of this project. Dr. Pnina Rosenberg introduced me to artworks from the Holocaust at Beit Lohamei Haghetaot in 2006; Dr. Mirjam Rajner, Senior Lecturer of Jewish Art at Bar-Ilan University, served as my mentor in 2010, while I was a fellow at Yad Vashem; Dr. Diane Afoumado (USHMM) was an early and important conversationalist on the subject of Holocaust art; and Dr. Jürgen Matthaus, Director of Applied Research at the USHMM, patiently encouraged my fledging ideas about the significance of analyzing as empirical evidence of history artworks from the period of Holocaust. My thanks to Ms. Lorena Fonseca, Instructor of French at the University of Mississippi, for working so diligently with me to sharpen skills in French; and to my colleague, Professor of Sociology, the late Dr. Mark Frezzo, who helped to verify the accuracy of some of my French translations. I  am extraordinarily grateful also to special colleagues and mentors in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Mississippi: Professors Jan Murray and Paula Temple, and Ms. Katherine R. Fields, Instructor of Printmaking. All three art colleagues invested enormous time teaching me how to make art using the techniques that Karl Schwesig employed in his works, including the challenging skills of painting in watercolors and creating in drypoint and woodcut printmaking. I am especially grateful to Jan for her sophisticated views about the processes of artmaking that she has shared with me over the course of this project. Understandings of these techniques from the inside out were invaluable to me through the process of studying Schwesig’s body of works. Similarly, I  am grateful to my friend, Dr. Wayne Poll, who generously shared

Acknowledgements  xv

medical knowledge that helped me to contextualize Karl Schwesig’s urological injuries that resulted from torture. I wish to thank my students at the University of Mississippi from 2010 to the present, who through the courses about genocide and women, race and religion, the sociology of disability, and the social contexts of Holocaust art have pushed me to think ever more critically and fully about aspects of this project. The life of any project is infinitely less lonely when it is supported by the care, critical exchanges, and insights of colleagues. For these, I thank my friend Dr. Annette Becker, historian at Université Paris-Nanterre, for our conversations about art and the World Wars while fellows at the USHMM and since then. I am immensely appreciative to my dear friends, the present chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Mississippi, Dr. Jeffrey T. Jackson; my former chair, Dr. Kirsten Dellinger; and my senior colleague at the University of Mississippi, Dr. John J. Green, former Director of the Center for Population Studies and Professor of Sociology. I am grateful for Kirsten’s fierce commitment to the faculty of our department, reflected in a willingness to fight for the necessary research and travel funds, helpful suggestions, and enthusiasm about the project over its life. I am indebted to John for his patient ear as I tried to work through the data about illness in Camps Gurs and Noé and for helping me to make important theoretical links. With John’s careful mentoring over these years, I have learned to parse more deliberately and critically the significance of morbidity and mortality in the camps. I am grateful also to my friend and distinguished senior colleague, Dr. Joe R. Feagin, Professor of Sociology at Texas A & M University for his years of support, encouragement, and our exchanges about the sociology of race and ethnicity, particularly as it relates to Jewish persons during the period of the Holocaust. I reserve my deepest gratitude, respect, and thanks for the late Dr. Gustave Schonfeld, Professor of Medicine at Washington University. More than any other single person, Dr. Schonfeld has shaped my thinking about several chapters in this book. A distinguished physician, scholar, and survivor, Dr. Schonfeld understood long before I did, the significance of my interests in analyzing illness and death in the French camps. Whereas most other colleagues looked askance when I mentioned illness and death as social problems in the camps, Dr. Schonfeld understood immediately. His untimely death meant that I never got to share my progress on the project with him, but his insights and encouragement to investigate these subjects have served as a beacon, opening up to me a world of academic inquiry that has relevance not only to Holocaust history and art about Camps Saint-Cyprien, Gurs, and Noé, but to the contemporary world. I am grateful to Ms. Eva Boden, Ms. Rose Abrahms, and Mr. Peter Feigl, all survivors of the French camps, who spent time talking to me and allowing me to ask questions in telephone conversations, about their encounters in war-period France.

xvi Acknowledgements

I am eternally thankful to the following Holocaust survivors who welcomed me into their homes, made a place for me at their tables, and allowed me to interview them, sometimes over the course of months and years: Mr. Frederick Terna, survivor of Leipa, the Terezin Ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Dachau, and his life partner, Dr. Rebecca Shiffman; the late Dr. Gustav Schonfeld, survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau and his life partner, Mrs. Miriam Schonfeld; the late Mrs. Renée Ruth Rothschild, survivor of Camp Gurs and Rivesaltes and her late life partner, Mr. John Rothschild; Mr. Yehuda Bacon, survivor of the Terezin Ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Mauthausen, and his life partner, Ms. Leah Bacon; and Mr. Manfried Weil and his life partner, Mrs. Alisa Weil. To my dear friend and research assistant Ms. Hanna Gorszczynski, I express profound appreciation for the dozens of hours during several trips to Germany, assisting me in interviews, negotiating art repositories and other institutions, and for helping me to cull through hundreds of pages of materials over several years. Likewise, I extend thanks to Mr. Yossi Altarez and his family for driving me to repositories throughout Israel and most importantly, for becoming my de facto family over the four-month period that I spent in Israel in 2010. For their help and guidance throughout this process, the Press’s significant financial commitment in producing Karl Schwesig’s artworks as an important feature of this book, and for their work in seeing the manuscript through production, I am entirely appreciative to Routledge Press, especially Mr. Dean Birkenkamp, the Senior Editor of Social Sciences, and Mr. Lewis Hodder, his Editorial Assistant. Lastly, I express thanks to my father-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel Curtis Joseph Johnson, for his lived example of endless integrity, grace, and kindness. To Curtis and Elizabeth’s son, Dr. Kirk Anthony Johnson, my partner of more than 30 years, my colleague, and my friend, and to our beautiful and intelligent daughter, Ms. Olivia Champion Johnson, I express my unreserved thanks for all of your patience, encouragement, support, and love over the more than 10-year life of this project. Finally, to those who helped but I failed to mention by name, your contributions were nevertheless important to me. Please forgive the omission and accept my warm thanks. Notwithstanding the excellent assistance and support that I have received over these years, any errors or problems in the book belong solely to the author.

PREFACE

Before we had the printed word and while the printed word was yet novel and conceived of as pictorial, Romantic poet William Blake integrated word with image as a composite art.1 These works utilized all of the tools of expression available to the poet. Considering the notable ambivalence about pictures espoused by most of Blake’s contemporaries,2 Blake’s esteem for writing, engraving, painting, and the printed word as coequals with the spoken word recognizes the power incumbent in the visual. Natural scientists and artists working together preceded Blake by hundreds of years. The practice of scientific observation and data collection in their most rudimentary forms began with the uses of images.3 Pamela Smith notes, beginning in the 13th century, “Images became an important way of recording, collecting, cataloguing and witnessing the curious, the marvelous, and the particular.”4 Despite this history of epistemological value demonstrated by uses of imagery, the challenge for many historians,5 even in an age dominated by images, is seeing the value of pictures for delineating history scientifically.6 The impressive body of artworks created during the Holocaust demands that scholars consider the value of these works as more than ancillary contributions to the history they tell. In fact, these artworks are frequently among the only records from the period that describe events from the subject positions of the persecuted. The purpose of this book is to examine how Karl Schwesig’s paintings, drawings, and prints convey empirical data about prewar Düsseldorf and three concentration camps located in France: Camp Saint-Cyprien, Camp Gurs, and Camp Noé. Schwesig’s visual artworks introduce and document several of the most pressing social problems that faced thousands of foreign Jewish and other migrants and refugees. Because these artworks communicate life through the eyes of the imprisoned, they enable us to appreciate aspects of life and events differently and in some instances more

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comprehensively than may be articulated in the documents created by the people who were in power. These dynamics alone render Holocaust artworks important artifacts. As material culture produced by prisoners, they offer intimate details about the mundane aspects of everyday experiences in jails, concentration camps, and ghettos. They give us another important dimension of what occurred and how it was experienced during the Third Reich. There are several anthologies and other works that document the genres of art created in camps and ghettos during the Holocaust. An equal number of biographies or autobiographical works about Holocaust artists exist. Among the major anthologies, volumes by Miriam Novitch,7 Janet Blatter and Sybil Milton,8 Ziva Amishai-Maisels,9 Pnina Rosenberg,10 and Glenn Sujo11 are well known. The purposes of these volumes vary. Israeli art historian Ziva Amishai-Maisels’s Depiction and Interpretation: The Influence of the Holocaust on the Visual Arts examines how the genres of art created during the Holocaust have affected art history. Novitch, well known for having curated the extensive collection of Holocaust art at Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, compiled 120 works in Spiritual Resistance. Novitch describes the book as featuring “the struggle to save humanity from annihilation.”12 It argues against the notion that Jewish victims were passive during the genocide. While the argument may seem obvious today, new Jewish arrivals into Israel during the postwar period experienced a great number of questions about what they did and were perceived to have not done during the Holocaust. Blatter and Milton’s Art of the Holocaust documents Holocaust victims’ hopes, humanity, creativity, and suffering.13 These works all link the artists to camps or ghettos and provide general historical information about the artists and their artworks, and to a lesser degree about the camps or ghettos. Salon des Refusés: L’art dans les camps d’internement français, 1939–1944, organized while art historian Pnina Rosenberg was the curator at Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, and Mickenberg et al.’s anthology, The Last Expression: Art and Auschwitz,14 which focuses on art at the slave labor and death camps at Auschwitz, connect more directly to the period’s history. Perhaps by delimiting the scope of these two works, Mickenberg et al. and Rosenberg are able to give greater historical depth than is possible when surveying a wide swath of Europe’s camps and ghettos. Still, the intention of these works appears not to be to argue for visual artworks as historical evidence in the ways that I advance in this study. There are a few books that bridge the anthologies to the present study. Karl Schwesig’s 1939 Schlegelkeller15 and Ester Lurie’s postwar book, Sketches from a Women’s Camp,16 both engage a kind of history-telling based on the artists’ firsthand experiences. This is unsurprising since both Schwesig and Lurie understood their roles to be documenters during the Holocaust. Osias Hofstatter’s17 drawings of the south of France, whether intentional or not, show an unmistakable and easily identifiable physical resemblance to the geographic locales where he and Schwesig were interned.18 Whether or not Hofstatter thought of himself as a documenter, knowing from postwar letters that he and Schwesig had crossed paths in

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France, and seeing artworks from both men and the geographic areas Hofstatter depicted, highlights key intersecting pieces in the two bodies of artworks. From this it is clear that Hofstatter’s works echo important relevant information in Schwesig’s artworks. Schwesig’s and Hofstatter’s bodies of works thus provide a source for mutual triangulation. But even in these three cases, the authors’ artworks were not integrated with other data forms. The biographies and autobiographies of Samuel Bak,19 Felix Nussbaum,20 and other artists do highlight key historical data. All of these works share with the present study the subject of the Holocaust and visual art. However, my work is devoted to highlighting the visual artworks created by a victim about victims and integrating these artworks into the broader history-telling about the period. To ignore these artworks’ historical value would be to repeat the errors of 18th- and 19th-century scholars who, eager to understand the history and material culture of ancient Israel and the ancient Near East, often plundered material remnants left by ordinary people in search of information about King David and other royalty. Thus, they forfeited an opportunity to learn about the past. Some scholars, including historians and art historians, have debated how to use art in history-telling.21 Among them, several scholars have focused on Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communication action to theorize about how historians could use visual culture to tell history.22 The impulse to look to sociology is an excellent one. In fact, numerous sociologists of art have contributed to our knowledge about art’s role in society and what it tells us about society. These include Hanna Deinhard,23 Jean Duvignaud,24 Arnold Hauser,25 Howard Becker,26 and Pierre Bourdieu.27 Assuredly, art communicates or it would be meaningless, but how it communicates and what it contributes to history is tied to understanding sociohistorical and political contexts. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu suggests that the field of artistic and other cultural production is highly contested terrain dominated by the most powerful.28 Bourdieu’s observations are applicable when considering the practices for collecting, organizing, and defining empirical data for history-telling. Barbie Zelizer,29 Janina Struk,30 Sarah Farmer,31 Daniel Walkowitz,32 and others have recognized the significance of filmic and photographic visual culture and the Holocaust. Still, these scholars have written relatively little about the roles of Holocaust paintings, drawings, prints, and their functions in history-telling.33 Yet, it is important to note that among early modern visual artists, there was a tradition of painting noteworthy historical scenes. This genre, aptly called history painting, depicted heroic or tragic human interaction(s) that emerged from biblical texts, literature, or ancient history. The purpose of these works was to teach morality.34 Initially, history painting was reserved for specific occasions such as military battles or sieges. Its subjects were usually from the past.35 The genre changed over time, providing not only documentation about the human suffering and turmoil concerning events such as the Protestant Reformation, but also offering commentary about these events.36

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As during the Civil War in the United States when publishers hired artists as war correspondents,37 the British government in 1939, by means of the War Artists Advisory Committee, “commissioned painters, illustrators, and sculptors to create a visual record of the conflict.”38 Considering these and similar traditions such as the history of journalism, which utilized artworks in reporting, the idea that paintings, drawings, and prints depict historical actors, events, social structures, and social conditions during the Holocaust is certainly credible. Many artists, including Karl Schwesig, responded to the Great War in their visual artworks and poetry.39 We need only recall the artworks and poetry of Max Beckmann, Georg Grosz, Otto Dix, Max Ernst, Hannah Hoch, Raoul Hausman, John Heartfield, Jean Arp, Paul Eluard, Joë Bousquet and André Breton, as Annette Becker suggests.40 In fact, Dadaism, Surrealism, and German Expressionism exhibit, to some extent, the tremendous impact of war and history on and in 20th-century art. A  formally trained artist, Karl Schwesig likely knew about the history painting tradition and of the other uses of art in reporting and depicting war. Schwesig was a politically astute person who recognized that art is intertwined with all aspects of social, political, and economic life. Indeed, it can be said of Karl Schwesig that he complied with “the same truth, which gives law to the historian.”41 To make sense of Schwesig’s artworks and other similar bodies of work, the artworks must be placed within their historical contexts and understood as parts of the larger historical record and in view of who Karl Schwesig was. I refer to these artworks as visual historical narratives not because they tell the entire history but to point to them as germane slices of history with sociological relevance. Artworks are no more able to disclose an entire history than is any other singular piece of evidence, whether an artifact, a letter, a testimony, a diary, a government document, or a photograph. But visual artworks, like all other pieces of data, whether created for this purpose or for other reasons, when situated with other pieces of evidence offer salient information about what occurred and how that affected the people, institutions, and conventions during the time. Surely, inexplicable dimensions of camp life exceed art just as artworks evoke ideas beyond the mere historical facts they may express. Neither of these, however, justifies sidelining the artworks, words, or any other mode of communication that contributes to our knowledge about what happened during the Holocaust. The confluence of events that occurred in France from 1939 to 1944 resulted in the death of approximately 77,000 of the 320,00042 to 350,000 Jewish people who were in France at the start of World War II.43 Of these Jewish persons who met death either at Auschwitz or in a French camp,44 67 percent or 51,590 were foreign Jews. Thus, while the death toll in France relative to other European nations like the Netherlands was smaller, the overwhelming majority of the roughly 22 to 24 percent of the overall Jewish population from France who died was foreigners.45

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Karl Schwesig’s bodies of artworks were created largely during two periods. While Schwesig was exiled in Belgium he developed a series of prints that addressed the torture and the degrading treatment that he and other Communists endured in the Düsseldorf jail during the prewar period. A second set of works, created during Schwesig’s imprisonment in three French concentration camps, focus on the period after the outbreak of war. These artworks, supported by records from the period, are the subjects of this study. The son of Albert and Karolina46 Säger Schwesig, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schwesig was born in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, on 19 June 1898.47 He was not Jewish. He was born into an Evangelical Christian household.48 Nevertheless, he was arrested as a Jew in Belgium.49 Unsurprisingly, a great deal of his artworks from the French concentration camp system center on Jewish persons. Because Karl Schwesig and I share this interest in Jewishness, the book is devoted largely, although not exclusively, to Jewish people in Düsseldorf and Jewish internees at Camp Saint-Cyprien, Camp Gurs, and Camp Noé. While the emphasis is on Schwesig’s Jewish colleagues and the broader Jewish community of Düsseldorf and in the French camps, it centers foreign Jews who, in most cases, were treated distinctly differently than were French Jewish communities. Schwesig not only attends to Orthodox Jewish persons, but also he depicts Mischlinge (“mixedrace”) or demi-aryans (“half-Aryans”). Schwesig utilized the terms “Jewish” and “Churchwomen” to identify these groups of people. Karl Schwesig’s artworks demonstrate the complexities of Jewishness during the period. Thus, the term foreign Jew requires a detailed explanation. It refers to Jewish people who did not have French citizenship or had it rescinded, as the Algerian Jews experienced when the Crémieux decree was revoked by French anti-Jewish legislation of 7 October  1940.50 The moniker “foreign Jew” also includes Jewish migrants who had been forcibly deported from Germany or Belgium to France during the war; or those who, fleeing Nazi oppression, migrated to France from Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia or Poland, and by virtue of the Statut des juifs of 4 October 1940, were relegated to internment in concentration camps.51 Foreign Jews were also Jewish persons who had lived in France, but due to the law of 22 July 1940, had their French citizenry revoked after a commission was established to review naturalizations accorded after 1927.52 Finally, the term foreign Jew comprised also the so-called mixed-race people who were called Mischlinge or demi-aryans (“mixed-race,” “half-Aryan,” respectively) despite their own self-identification as Christians, and were by German and French laws considered racial hybrids. For the purposes of this study, I define political dissidents as people who, like Karl Schwesig, were Communists or in any way anti-fascists. The purpose is not to delineate what each of these groups believed, but rather to identify the constituencies imprisoned with Schwesig and those portrayed in Schwesig’s body of art. In addition to Communists, Spanish Republicans, members of the French

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resistance, former members of the International Brigade, and anarchists form this group. Of these, Schwesig most commonly portrays Spanish Republicans.

Origins of the Idea The idea for the book developed after I encountered artworks created by a Holocaust survivor, Magda Watts. At first, Magda Watts’s sculptures and other artworks registered as if they might have been a response to the trauma she endured at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her works clearly highlight iconic notions of Jewishness that integrate Watts’s experiences as a survivor. When Mrs. Watts was a teenager at Auschwitz-Birkenau she made dolls that were a part of an informal but highly significant bartering system. It was the way that Magda managed to live. A slave laborer, Magda Watts garnered a bit of extra bread or a potato in her soup by crafting dolls for a guard at Auschwitz-Birkenau. A day or two after seeing Mrs. Watts’s sculptures, dolls I saw in an exhibit at Yad Vashem-The World Holocaust Remembrance Center reminded me of the dolls that Mrs. Watts had made as a teenager at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I questioned the relationship of artifacts, including paintings, prints, and drawings, to the history from which they emerged. The connectedness between her artworks and the artifacts in Yad Vashem’s collection seemed to be more than an ephemeral link. Seeing the two in quick succession led to consideration about whether and how sculptures and visual artworks tell history, and how best to elicit that data from the works in a scientific way. These questions are not so different from the ones that W. J. T. Mitchell asked in his 2015 work, Image Science. Over time, it became apparent that social scientists had been analyzing visual art since the 1930s by applying quantitative content analysis to motion picture films. I settled on utilizing qualitative content analysis to examine Karl Schwesig’s artworks for their historical sociological evidence. The methodological goal was simple: to subject all of the artworks to the same level of inquiry and to verify if what appeared to be in the pictures actually could be triangulated by means of other forms of archival data. After examining a large number of artworks about the Holocaust, I developed a simple coding framework from the themes that had emerged: starvation, illness, death, disability, leisure, and male rape. Then, I selected a subset of Karl Schwesig’s artworks that demonstrated these themes to see what the historical record tells us about these subjects during the period when Schwesig was at these locales. Sociologist of art Hanna Deinhard argued that sociologists are not concerned usually with individual works of art but “concentrate rather on situating it within the much wider frame of institutions (of which art itself is one), ‘customs,’ ‘mores,’ ‘roles,’ ‘communication processes,’ etc.).”53 In this study, I take a different approach. I engage individual artworks as a means for analyzing aspects of the social world such as social groups and social structures. Thematically, Karl Schwesig’s works address aspects of the social world that surface in various bodies of Holocaust artworks. They exemplify Schwesig’s prewar and wartime understandings of the

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governmental power structures that seized on Jewish people, Communists, and others. In his Sociology of Art, French scholar Jean Divagnaud writes: But the work of art says no more than what it is in itself—and what we give it. What is this arrangement of symbols but a stimulus to direct us to the objects symbolized which, in themselves, have meaning for us. Only a permanent meaning beyond our immediate awareness, will suffice. So much for works of art which satisfy at first reading and fall prey to criticism.54 (emphasis mine) Schwesig’s artworks point us to foreign Jews, political dissidents, and disabled people, most of whom were Spanish Republicans, and the conditions at French camps that all of these people were forced to suffer. He highlights the illness, poverty, religion, and politics in these places. This study focuses on the portions of the 50- to 52-piece print series that Schwesig created about his and other Communists’ Düsseldorf jail experiences of torture and the 525 pieces that Schwesig created in the camps. Two postwar prints that shed light on Schwesig’s time at Camp Nexon are also integrated into the study. In these individual works, the artist focuses mainly on a racialized social group—Jewish foreigners. The artist attended to a lesser degree on disabled people who were almost exclusively Spanish Republicans—some of whom were political dissidents also. These artworks tell a story that link the art to its history and history to the social structures, social conditions, and social norms that existed. Within their historical contexts, they tell a story visually. This book seeks to achieve three goals. First, the book addresses two research questions: 1) Do Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schwesig’s artworks convey empirical historical data about the social structures, social groups, and social interactions of Jewish persons and other groups in prewar Düsseldorf and at Camp Saint-Cyprien, Camp Gurs, and Camp Noé during the periods when Schwesig55 was jailed or interned at these places? and 2) How do Karl Schwesig’s artworks from these locales inform about the sociocultural, religious, medical, and political frameworks56 that existed in prewar Düsseldorf and later, under the Vichy regime? Second, the book tests my hypothesis that Schwesig’s works are empirical historical visual narratives that provide relevant data about Jewish migrants and deported Jewish people, and Christians who had Jewish ancestry57 and therefore were deported as if they, too, were Jewish. Finally, it also evaluates the degree to which these paintings, drawings, and prints cause us to learn about facets of life in prewar Düsseldorf and in the French camps that may not have been previously considered. In this study, the term Holocaust art refers to visual artworks created by people who were detained, jailed, tortured, or imprisoned, whether due to their religious, racial, or political views, while living in exile after fleeing oppression or while detained and deported by a government entity from 1933 to 1945. Some

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works created after the postwar period are included under this rubric because several artists either recreated artworks originally conceived of in camps or ghettos, or reworked pieces in media that were unavailable during incarceration. Others created retrospectively artworks about their experiences in camps and ghettos. All of these artworks are important, but they may serve different purposes. The processes for analyzing the content of artworks are similar to those for evaluating other qualitative data.58 Reliance on triangulation of these data from multiple, sometimes opposing sources and subject positions, not only validates the historicity of data gleaned from visual artworks59 but also enables a richer, multifaceted view of the historical social situations represented by the artworks. Utilizing interview data, diaries, photographs, governmental documents, and other archival materials thus minimizes subjectivity in interpreting the data.60 I hypothesized that by first examining a broad body of artworks and developing a list of social conditions and other themes emergent from them, then systematically going through the archival materials from the camps, including internees’ writings, survivor testimonies, interviews, governmental sources, and newspaper reports, scholars could test whether these artworks meet a standard whereby they could be used as historical visual narratives. In other words, for this interdisciplinary study to show the significance of visual sociology to Schwesig’s art and conventional modes of history-telling, “a historical analysis  .  .  . a historical mode of explanation”61 must be central. The analysis of Holocaust artworks as history and sociology is grounded in the notion that “valid scientific data about society are accessible by observing, analyzing and theorizing its visual manifestations: behaviors of people and material products of culture.”62 Ultimately, Holocaust art deserves this kind of serious consideration because it draws direct attention to empirical historical facts that documents prepared by perpetrators, bystanders, or collaborators often fail to show us. These artworks amplify parts of the historical record from the victims’ and survivors’ points of view. They educate us about intimate aspects of their lives, inform about the concrete social conditions they faced, and document the social structures that existed. Camp directors or other representatives may have had a vested interest in either diminishing or entirely omitting these perspectives from public purview. Internees had no such agenda. But the art also reveals parts of the historical record that might be easily eclipsed or misunderstood if not contextualized by the artworks. Thus, I argue that Schwesig’s visual artworks are most effectively studied as parts of the complex activities in which they were embedded and created rather than as detached, individual expressions.63 Unlike most archival materials that were not created solely to document history, Karl Schwesig’s artworks were created expressly to apprise the world about what Schwesig considered to be National Socialism’s cannibalistic nature.64 In a March  1939 letter to American novelist Upton Sinclair, Schwesig writes, “Understand: one still underestimates the grotesque face of modern Cannibalism.

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I must show this hideous face to the great masses of people who are still free. You did not hear our cries out of the torture cellar. I am now liberated and will help my comrades in the Cellar.”65 Schwesig began documenting his experiences under Nazi rule because he recognized widespread ignorance about events in Germany and was determined to capture these realities in his artworks.66 This study pursues a visual sociology of the Holocaust that centers visual analysis of Holocaust art and employs archival documents to enrich that analysis. I subjected the artworks to careful scrutiny and verification by comparing data from the artworks to more traditional datasets used by historians, to see if the conditions revealed in the drawings, paintings, and prints resonated with conditions on the ground and reported in government correspondence, camp reports, letters and writings from internees, inventories of inmates’ belongings, aid providers’ reports, photographs, death certificates, Books of the Dead, requisitions for supplies, work orders from the Vichy government and German officials, and survivors’ testimonies. Among these data, I count as perhaps most important a hoard of 215 victims’ letters which were written more or less simultaneously with Karl Schwesig’s creation of visual works about experiences in the French camp system. A sample of the findings about these artworks is presented in this study. In every case, Schwesig’s expansive body of artworks finds concordance with other traditional archival historical documents. In other words, the artworks speak of the same social conditions that are reflected in more traditional datasets although these sources of information were created independently. The consistently high rate of concordance between Schwesig’s artworks and these other data is the singularly most impressive part of these chapters, for two reasons. First, this concordance validates my hypothesis that Karl Schwesig’s artworks have empirical value for Holocaust historiography. Moreover, rather than a hybridized method of reading artworks with texts to valid the images’ worth, the study strongly suggests that Schwesig’s works alone present a set of historical visual narratives that are as valuable as any set of archival documents. Whereas historiographies are often based predominantly on documents created by the powerful, Schwesig’s clear concern is to inform about subpopulations from the perspective of prisoners, especially such vulnerable groups such as Jewish persons, political prisoners, the elderly, disabled, and sick. Beginning in September 1935, after having been stripped of his German citizenry for committing high treason, and serving a 16-month prison sentence, Karl Schwesig fled Germany for Belgium where he documented in a series of prints his and other Düsseldorf prisoners’ experiences in the Folterkeller.67 In early 1939, Schwesig sent his manuscript titled Schlegelkeller,68 featuring artworks exposing Nazi brutality, to Upton Sinclair.69 While it could be argued today that Schwesig’s artworks are merely “anti-Nazi propaganda”—the musings of a disgruntled and alienated German citizen—Schwesig’s letter to Sinclair makes clear the artist’s intentions.70 Indeed, based on everything we know about life in Düsseldorf from Third Reich records

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and other written archival sources, Schwesig’s assessment of Nazi brutality and torture against Communists was accurate, whereas the idea that Schwesig’s works were anti-Nazi propaganda,71 as a memo from the German Embassy in Belgium claimed, was a farce. The artworks are valuable for what they tell us directly, but also for what they lead us to investigate about particular structural problems such as the suppression of political dissidents and the public health crises in camps. In addition, the artworks reveal something of the prisoners’ emotional and physiological dispositions and the artist’s political views.72 Through an Artist’s Eyes is the product of more than 10  years of extensive research and study in 14 public and private archives and art repositories in Israel, the United States, Germany, and France. I was able to access materials in four other archives in Belgium, Switzerland, France, and the United States via email communication and the kind assistance of archival or other institutional personnel. To make finding documents more agreeable, I have referenced these materials by using the first four or five words of primary source materials in the original language with dates when available and other key archival information. I interviewed or had extensive telephone conversations with seven survivors who had been interned in the French concentration camp system. In the book, I use the words of the social actors as much as possible, including the voices of victims, perpetrators, and collaborators. These voices strike me as absolutely vital to the work. Thus, I use an unusual number of direct quotes throughout the text. When the original texts appear in German and French, I have translated those passages for the convenience of readers who may be unfamiliar with these languages. When I relied on other scholars’ work, such as a description of the state of knowledge about tuberculosis in Chapter 4, I used sources that were available and knowable during the period of the artworks so as to provide the contemporaneous points of view.

An Overview by Chapter In the Introduction, I present a historical sketch focused on the cultural, socioeconomic, and political environments, including the rise and roles of the Kommunistische Partei of Deustchlands (KPD), in the Lower Rhein and Ruhr Valley regions of Germany. Here, the interplay between Schwesig’s personal life and the public structural issues come to the forefront, especially the kinds of difference that the Third Reich considered un-Germanic and therefore endeavored to crush in the prewar period.73 Understanding the decades prior to the rise of the Third Reich in Germany helps situate the major problems that confronted Karl Schwesig, his colleagues, and those who opposed them. The book, while not a biography, follows the contours of Karl Schwesig’s life inasmuch as the four locales we discuss in the chapters that follow represent places where Schwesig was interned. Therefore, Chapter 1 is dedicated to establishing

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a concise but thorough purview of Schwesig’s development as an artist in Düsseldorf and his engagement with the KPD. The chapter highlights Schwesig’s association with Das Junge Rheinland, his brutal fate in the Folterkeller, the torture of Schwesig’s Jewish and Communist colleagues, and the maltreatment of Jewish people in the Düsseldorf region. Chapter  1 discusses briefly Schwesig’s period of exile in Belgium and it ends with Karl Schwesig’s arrest in Belgium on 10 May 1940, and his subsequent deportation to the south of France with Jewish persons who were then living in Belgium. In Chapter 2, I concentrate on the specific physiological and environmental conditions that existed at Saint-Cyprien and were recorded by Schwesig between mid-May 1940 until the end of October 1940, when he was transported to Gurs. As a preamble to this and subsequent chapters about the French camps, I introduce data pertinent to the legacy of each specific locale. For example, regarding Saint-Cyprien, I discuss the site’s geography and its uses beginning after the eruption of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936. The Spanish Civil War precipitated a flood of Spanish refugees into France at the same time that central and eastern European Jews and others fled Nazism. At Saint-Cyprien, I  focus on several important matters: 1) ethnic diversity in the camp; 2) physical disability, especially as it pertains to agricultural labor and the exploitation of refugees, including disabled amputees who functioned as manual laborers in the name of French national security; 3) weather-related conditions and calamities; 4) leisure, that is, the combination of periodic, unexpected pleasures juxtaposed against devastatingly harsh weather; 5) the allocation of foodstuffs; and 6) male rape. A letter by Karl Schwesig while he was at Saint-Cyprien describes his desperate hope of being liberated and permitted to immigrate to the US.74 Instead, Schwesig would be transported to Gurs rather than given the chance afforded artists such as Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and his friend, Gert Wollheim.75 Chapter 3 engages everyday life at Gurs, a religiously and culturally diverse camp. Schwesig’s works reveal the daily routines required to eke out an existence against the backdrop of the majestic Pyrenees Mountains. The investigation of Gurs highlights four important issues: 1) populations of German Christians and Jews; 2) malnutrition and hunger; but also 3) an unassailable pride among the camp’s inhabitants, many of whom were scientists, doctors, rabbis, artists, and other intellectuals; and 4) the bitter political irony in the French mantra “liberté, égalité, fraternité” against the background of a barbed-wire enclosed camp that robbed Schwesig and others of these long-esteemed values of the Third Republic until these values were abandoned after the defeat of June  1940, according to Robert Paxton.76 Schwesig was imprisoned at Gurs for four months, from early November until early February 1941, when he was shipped to Noé.77 Camp Noé marked the French camp where Schwesig was interned for the longest period of time. While it was called a hospital camp, documents depict Noé as a locale to which the aged and sick patient-prisoners were shipped in anticipation of their impending demise. It is therefore fitting that Chapter 4 recounts in

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painstaking detail the desperate health conditions faced by the elderly and chronically ill patients but also by the doctors who treated them. The examination of Noé underscores: 1) the role of environmental conditions that encouraged disease and illness; 2) a constant, desperate lack of medical supplies; 3) the magnitude of insect infestations and other conditions that were hospitable to disease and death among vulnerable populations; 4) the immense impoverishment of inmates and the high mortality rates among Jewish internees; and 5) how Vichy socially constructed the notion of illness and epidemic. Chapter 5 summarizes the types of historical data drawn from Karl Schwesig’s artworks and offers a sociological analysis of what the evidence from Schwesig’s artworks tells us about dehumanization and the racialization of Jewish persons and political dissidents in Düsseldorf and at three French camps for the historical periods under consideration. One of the key contributions of sociology to the study of artworks created during the Holocaust is its ability to identify patterns and mechanisms that functioned in the social world. The Schwesig artworks under consideration in this book offer important information about the specific mechanisms responsible for dehumanizing and racializing Jewish people and political dissidents in prewar Germany and wartime France. The fact that people were interned in France rather than Poland and suffered and died from tuberculosis or cachexia rather than in a death chamber ought not to relegate these experiences or the processes that created them to a less important status. Hierarchies of suffering are callous and harmful. They provide an opportunity to ignore social systems of inequality and inequity. An age when concentration and detention camps are springing up throughout the world, some of them in response to the tides of migrant and refugee populations seeking relief from political oppression and war, should lead us back to this past. Awareness related to the present and knowledge about the processes of dehumanization and the racialization of religious social groups during the Third Reich indicate that these historical data are prescient. Failing to analyze them as the historical sociological data that they are, limits any hope of achieving NEVER AGAIN.

Notes 1. W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago/ London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 121. 2. Mitchell, Picture Theory, 112–17. 3. Pamela E. Smith, “Art, Science, and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe,” Isis 97, no. 1 (2006): 83–100. 4. Smith, “Art, Science, and Visual Culture,” 89–90. 5. Daniel J. Walkowitz, “Visual History: The Craft of the Historian-Filmmaker,” Public Historian 7, no. 1 (1985): 52–64; Sarah Farmer, “Going Visual: Holocaust Representation and Historical Method,” The American Historical Review 115, no. 1 (2010): 115–22. 6. For a more positive view about visual culture for history-telling, cf. Forum, “The Visual Turn in Early Modern History and Historiography,” German History 30, no.

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4 (2012): 574–91. See also, the works in historical journalism and uses of art by the military as noted later. 7. Miriam Novitch, Spiritual Resistance: Art from Concentration Camps, 1940–1945 (Western Galilee, Israel: Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, 1981). 8. Janet Blatter and Sybil Milton, Art of the Holocaust (New York: W.H. Publishing, 1981). 9. Ziva Amishai-Maisels, Depiction and Interpretation: The Influence of the Holocaust on Visual Arts (Oxford/New York: Pergamon Press, 1993). 10. Pnina Rosenberg, Salon des refuses: L’art dans les camps d’internement français, 1939–1945 (Western Galilee: Musée de la Maison des Combattants des Ghettos, 2000). 11. Glenn Sujo, Legacies of Silence: The Visual Arts and Holocaust Memory (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2001). 12. Novitch, Spiritual Resistance, 9. 13. Blatter and Milton, Art of the Holocaust, 21. 14. David Mickenberg, Corinne Granof, and Peter Hayes, The Last Expression: Art and Auschwitz (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2003). 15. Karl Schwesig, Schlegelkeller: Mit einen Vorwort von Heinrich Mann (Düsseldorf: Fröhlich und Kaufmann, 1983). 16. Esther Lurie, Sketches from a Women’s Camp, 3rd ed. (Tel Aviv: J. L. Peretz Publishing House, 1962). Esther Lurie also created a series of postcards based on her drawings from the Kovno Ghetto cf., Esther Lurie, Ghetto: 15 Drawings (Tel Aviv: Edition Dviv, 1958). 17. Osias Hofstatter and Rachel Sukman, Osias Hofstatter: The Early Years, 1938–1957 ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Museum of Art, 1992). 18. Hofstatter and Sukman, Osias Hofstatter, 1992. 19. Samuel Bak, Painted in Words (Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001). 20. Felix Nussbaum, Art Defamed, Art in Exile, Art in Resistance, eds. Felix Jorg and Karl Jorg (Bramsche, Germany: Rasch, 1997). 21. Forum, “The Visual Turn,” 574–91. 22. Forum, “The Visual Turn,” 576–79. 23. Hanna Deinhard, Meaning and Expression: Toward a Sociology of Art (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 1984). 24. Jean Duvignaud, The Sociology of Art with an Introduction by John Fletcher, trans. Timothy Wilson (London: Paladin, 1972). 25. Arnold Hauser, The Sociology of Art, trans. Kenneth Northcott (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985). 26. Howard Becker, Art Worlds (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008). 27. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed,” in The Field of Cultural Production, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 28. Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production,” 40–45. 29. Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory Through the Camera’s Eyes (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.) 30. Janina Struk, Photographing the Holocaust: Interpretations of Evidence (London/New York: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2005). 31. Farmer, “Going Visual.” 32. Walkowitz, “Visual History.” 33. Cf. Walkowitz, “Visual History”; Farmer, “Going Visual.” 34. Wendy Wassyng Roworth, “The Evolution of History Painting Masaniello’s Revolt and Other Disasters in Seventeenth Century Naples,” The Art Bulletin 75, no. 2 (1993): 219. 35. Roworth, “The Evolution of History Painting,” 220. 36. Roworth, “The Evolution of History Painting,” 220.

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37. Jennifer E. Moore, “The Artist as Reporter: Drawing National Identity During the U.S. Civil War,” Journalism History 44, no. 1 (2018): 2–11. 38. Weider History Group, “War Artists at Sea,” Military History (2014): 50–55. 39. Annette Becker, “The Avant-garde, Madness and the Great War,” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 1 (2000): 71–72. 40. Becker, “The Avant-garde.” 41. Edgar Wind, “The Revolution of History Painting,” Journal of the Warburg Institute 2, no. 2 (1939): 116. 42. “France,” Holocaust Online Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/france. 43. Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller, “Anti-Jewish Policy and Organization of the Deportation in France and the Netherlands, 1940–1944: A Comparative Study,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20, no. 3 (2006): 437. 44. “France,” Holocaust Online Encyclopedia. 45. Griffioen and Zeller, “Anti-Jewish Policy and Organization of the Deportation,” 437. 46. As best I can tell from the handwritten city records of Karl Schwesig’s family documents, Karolina was Schwesig’s mother’s name (Karl Schwesig’s family records, documents, Gelsenkirchen Stadtarchiv, Gelsenkirchen, Germany). 47. Karl Schwesig, Camp Noé fiche individuelle, 28 February  1941, côte 1868 W37, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 48. Karl Schwesig, family records. 49. “Liste von Juden die in Mai 1940 in Belgien wohnhaft,” International Tracing Service Digital Collection, Malines Ordner 24, 1.1.24.1, folder no. 24, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 50. Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, with a New Foreword by Stanley Hoffman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 4. 51. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 4. 52. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 4. 53. Hanna Deinhard, “Reflections on Art History and Sociology,” Art Journal 35, no. 1 (1975): 29. 54. Duvignaud, The Sociology of Art, 21. 55. Karl Schwesig shares the precise same name as another man from Gelsenkirchen who was born three years earlier. According to records at the City Archive of Gelsenkirchen, these were two different people. It is important to note that both men’s files appear to have been merged by the International Tracing Service, making it appear as if the two men were one person. 56. Deinhard, “Reflections on Art History,” 29–32. 57. Germans called Christians who had converted from Judaism Mischlinge. The French called these people demi-aryans. 58. Scott Reeves, Ayelet Kuper, and Brian D. Hodges, “Qualitative Research Methodologies: Ethnography,” British Medical Journal 337, 7668 (2008): 513. 59. Reeves, Kuper, and Hodges, “Qualitative Research Methodologies,” 513. 60. Norman K. Denzin, “Triangulation 2.0,” Journal of Mixed Methods Research 6, no. 2 (2012): 82. 61. E. A. Kessler, “Introducing Images, Technology, and History: A Note from the Image Editor,” History and Technology 25, no. 4 (December 2009): 388. 62. Luc Pauwels, “Visual Sociology Reframed: An Analytical Synthesis and Discussion of Visual Methods in Social and Cultural Research,” Sociological Methods and Research 38 (2010): 546. 63. Regula Valérie Burri, “Visual Rationalities: Towards a Sociology of Images,” Current Sociology 60, no. 1 (2012): 48. 64. Karl Schwesig to Upton Sinclair, letter, 15 March 1939, Karl Schwesig papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Preface  xxxi

6 5. Karl Schwesig to Upton Sinclair, letter, 15 March 1939. 66. Karl Schwesig to Upton Sinclair, letter, 15 March 1939. 67. “Extraits du dossier de l’administration de la sûreté publique office des étrangers à Bruxelles Concerne: Karl Schwesig,” notes, 4 October  1935, Karl Schwesig’s file #A161905, Archives générales du Royaume, Brussels, Belgium, 1–2. 68. Schwesig, Schlegelkeller. 69. Karl Schwesig to Upton Sinclair, letter, 15 March 1939. 70. Herr Schmidt-Rolke to Deutsches Generalkonsulat, letter #604, 30 July  1937, Archives générales du Royaume et Archives de l’État, Brussels, Belgium; Karl Schwesig to Upton Sinclair, letter, 15 March 1939. 71. The word propaganda implies false claims in the post-World War I sense, not as the term was initially used. (Edward Bernays, Propaganda with an Introduction by Mark Crispin Miller [Brooklyn: IG Publishing, 1928], 11–14). 72. Cf. Burri, “Visual Rationalities,” 46. 73. C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959). 74. Karl Schwesig to Unknown, drawing no. 2044 (back), 1940, Beit Lohamei Haghetaot Art Collection, Western Galilee, Israel. 75. Karl Schwesig, drawing no. 2044 (back), 1940. 76. Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 20–33. 77. Karl Schwesig, intake card, 29 October 1940, Archives départementales des PyrénéesAtlantiques, Pau, France.

INTRODUCTION

Artworks created during the Third Reich, in both the prewar period and World War II, were produced under a variety of very different circumstances. Karl Schwesig and other artists who were interned in the French camp system worked freely, whereas those who created artworks in camps and ghettos in the East at places like Terezin Ghetto or the Kovno Ghetto made art secretly and at their peril. The larger sociopolitical, historical, economic settings, and the ideologies that supported them are equally important to consider. This Introduction identifies the influences of German Romanticism, Communism, race science and eugenics, and the proliferation of racism, including the racialization of Jewish persons, during the early 20th century. All are key to grasping who Karl Schwesig was and how he perceived the world. Unsurprisingly, antiCommunism, racism, the uses of race science, and anti-avant-garde perspectives are attributable to the Nazi Party’s worldviews and particularly their conceptualization of Jews, the disabled, and other social groups. These influences notwithstanding, Robert O. Paxton has argued that the rise of fascism’s nationalistic appeal, bereft and unchecked by both an internal intellectual consistency1 and bolstered by a penchant for extrajudicial violence,2 was well poised to take advantage of Weimar’s weakness. This enabled the Nazi Party to use nationalistic sentiments to bolster Germany following its World War I loss. Together, extrajudicial violence and ultra-nationalism seem to have been dangerously appealing. It is important to bear in mind, however, that long before the Nazi Party evolved, various groups across the political spectrum throughout the world had developed, nurtured, and embraced some of the ideologies that were so prominent in Nazi Germany, including nations that eventually constituted the Allied forces during World War II.

2 Introduction

Racializing Jews The racialization of Jewish persons in Europe constitutes a form of racism. The term racism gets at more than the “hatred of Jews” or antisemitism. By racism, I mean “the ideologies, policies, and practices in various institutional arenas that normalize and reproduce racial inequality, inequity, and domination based on racial significations and identities”3 or perceived racial identities, as was the case with Jewish persons during World War II and has been the case with Jews in other historic epics since the 4th century ce.4 Similar strategies for racializing Muslims exist. The term racism usually refers to a social group’s physiological traits such as skin color, eye shape, or hair texture that distinguishes that group from the dominant group’s physical characteristics. Rarely is racism used to describe the social processes that institutions use to render religious social groups unequal.5 The difficulty is linked to biological assumptions about race and racism. If, however, racialization as a social process marks religious social groups for unequal and inequitable treatment, then surely, religious groups can be and are racialized. For example, racializers often attribute physiological characteristics to the racialized religious entity. Since the 11th century, European churches’ stained glass windows have portrayed Jews as bearded men, with long or large Pinocchio-like noses and wearing pointed hats. Regularly they are depicted as either killing Jesus or reaching for moneybags.6 Every aspect of these images signifies an indelible trait associated with stereotypical characteristics that were considered endemic to Jewishness. The assigned physiology functions as phenotypical traits, as if Jews constituted a race. Thus, Jewish people have been racialized since the medieval period. Christianity, Joe R. Feagin argues, is a key foundational element of the white racial frame’s conceptualization as early as the dawn of modernity.7 The uses of phrases like “perfidious Jews” in Church liturgy until the Second Vatican Council is emblematic of how Christian orthodoxy has been elevated above Judaism, Islam, and other religious social groups. This kind of treatment was certainly in existence by the 16th century, when most social scientists agree that the introduction of Spanish blood purity laws8 exemplifies how justification for religious dominance of one religious social group over others occurs. Popular notions about racism focus on discrimination linked to skin color. Social scientists, however, describe racism in far more complex structural terms. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues, “. . . social orders are stratified along racial as well as class and gender lines. Racial stratification is always hierarchical; thus the race ascribed with the superior position enjoys social, political, economic, and psychological advantages over the group or groups ascribed with inferior positions.”9 Historical evidence supports adding Jewish people among the groups who were racialized and ascribed an inferior social position in World War II Europe. BonillaSilva notes further: “After attaching meaning to a ‘people’ . . . race becomes a real category of group association and identity.”10 More recently, Jews have been racialized by means of assigning to them a nonwhite status, as George Yancey argues.11 Certainly,

Introduction  3

the underlying laws, policies, and treatment of Jewish people in France and in Germany demonstrate how racialization functions as racism. That the Nuremberg Laws relegated Jewish persons in Nazi Germany to second-class citizenry were patterned after American laws against African Americans indicates more than an ephemeral tie between the racialization of religious social groups and racism against particular racial groups.12 Thus, it did not matter that Judaism is a religion rather than a race. By casting Jewishness as a race, Jewish people were subjected to the same systematic power abuses and oppression that other non-dominant groups were. They, too, had been deemed fundamentally other than and inferior to “whites.” Michael Omi and Howard Winant consider this othering a foundational element of racism.13 Finally, Joe R. Feagin describes Gordon W. Allport’s definition and description of prejudice as weak14 because it does not focus on the systemic and structural nature of racism. I agree. Yet, the structural effects that Allport associates with prejudice—withdrawal, discrimination, physical attack, and mass annihilation or genocide15—describe aptly the outcomes of systemic structural racism. This range highlights racism as more than an ideology, but a set of social processes that are destructive and have the potential to be deadly, as was the case with Jewish persons during World War II. To some extent, Karl Schwesig’s social locations loom large and are intimately related to the historical contexts and the artworks discussed in later chapters. Therefore, it is vital to see how the dominant groups in Germany and France viewed Schwesig and the subjects of his artworks at the time. Whereas scholars like George Mosse and Stanley Milgram16 in the decades following World War II, sought out social scientific explanations to account for why and how the Nazi Party and ordinary Germans created its extraordinarily deadly system of genocide and atrocities, the sociology of knowledge suggests an alternative perspective. Even though many of the ideologies that eventually helped to shape in one way or another the thinking during the Third Reich, acknowledging these similarities is not at all the same as diminishing the longer national and cultural legacies of Germany or any other nation that collaborated with Germany, as France did. Such a claim would be inaccurate and misses the point. The point is that the knowledge responsible for producing and shaping human societies is intergenerational.17 In the case of the Third Reich, views that romanticized and elevated German culture and art existed for decades before the Nazi Party emerged, but were radicalized during the Third Reich. Karl Schwesig’s artworks, therefore, share profound links to both the period of the Holocaust and to decades of pre– World War II history. If sociologists of knowledge and culture are correct, the views expressed in the artworks and during the period have rich cultural legacies.

Karl Schwesig’s Personal Troubles or Social Structural Issues? While this book inevitably tells Düsseldorf Kunstmaler Karl Schwesig’s personal history in intricate detail, it also aims to analyze the cultures and subcultures that

4 Introduction

gave rise to the visual narratives that he produced. It is these artworks’ ability to tell about the private and individual but also the public and societal structures that make the works important historical documentation. Schwesig survived the war, but his health problems, many of which originated during the prewar period as a result of torture, were exacerbated by postwar conditions and the social consequences of his activism. For Schwesig, art was activism—it was trained on the social, economic, and political. Having been ruined as an artist as a result of the Nazi Party, he died on his 57th birthday on 19 June 1955. Letters written by Schwesig and other documents reveal that he confronted punishing financial pressures that resulted from an inability to earn money as an artist. Schwesig claimed, and there is evidence to support the notion, that his former oppressors remained in power in postwar Düsseldorf, thus blocking him from entering juried art exhibits and therefore, further ruining his reputation as a painter. In turn, this intensified post-traumatic stress associated with torture and years of incarceration. Karl Schwesig’s intersecting social locations18 are directly associated with Communism, art, disability, and race science. These complex interlocking issues were at the fore when Karl Schwesig came of age. They are significant for how he understood himself and the world around him. Among Schwesig’s social locations, his political identity as a Communist within the context of Germany’s modern social history—from the Wilhelmine era and the World War I defeat, to Weimar and then Nazism’s rise and the resulting genocide—was hardly coincidental. At issue here are these ideologies, reactions to them, and the ensuing problems of class disparities, economics, politics, war, destruction, and national concerns about how to remedy vast social problems. These were more than individual or personal troubles but emblematic of structural issues that existed in many industrialized nations. It is impracticable to pursue detailed discussions of Communism, the economy, politics, race science or eugenics, colonial genocide, and the avant-garde in this book. Any one of these subjects is worthy of many books. But it is important to touch on how each of these notions helped to shape the worlds that Karl Schwesig inherited, inhabited, and responded to in his artworks. Pragmatically and more specifically, Düsseldorf ’s and Gelsenkirchen’s working classes were just developing during Schwesig’s youth. His seemingly lifelong humanitarian drive, with its emphasis on social and economic equality and equity, was integrally tied to the challenges of forming a working class in the Lower Rhein region and Ruhr Valley. Mary Nolan writes: Exploitation, insecurity and exclusion did not in and of themselves “make” the Düsseldorf working class. Many workers undoubtedly considered their wages inadequate, the authority of supervisors and owners unmerited and arbitrary, and their overall situation unjust. Certainly the desire for “decent human treatment” was widespread, as memoirs and questionnaires show. But Düsseldorf ’s workers were unable to forge their fragmented ranks into

Introduction  5

a class, to mold a culture that incorporated yet transcended the particularistic cultures that abounded. They lacked a common vocabulary in which to articulate shared grievances and goals. The obstacles to the creation of class, culture and consciousness came not only from structural and cultural conditions but from political ones as well.  .  .  . In Europe’s most expansive, technologically advanced, and organized capitalist economy, political power remained firmly in the hands of an economically declining land nobility. Industrialization transformed society but not politics, and until 1918 Germany remained illiberal and anti-democratic.19 To a great extent, these movements’ failures, scholars argue, prepared the opening for the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands.20 In 1923, hyperinflation rocked Weimar Germany, and by the decade’s end, capitalism was on its heels. Neither Hitler’s Munich Putsch nor the Communist Revolution prevailed over the weak and staggering Weimar Republic.21 More broadly, the 1923 grab for power by Communists and fascists would change dramatically conversations about democracy and liberalism.22 Historian Mark Mazower describes the general tenor of life: The fact is that in most of Europe by the mid-1930s—outside the northern fringe—liberalism looked tired, the organized Left had been smashed and the sole struggles over ideology and governance were taking place within the Right—among authoritarians, traditional conservatives, technocrats and radical right-wing extremists. Only France continued its civil war between Left and Right through the 1930s, until that was ended by Vichy. But civil war had already erupted briefly in Austria (in 1934) and more protractedly in Spain before ending in right-wing triumph. In Italy, central Europe and the Balkans, the Right held sway. Regimes varied from the royal dictatorship of King Carol in Romania, through the military men ruling Spain, Greece and Hungary to the one-party states in Germany and Italy. Not all of these were fascists; indeed, some saw in fascists their most threatening enemies.23 (emphasis mine) By 1929 much of the industrialized world was in the throes of the Great Depression. Nevertheless, nations throughout the world, including Germany, were contemplating efficiency, mechanization, and the other technological wonders of modernism.24 As elsewhere in the world, Communism in France played an important role in the 20th century. In France, even before the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, French working-class people, due to the Paris Commune of 1871, successfully enacted progressive programs through collective action before these movements could be repressed.25 Throughout the 1920s, French Communism played

6 Introduction

an important role for the working classes locally and nationally.26 Its successes, Tyler Stovall notes, lay in the attention that the Parti communiste français (PCF) paid to longstanding issues such as quality of housing, utilities, and schools.27 Stovall writes: In contrast with many other industrialized nations, communism has played a key role in French politics during the twentieth century. It has been especially significant in the life of the working class since 1920, having self-consciously and successfully made itself into a working-class party and often serving as the major voice of French workers in both national and local politics.28 The possibilities of revolution among working-class people hovered in the minds of French conservatives, Robert Paxton writes.29 However, for many in France, Communism was less a threat to democracy than a mechanism for social change that would result in a more equitable and effective system of taxation.30 Following the corruption revealed by the Stavisky scandal on 6 February1934, groups from the French Left and Right protested against the nationalists. Thereafter, “the political battleground in France assumed an increasing[ly] bipolar pattern.”31 Yet, some political groups that were at odds with each other took joint actions. For example, the Communists, who were typically doctrinaire, according to William Sharp, withdrew somewhat from those positions in order to work with socialists and trade unionists.32 Robert Paxton summarized the posture of French politics after the scandal in the following fashion: This aroused militancy began to be redirected against a different target after February 1934. The accusation of weakness remained, but the source of the threat was transferred from the boches to the Bolsheviks. Fear of revolution was, of course, a constant of French conservative politics. In the 1930’s, however, men of impeccably republican background joined the conservative crusade against the Left, as their fathers and grandfathers had in 1917, 1871, and 1848. They were frightened this time by the depression, by the possibility of another war with its attendant revolution, and by the Communist party’s efforts to emerge from its isolation. Their frantic antibolshevism began to prepare the alignment of 1940. The French Left had indeed reacted to the nationalist demonstrations of February  1934 by an “opening to the left,” in the form of a socialist and radical rapprochement with the previously isolated Communist party. Some Communist militants had marched against the republic with the nationalists on February 6. Over the succeeding months, however, an antifascist front united them with the democratic Left. . . . The point is that in a popular vote divided nearly fifty-fifty, the left parties profited by their union to win a majority of seats in the Chamber and the Senate. . . .

Introduction  7

The Conservatives felt underrepresented and turned more willingly to direct action. French conservatives believe to this day that a Bolshevik takeover had begun, although it is quite clear that the leaders of both the Communist party and the CGT were taken by surprise by the spontaneous wave of jubilation and by the occupation of factories.33 In comparison to Germany, the effects of the Great Depression on France were markedly different, but the effects of the Depression lasted an unusually long time into 1939. Overall, the French economy grew rapidly in the 1920s.34 Manufacturing and production reached a peak in the first half of 1930. Astonishingly, only one French bank failed during the period.35 Even though 20th-century German culture is sometimes depicted as entirely anti-modernist, it was in fact enamored with two important elements of modernism—eugenics and technology. German thinking about social engineering was in lockstep with societies throughout the world, including the United States, Great Britain, India, Brazil, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Italy, Spain, France, Hungary, and other countries which, despite available evidence to the contrary, deemed eugenics a credible path to improving national populations.36 Notwithstanding the eugenics movement, in the years prior to the Great Depression, Germany had implemented two laws on behalf of the disabled. Germans, to some extent, seemed to care for the 2.7 million returning disabled veterans of the Great War and others.37 However, well before the Third Reich, eugenics was an established part of “Weimar biology, medicine and social policy” and in May 1920, Prussian officials formed a 15-member council called the Beirat für Rassenhygiene und Bevölkerungswesen to study “scientifically the racial hygiene legacy of the War as a part of the government programme of social reconstruction.”38 While race hygiene in Germany had been rejected prior to World War I, Weimar officials hoped it would help resolve “intractable social problems.”39 It is widely acknowledged that “American eugenics provided significant material and ideological support for the Germans.”40 Some scholars also note that “British eugenicists . . . did indeed view the Nazi government positively in the early years of the 1930s”41 with a “significant though not numerically sizable, faction in the British eugenics movement . . . [viewing] Nazi Germany as an admirable state for its implementation of eugenic principles.”42 While the uses of eugenics in the service of genocide in Germany during the Third Reich are unique in comparison to its uses in the United States and elsewhere during the period, the motivating principles were identical.43 Frank Dikötter writes: Eugenics was not so much a clear set of scientific principles as a “modern” way of talking about social problems in biologizing terms: politicians with mutually incompatible beliefs and scientists with opposed interests could all selectively appropriate eugenics to portray society as an organic body that had to be guided by biological laws. Eugenics gave scientific authority

8 Introduction

to social fears and moral panics, lent respectability to racial doctrines, and provided legitimacy to sterilization acts and immigration laws. Powered by the prestige of science, it allowed modernizing elites to represent their prescriptive claims about social order as objective statements irrevocably grounded in the laws of nature. Eugenics promoted a biologizing vision of society in which the reproductive rights of individuals were subordinated to the rights of an abstract organic collective.44 Seemingly in global unison, Social Darwinism had seized the imaginations of late 19th- and early 20th-century intellectuals, and in one sense was a companion to the avid nationalism that also grasped these nations. With Social Darwinism, specifically eugenics, countries saw a path to “improve their populations” and thus, secure a place in the hierarchy among world nations. Here again, complexities emerge. In addition to the eugenics movement the Lebensreformbewegung or life reform movement, during the second half of the 19th century, occupied “a growing number of Germans who scrutinized and disciplined their bodies in a utopian search for health and beauty.”45 According to Michael Hau, “supporters of the life reform movement were worried not only about the health of individuals but about the healing process (Gesundung) of society as a whole.”46 But this drive for health functioned antithetically for disabled people, and was the cause of intense hostility towards them.47 Carol Poore writes, “Discourses that called for rehabilitating and reintegrating disabled veterans, workers, and young people were various types of stigmatizing, eliminationist discourses that challenged the right of some disabled people to a place as equal citizens and even their right to exist.”48 The continuity of themes between the Third Reich and antecedent German cultures during the Wilhelmine and Weimar periods is clear. If Karl Schwesig’s status as a German Communist artist did not differentiate him sufficiently, then, according to Nazi ideology, his other social locations as a disabled Polish immigrant who was arrested on 10 May 1940 as a Jew meant that he was four times as likely to be killed than other citizens, since any one of these stigmatized social identities alone would have sufficed as cause for his justifiable extermination during the Third Reich. France, like the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, had developed a eugenics program. Based on the Lamarckian view of heredity, French eugenicists claimed the environment could evoke physiological changes in humans, which are then passed down to future generations. With its influential eugenics program, France confronted fears and concerns about societal degeneracy and low birth rates in an aging society.49 The aim of the program was to improve the quality of the French population.50 In contrast to Germany (and the US), the French program initially featured positive eugenics. By the time there was an appetite among eugenicists for negative eugenic measures, the Great Depression, government cutbacks to programs supporting eugenics, and the December 1930 church encyclical that was focused on birth control movements prevented negative

Introduction  9

eugenics from thriving in France during the first years of the 1930s.51 Even when the Fondation Carrel’s population group encouraged voluntary and forcible sterilization among people with certain mental and hereditary physical illnesses, the confinement of these groups, or both measures in the 1940s, the measures were not introduced into public policy. One important deterrent to the development of negative eugenics in France was the rising significance of eugenics as a celebrated part of Nazi ideology in Germany. In the early 1930s, already wary of sterilization and the anti-immigration laws established in the US and the birthcontrol movement in Great Britain, French eugenicists viewed their movement as different than those that had become associated with antisemitism, anti-black, and anti-immigrant sentiments to preserve the purity of Aryans.52 The point here is not that these values were anathema to all French eugenicists53 but that they did not succeed in becoming public policy in France despite the Vichy government’s decision to fund generously the Fondation Carrel,54 which was chartered as a public institution under the joint supervision of the ministries of finance and public health.55 Alexis Carrel, a Nobel Prize-winning physician and avid eugenicist who had expressed explicitly antisemitic views, was placed in charge of an organization that employed from 300 to 400 people.56 The work carried out under the foundation is of great significance for understanding war-period France and arguably the treatment of North Africans in France since the war. The goals of the Fondation Carrel appeared to have meshed with the objectives of Pétain’s National Revolution. Both the National Revolution and the foundation agenda seem to have been marginally effective in comparison to other Western nations57 with a few important exceptions. Notably, the work assessing the biological worth of foreigners, especially North Africans, Armenian, and Polish peoples, has affected race relations and understanding migration and racism in France despite France’s ostensibly colorblind posture.58 The question this work poses is whether and how the Foundation’s perception about foreigners is linked to how and why French officials were able to justify the roundup of foreign Jews in the summer and autumn of 1942, given the view that “the presence of biologically undesirable groups of foreigners . . . poses a threat to the French population.”59 The other important question tied intimately to eugenics is the treatment of mentally ill persons in France during World War II60—a question that seems not to be entirely unrelated to the treatment of foreign, elderly, and ill persons in the hospital camp at Noé. Availability of food was the center of problems related to disease spread experienced by both groups. Marc Masson and Jean-Michel Azorin explore the increased mortality rates among mentality ill patients, who suffered many of the same kinds of physiological illnesses and high death rates as Jewish and political dissidents experienced, as explored in Chapter 4. Masson and Azorin claim “there was no state eugenic policy in France and that psychiatrists’ reactions during the crisis were able, up to a point, to counter the effects of famine.”61 The religious orders that ran mental institutions interceded to protect vulnerable patients against the worst impulses of French eugenicists.62 But these

10 Introduction

findings make it especially important to consider carefully the influence eugenics may have had on decisions related to chronically ill persons. Illness among Jewish migrants at Camp Noé is centered in Karl Schwesig’s artworks. Unsurprisingly, the data indicates high rates of illness and death at Camp Noé.63 Whereas German culture willingly incorporated ideas such as eugenics that emerged from outside of the state,64 some elements of German culture aggressively renounced as foreign and un-German other hallmarks of modernism, particularly liberal democracy and culturally imported notions identified with avant-garde art. Pre-1914 Germany embraced extremes highlighted during the Wilhelmine era and this perspective, Peter Lassman claims, included segmenting intellectualism from politics, resulting in anti-intellectualism in German politics.65 According to Lassman’s view, mixing the two realms could only be the result of cultural diffusion—that is, the invasion of foreignness, which was, by definition, endemic of the un-German man, someone endowed with French cultural values.66 By Lassman’s account, the segregation of intellectualism from politics peaked in a cultural crisis during the Weimar Republic. Lassman asserts about this cultural crisis that: its roots are to be found in earlier decades and its echoes are still to be heard. The anti-modernism and sense of cultural crisis current among the mandarin intellectuals was given additional weight by the popular distinction that was believed to hold between Kultur and Zivilisation. In short, this distinction refers to the inner cultivation and spiritual depth of German culture in contrast to the superficial and materialist civilization of “the West” (meaning principally, England, France, and the US).67 Eventually, German society migrated towards notions that would promote “national collectivity as organized by the totalitarian state.”68 Here, one last point bears mentioning: art, in all of its diverse forms, held special significance in early 20th-century German culture, and it was defined strictly by its purveyors, even before World War I. As a part of the post-World War I cultural shift to the extreme right of the political spectrum by some segments of German society, avant-garde art, jeopardized from its origins, was renounced in even more strident terms than it had been before the Weimar Republic.69 Modern art was un-German and corrosive. But artists who had considered themselves politicos had already begun bridging the divide.70 Of the artists who were identifiably political or favoring the avant-garde, some were persuaded to shift to the right, if only temporarily, when faced with diminished opportunities as artists. Many members of Das Junge Rheinland, an artist collective to which Schwesig belonged, had already collapsed the divide between culture and politics, but differently than those artists who were content to shift to the right. Thus, with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, they were among Nazism’s first victims of gratuitous violence.

Introduction  11

The fate of Das Junge Rheinland was partly dictated by ideas that emanated from German Romanticism and were formulated in proximity to völkisch ideology and later, Nazism. Elsewhere it has been argued notions of Judeo-Bolshevism combined with völkisch ideologies furthered the agenda of National Socialism.71 Here, I contend that romanticist Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel’s pronouncement about science and history, and his view about unity, should be considered viable independently of the philosopher’s notions about art as divine creation. On this basis, historiographies can ill afford to ignore Holocaust art as parts of the whole historical picture, no matter how ephemeral it may appear to be, lest that part of the cultural whole be obliterated. Likewise, to affirm Schlegel’s pronouncement about unity is not equivalent to arguing that art is not socially produced, nor is it the same as claiming that art is mystically created—a claim that is associated with Schlegel’s aesthetic. But Schlegel’s mention about the relationship of art to science (and thus, history, I would maintain) is also significant and relevant to this study, even if Schlegel’s philosophy in its entirety is considered by some to be antithetical to the sociology of art.72 To summarize, in this chapter I outlined briefly the key local, national, continental, and global sociocultural contexts that were important to shaping the societies in which Karl Schwesig lived, and that in turn, produced his social locations or social identities and his social world. Ultimately, I contend that his artworks refract these historical social phenomena. Specifically, I have highlighted aspects of the major social institutions—especially political, economic, and governmental institutions—and ideological movements associated with them, including the working-class struggle in Germany and France; the working-class attraction to Communism in these countries during the early 20th century; the adaptation of eugenics in Weimar Germany and a somewhat different iteration in France; and likewise, Germany’s resistance to liberal democracy and its ambivalence towards avant-garde art. In France, where avant-garde art was born, the disposition toward art differed. These social contexts direct attention to Karl Schwesig’s specific social identities and the interactive processes by which humans inevitably shape, and simultaneously are shaped, by their societies. Julia Rothenberg opens her Sociology Meets the Arts by describing the arts as sites of social processes—reflections of social life and social interactions.73 In the next chapter, Karl Schwesig’s woodblock prints detail Schwesig’s torture. In that all Düsseldorf artists who were jailed as Communists were treated fairly similarly, Schwesig’s torture was relatively routine. It featured some of the same kinds of experiences that other Communist artists endured. The prints he created therefore open an important set of social interactions between the Nazi Party and local officials and Jews, artists, and political dissidents. Some of these artists were Jewish or from families of Jewish descent. The chapter in its entirety exposes Düsseldorf ’s ethos for Jewish citizens and political dissidents. Thus, Schwesig’s artworks link the roles of political ideologies discussed in this introduction to the social world that existed.

12 Introduction

Notes 1. Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), 16–20. 2. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, 32–41. 3. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd ed. (New York/London: Routledge Press, 2015), 128–29. 4. Cf. Jacob Rader Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A  Source Book: 515–1791 (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College, 1990). For laws that were enforced against Jewish persons see: The Laws of Constantine in 315 ce, the Law Code of Justinian, and Law Code of Theodosian. 5. The racialization of Muslims functions similarly to the racialization of Jews. Cf. Steve Garner and Saher Selod, “The Racialization of Muslims: Empirical Studies of Islamophobia in the United States,” Critical Sociology 41, no. 1 (2015): 9–19; Leon Moosavi, “The Racialization of Muslim Converts in Britain and Their Experiences of Islamophobia,” Critical Sociology 41, no. 1 (2015): 41–56. 6. Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999); Sara Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Iconography (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014). 7. Joe R. Feagin, The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge Press, 2013), 39 ff. 8. Jerome Friedman, “Jewish Conversion, the Spanish Pure Blood Laws and Reformation: A Revisionist View of Racial and Religious Antisemitism,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 18, no. 1 (1987): 3–30. 9. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, “The Essential Social Fact of Race,” American Sociological Review 64, no. 6 (1999): 889. 10. Bonilla-Silva, “The Essential Social Fact of Race,” 889. 11. George Yancey, Who Is White?: Latinos, Asians, and the New Black/Nonblack Divide (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003). 12. James Q. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Laws (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017). 13. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 105–9. 14. Joe R. Feagin conversation with the author, 24 October 2014. 15. Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice: The 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Basic Books, 1957), 14–16. 16. George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964); Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experiential View (New York: Harper Perennial, 1975). 17. Cf. Peter L. Berger and Steven Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor Books, 1966). 18. For a discussion about intersectionality, cf. Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38, no. 4 (2013): 785–810. 19. Mary Nolan, Social Democracy and Society: Working Class Radicalism in Düsseldorf, 1890– 1920 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 24–25. 20. Nolan, Social Democracy and Society, 271–95. 21. Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s 20th Century (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 104. 22. Mazower, Dark Continent, 104. 23. Mazower, Dark Continent, 28. 24. Mazower, Dark Continent, 104. 25. Casey Harison, “The Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian Revolution of 1905, and the Shifting of the Revolutionary Tradition,” History and Memory 19, no. 2 (2007): 6.

Introduction  13

26. Tyler Stovall, “French Communism and Suburban Development: The Rise of the Paris Red Belt,” Journal of Contemporary History 24, no. 3 (1989): 437. 27. Stovall, “French Communism and Suburban Development,” 438. 28. Stovall, “French Communism and Suburban Development,” 437. 29. Paxton, Vichy France, 246. 30. D. E. Goldey, “Communism in Italy and France,” Political Studies 25, no. 3 (1977): 431–36. 31. William Sharp, “The Popular Front in France: Prelude or Interlude,” The American Political Science Review 30, no. 5 (1936): 859. 32. Sharp, “The Popular Front in France,” 879. 33. Paxton, Vichy France, 246–47. 34. Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur, “The Great Depression in France, 1929–1938,” in Business Cycle and Depression, ed. D. Glasner (Paris School of Economics website), accessed 26 February 2019, www.parisschoolofeconomics.com/hautcoeur-pierre-cyrille/1929. html. 35. Hautcoeur, “The Great Depression in France, 1929–1938,” 39. For a more nuanced understanding of the economic impact of the Great Depression on views about migrants in France during the prewar years, cf. Vicki Caron, Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933–1939 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). 36. Garland E. Allen, “Eugenics and Modern Biology: Critiques of Eugenics, 1910–1935,” Annals of Human Genetics 75 (2011): 314; Kenneth M. Weiss and Brian W. Lambert, “When the Time Seems Ripe: Eugenics, the Annals, and the Subtle Persistence of Typological Thinking,” Annals of Human Genetics 75 (2011): 334–40. 37. Carol Poore, Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2009), 8–13. 38. Paul Weindling, “Weimar Eugenics: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Social Contexts,” Annals of Science 42 (1985): 304. Cf. also, Shelia Weiss, “Essay Review: Racial Science and Genetics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society,” Journal of the History of Biology 38 (2005): 367–79. 39. Weindling, “Weimar Eugenics,” 304. 40. Bradley W. Hart, “Watching the ‘Eugenics Experiment’ Unfold: The Mixed Views of British Eugenics Toward Nazi Germany in the Early 1930s,” Journal of the History of Biology 45 (2012): 33. 41. Hart, “Watching the ‘Eugenics Experiment’ Unfold,” 33. 42. Hart, “Watching the ‘Eugenics Experiment’ Unfold,” 33. 43. Frank Dikötter, “Race Culture: Recent Perspectives on the History of Eugenics,” American Historical Review (1998): 467. Cf. also, Hart, “Watching the ‘Eugenics Experiment’ Unfold,” 33–63; and Weindling, “Weimar Eugenics,” 303–18. 44. Dikötter, “Race Culture,” 467–68. 45. Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890–1930 (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 1. 46. Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany, 1. 47. Poore, Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture, 4–5. 48. Poore, Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture, 3. 49. William Schneider, “Toward the Improvement of the Human Race: The History of Eugenics in France,” The Journal of Modern History 54, no. 2 (1982): 269–70. 50. Schneider, “Toward the Improvement of the Human Race,” 271. 51. Schneider, “Toward the Improvement of the Human Race,” 281–87. 52. Schneider, “Toward the Improvement of the Human Race,” 287–88. 53. Andrés H. Reggiani, “Alexis Carrel, the Unknown: Eugenics and Population Research Under Vichy,” French Historical Studies 25, no. 2 (2002): 331–56. 54. Reggiani, “Alexis Carrel, the Unknown,” 344. 55. Reggiani, “Alexis Carrel, the Unknown,” 344.

14 Introduction

5 6. Reggiani, “Alexis Carrel, the Unknown,” 343–45. 57. Paxton, Vichy France, 374–83; Reggiani, “Alexis Carrel, the Unknown,” 347–52. 58. Jacques Barou, “Integration of Immigrants in France: A Historical Perspective,” Identities 21, no. 6 (2014): 642–57. 59. Reggiani, “Alexis Carrel, the Unknown,” 350. 60. Marc Masson and Jean-Michel Azorin, “The French Mentally Ill in World War II: The Lesson of History,” International Journal of Mental Health 35, no. 4 (2006–2007): 26–39. 61. I am not qualified to analyze the differences between Reggiani’s findings and Masson and Azorin’s but it is important to acknowledge the scholarship and possibilities raised by these works. Masson and Azorin, “The French Mentally Ill in World War II,” 34; Andrés H. Reggiani, God’s Eugenicist; Alexis Carrel and the Sociobiology of Decline (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007). 62. Masson and Azorin, “The French Mentally Ill in World War II,” 36–37. 63. Willa M. Johnson, “The Treatment of Foreign Jews at Camp Noé and Archbishop Saliège’s Letter of Rebuke and Resistance,” in review. 64. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model. 65. Peter Lassman, “Enlightenment Cultural Crisis and the Role of Intellectualism from Kant to Habermas,” Journal of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas 5, no. 6 (2000): 815. 66. Lassman, “Enlightenment Cultural Crisis and the Role of Intellectualism,” 816. 67. Lassman, “Enlightenment Cultural Crisis and the Role of Intellectualism,” 816. 68. Mark Antliff, “Fascism, Modernism, and Modernity,” The Art Bulletin 84, no. 1 (2002): 148–49. 69. Cf. Peter Paret, German Encounters with Modernism, 1840–1945 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 63–81; cf. also, Henry Thode, Kunst, Religion und Kultur: Ansprachen an die Heidelberger Studentenschaft Gehalten bei der anlässlich Seiner Ablehnung des Rufes an die Berliner Universität Veranstalteten Feier (Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universität, 1901). 70. Paret, German Encounters, 63–81. 71. Brian Crim, “ ‘Our Most Serious Enemy’: The Specter of Judeo-Bolshevism in the German Military Community, 1914–1923,” Central European History 44 (2011): 625. 72. Hauser, The Sociology of Art. 73. Julia Rothenberg, Sociology Looks at the Arts (New York/London: Routledge, 2014), vi.

1 “I FOUGHT NATIONAL CANNIBALISM WITH . . . ART”1 Karl Schwesig, the Ethos of Düsseldorf, and the Weight of Stigmatization, 1933–1939

The Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof is a bustling hub of activity, filled with train gates, eateries, a café, a large bookstore, a beautiful florist, and other shops. It is wellworn terrain—a very familiar and yet, simultaneously, foreign place to the city’s visitors. Brass bricks, or Stolpersteine, mark the location of some of Düsseldorf ’s former Jewish residents or their places of employment, but I know of no such markers to commemorate Communists who were tortured under the Third Reich in a nearby cellar. On 11 July 1933,2 when Karl Schwesig was arrested for the first time under the Third Reich in Düsseldorf-Dernedorf, he was taken to the abandoned basement of the Schlegel Brewery, located on the Bismarckstraße. There he and other Communists were tortured relentlessly,3 some to death, over a four-day period. The postwar charges against one Hilfslehrer involved in Karl Schwesig’s torture underscores this point: “The one in question, A. S.,4 actively participated in bringing about the severe physical abuse, causing the death of those affected.”5 To understand why Karl Schwesig and his circle of friends and fellow sojourners were objectionable to the Third Reich is to grasp the nature and consequences of, among other things, racism and race-thinking in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and likewise, to comprehend the extent to which National Socialism presented its agenda as one designed to rescue German art.6 Hannah Arendt’s 1944 essay, “Race-Thinking Before Racism” traces the history of racethinking in Germany to “frustrated nationalism”7 and “organic naturalistic definitions of peoples”8 who “needed ideological definitions of national unity as a substitute for political nationhood.”9 The distinctions between authentic Germans and others arose, according to Arendt, from the combination of an organic notion of peoplehood with German Romanticism’s “innate personality.”10 Thus, understanding how targets for torture were selected is to apprehend the degree to

16  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

which the Third Reich and its predecessors socially constructed notions of Germanness. German art and culture were conceptualized as something endemic to one’s genetic coding—vulnerable and susceptible to corruption and destruction by foreign influences. During the same period as Arendt discusses, Carl Vinnen in Ein Protest deutscher Künstler: Mit Einleitung von Carl Vinnen articulated a view that exemplifies Arendt’s point.11 The treatment of avant-garde artists in the two decades before the Third Reich makes this point convincingly. In the 1911 manifesto, Vinnen railed against French art and its influence on German art and culture. He claimed that truly German artworks uphold “Nordic” qualities and are, in form and content, thus superior to avant-garde art. Avant-garde artworks, which sometimes integrated trends from Africa and elsewhere, according to Vinnen, ignored the fundamentals of art. This rendered these works inferior.12 Rose-Carol Washton Long maintains effectively that Vinnen incorporated a thinly veiled anti-urban, antisemitic nationalism13 into his critique. Later, National Socialism adopted these ideals and values and imbued the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich with them. These views, however, were not entirely new, but rather clever amalgamations of ideas that began as early as the contemporaneous völkisch ideology integrated with authoritarian rightwing politics—and branded as authentic Germanness. This cultural prism, exacerbated by the World War I loss, ostracized Jews, a large swath of German avant-garde artists, and others with opposing political ideologies. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, German artistic and political values that centered on a form of Romanticism coupled with nationalistic and ethnocentric religious fervor were common.14 Even before Vinnen and those of his ilk, some art historians tied Germany’s cultural depth and ideological strength to an idyllic past connoted in the realism of high art.15 For example, in a 1901 lecture, Henry Thode anguished over the move away from realism in German art and the emergence of the avant-garde. For Thode and others, the avant-garde signaled Germany’s internal cultural erosion.16 On this basis, Thode declined to accept an invitation for a professorial position in Berlin, which he deemed the epicenter of detrimental art.17 Similarly, in 1929 Dr. Othmar Spann, a Viennese professor, echoed Thode’s sentiments in a speech that was reprinted.18 He sketched a doomsday scenario of western Christian culture “in the darkest Spenglerian tones,”19 Hildegard Brenner noted. Clearly, Spann connected this cultural crisis specifically to modern art. He remarked, “Art is still completely hopeless. When we, about Dadaism, about Futurism, or about Atonalism etc. think, when we think about the advance of movies and the push of review etc., [lively applause], then you see that everything here is still in a sorry state.”20 Carl Vinnen,21 who had championed this new nationalistic art more than a decade earlier than Spann, became emblematic of the argument made by National Socialists in favor of pure German art. Karl Schwesig and his colleagues’ art posed another set of problems for the status quo—namely, their embrace of diversity, which by extension meant the

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  17

import of artistic influences not only from neighboring European nations such as France, but from Africa. Also, Das Junge Rheinland repeatedly and expressly focused on the newness and the freshness of ideas that propelled art. The group’s first exhibit catalogue summarized its artistic goals: “To him, [the young Rhinelander], any artist, is welcome, who outlives working templates [or art trends], striving for innovation, young and fresh in the place of routine business, a punctilious, natural sculpture sits”22 (emphasis mine). Das Junge Rheinland not only practiced modern art, but also articulated eine neue Kunst—“a new art” contrary to the art embraced by the völkisch ideology pervasive during the early decades of the 20th century in Germany. The group’s intellectual prowess was formidable. Its members were not reluctant to brandish their views. Thus, they were followed in local newsprint media, and they published their own art journal. In addition, the group was comprised of Jewish and Communist artists among others. In short, it had a reputation for left-wing politics. There were other related complications. During the historic period in which Das Junge Rheinland emerged, Jewishness was conflated with Bolshevism. Brian Crim notes, “The November Revolution of 1918 was the perfect storm in which preexisting fear and loathing of Jews and leftist ideology merged with a very real fear of national disintegration.”23 This well-established stereotype that initially gained steam during the Great War, and in the period thereafter, was likely unhelpful to Schwesig and an artistic circle that embraced both kinds of difference.24 National Socialists doubled down on the stereotype as if the two—Jewishness and Communism— were inseparable. A 1933 issue of Volksparole illustrates the use of this stereotype as a part of the Nazi Party’s daily propaganda.25 Perhaps most significantly, Karl Schwesig used art for the twin purposes of promoting Communism and combating National Socialism.26 In a postwar thank-you letter addressed to the Hollywood producer and businessman Melvin Frank,27 Schwesig described his artwork during the era of the Third Reich. He wrote: “I  fought cannibalism28 [that is, National Socialism] with the means of art.”29 Schwesig’s production of anti-Nazi materials resulted in his torture, his loss of German citizenry, and imprisonment for 16 months after he was charged with “high treason.”30 In the mid- to late 1930s, Karl Schwesig’s artworks that recapitulated his and other political dissidents’ journey through the first years of the Third Reich were shown in exhibits at the Palais d’Egmont in Brussels, in Amsterdam, and the Museum for Modern Western Art in Moscow.31 By 1939, Schwesig had converted the works into a manuscript titled Schlegelkeller with a foreword to the work written by the esteemed German writer and antifascist, Heinrich Mann.32 The artworks in the book, which was posthumously published in 1983 by Dr. Peter Barth, are significant for the present study for two reasons. First, the artworks conform closely to the artist’s sworn testimony and to the sworn testimonies given by several others who were tortured at the same time with him in the Folterkeller

18  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

(“torture cellar”). Thus, these works from the prewar period affirm the hypothesis that Karl Schwesig’s artworks function as empirical evidence exposing the period’s history. Indeed, Schwesig’s own words describing his artworks function to confirm the hypothesis.33 Second, these artworks, when read within the context of Gestapo files and other data, demonstrate the extent to which the artworks go beyond Schwesig’s personal individual biography and contribute to a broader understanding of prewar Düsseldorf for political dissidents during the Third Reich. Together, the artworks with the Gestapo and related German state files, including postwar sworn testimonies about events and medical certifications referring to injuries and torture that Karl Schwesig endured, reveal the systematic exploitation of Communists, modern artists, and Düsseldorf ’s Jewish community.34

The Beginning of Woes There are several indicators for when and how Karl Schwesig’s difficulties with the Nazi Party arose. The first may be associated with Karl Schwesig’s social identities and his political and economic philosophies. To highlight relationships pertinent to Schwesig’s political and social commitments I  discuss the initial violence perpetrated against members of the KPD, who, like Karl Schwesig, had multiple social identities, all of which put them in disfavor with the Nazi Party. Schwesig’s affiliation with Das Junge Rheinland and the Mutter Ey circle of artists emphasize his social identity as an avant-garde artist and its meaning to the Nazi Party. The Nazi Party’s strategy of torturing Communists underscores the significance of this link between Schwesig and the other victims’ experiences. But Communism was not the only social identity to qualify Karl Schwesig for torture. In fact, it appears that the effects of multiple and sometimes conflicting marginalized or intersectional identities35 during the Third Reich account for the ways that people like Schwesig were persecuted and the intensity of that persecution. Perceptions about race created another key limiting social identity. This point is especially important as race in Nazi Germany pertained to Jewishness. Racism victimized not only people of African descent but extended to include the racialization of Jewish and half-Jewish persons. Hilarius (Lari) Gilges, an Afro-German entertainer, provides us with a startlingly graphic and violent example of intersectionality and the effects of racialization. A  member of the Communist Party, Gilges was reportedly the first Communist killed in Düsseldorf during 1933. Bastian Fleermann, director of the Düsseldorf Mahn- und Gedenkstätt, notes, Gilges was killed, then dismembered, and his body parts distributed throughout parts of Düsseldorf. Fleermann argued that the murder was due to Gilges’s association with the KPD.36 It appears equally likely that not only Gilges’s race but also his mixed marriage account for why he was so viciously killed. Tina Campt argues that the possibility of racial-mixing and Mischehe (“mixed-marriage”) associated with Afro-Germans so terrorized

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  19

Germans that in Campt’s words, it “evoked a dire sense of [racial] endangerment” and “a violation of boundaries that constituted German national identity.”37 Married to a German woman, Gilges was, therefore, in a very real sense, the embodiment of what Campt posits Germans most feared.38 A  practitioner of entartete Kunst (“degenerate art”) as an actor-dancer, Gilges was also a Communist.39 While Schwesig was neither black nor Jewish, he was Polish—a very stigmatized identity in German eyes. Therefore, as with Schwesig and his colleagues, the violence visited upon Gilges appears to be as a result of these multiple, undesirable, and intersecting social identities that included his allegiance to Communism. Like Hilarius Gilges, Karl Schwesig’s circumstances are tied also, at least in part, to his role as an avant-garde artist. In 1919, Herbert Eulenberg, Arthur Kaufmann, and Adolf Uzarski formed Das Junge Rheinland, an artist collective of esteemed visual artists including Otto Dix, Otto Pankok, Gert Wollheim, Adler Jankl, Walter Opfey, Heinz May, Adalbert Trillhaase, and Max Ernst, among others.40 In 1921, Karl Schwesig was thrust into core of the collective. Schwesig, who had a growth-hormone deficiency, was unusually short and uncommonly vociferous. Anne and Baumeister describe Schwesig: “The painter was like Uzarski of small stature and reacted like him with verbal attacks [characterized by] derision and defamation.”41 In ensuing years, Schwesig by every measurable indication became an identifiable part of the collective and an important contributing artist on the Düsseldorf scene.42 In addition to the numerous newspaper mentions about the collective, Schwesig, with Uzarski, Wollheim, and Kaufmann, wrote the lion’s share of the 10-volume journal, Das Junge Rheinland, in 1920–21.43 “Karlchen” as Schwesig was affectionately known, was featured with other members of the collective and the Johanna “Mutter” Ey circle in Arthur Kaufmann’s 1925 painting, Zeitgenossen. Given the wedge established between Germany’s avant-garde artists and purists, Karl Schwesig’s political interests, combined with his membership in Das Junge Rheinland and later, the Rheinische Sezession,44 in many ways marked the beginnings of troubles for him. Schwesig, who was from a Gelsenkirchen workingclass background, had close ties to and involvement with the KPD.45 Thus, Schwesig’s relationships with men who were involved in the KPD, such as the artists Hanns Kralik, Julius ( Julio) Levin, Franz Monjau, Peter Ludwigs, Johannes Sang,46 and writer Heinrich Mann, further established Schwesig in a position against the newly emerging status quo. If Arthur Kaufmann’s portrait of his contemporaries secures Karl Schwesig’s position among Schwesig’s art peers, then the photograph of Karl Schwesig with Gert Heinrich Wollheim showing Wollheim mockingly sporting a swastika in ca. 1922 (Figure 1.1) is indicative of his and Karl Schwesig’s political and ideological perspectives vis-à-vis Nazism. Lest the relationship between avant-garde art, Communism, and the Third Reich be presumed dubious, the Third Reich’s 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich was an unequivocal renunciation of the avant-garde movement. Schwesig’s 1949 sworn testimony draws a straight and direct line between the

20  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

FIGURE 1.1 Photograph

of Gert Wollheim (top), Johanna Ey (bottom right), Karl Schwesig (bottom center), Elizabeth Kaufman (center), and Adalbert Trillhaase (bottom left), ca. 1922

three—avant-garde art, Communism, and the Third Reich. He recalled the mockery made about his artworks amidst the torture visited upon him. “They made fun of my picture and they represented it as if it was a kind of degenerate art,”47 he said. Elsewhere in a postwar essay about his treatment in the Schlegelkeller, Schwesig elaborates: When S. indicated I was gay it thus coincided with the command, which he gave to the torturer in the Schlegelkeller. Already the first night during

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  21

the beating one person tried to force a confession that I was perverse, that I was homosexual. . . . This view, S., in my opinion, matched also with the caption under my picture, from the SA seized picture that would be featured in the Nazi newspaper, Volksparole: ‘Sick, erotic prisoner, a travesty of morality.’ This copy of the Volksparole was presented to me in the original.48 The use of Schwesig’s artworks was an integrated part of the torture that he experienced. Artist and works were associated with homosexuality—another Nazi-stigmatized social identity. Clearly, S.’s assertion was intended to slander Schwesig.49 In so doing, S. publicly rendered homosexuality, avant-garde artists, and their artworks degenerate. Long before the rise of the Nazi Party, mainstream Düsseldorf newspaper articles focused on Schwesig’s romantic encounters with beautiful women.50 These accounts contradict S.’s claims. Schwesig exposed the Nazi Party’s stigmatization of avant-garde artworks and artists for what they were. To wit, Schwesig argued: They wanted also to know from me whether the Academic director was homosexual. Generally, around this low point, S. and the Nazi torturers circled; and [is] characteristic of [their] psychic state. Here also is the psychological key to understand[ing] all [of] the perverse brutality that happened in the Nazi torture cellars, generally and in particular, had been done on the defenseless victims in the Düsseldorf hitting cellar.51 Schwesig acknowledges that torturers inquired about the sexuality of the art director, presumably of the Düsseldorf Art Academy, where Schwesig studied art.52 He pivoted quickly from what his inquisitors asked to describe the ways his inquisitors employed sexual violence against him and others as a part of the torture they meted out to prisoners while they were jailed in the Düsseldorf Schlegelkeller.53 Apparently, torturers attempted to denigrate and ostracize prisoners by stigmatizing them as gay. Brock Bastian and Nick Haslam argue that such actions disrupt humans’ fundamental sense of belongingness and are a part of the processes of dehumanization.54 According to Gordon W. Allport, the specific kind of sexualized accusations made by S. against prisoners are indicative of anxieties related to sex and prejudice.55 Schwesig claimed that the sexual violence was a tool to assert dominance over them. His assertion comports with findings by several scholars who write about the function of rape during war and genocide.56 Allport concludes that men like S., who hostilely ridicule others using sexuality and difference,57 are in fact, compensating for their own sexual inadequacies. Thus, the accusations function to tell more about the accuser than the victim, Allport suggests.58 What Schwesig experienced concerning homosexuality was not uncharacteristic of the Nazi Party’s perceptions about avant-garde artists, their artworks, and stigmatization of outgroups.59 The Nazi Party was responsible for other abuses

22  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

of persons in outgroups, or people with what sociologist Erving Goffman called “discredited” social identities. Third Reich officials took photographs of disabled people that they later displayed alongside images of modern artists and their artworks during the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition.60 Thus, disabled people and disability were defamed in a fashion similar to homosexuals and homosexuality.61 Both strategies were mechanisms for demeaning avant-garde artists and marking their artworks. In the first two sections of this chapter, Karl Schwesig’s place in Düsseldorf, the KPD, and Das Junge Rheinland were introduced. A significant portion of the discussion explains salient parts of Karl Schwesig’s social identities and why they offended Nazi sensibilities. Schwesig’s master status as an avant-garde artist, his outspoken views in favor of Communism, his thorough acceptance of Jewishness, and his anti-fascism were all key. In the section that follows, I discuss in some depth Karl Schwesig’s experience in the Schlegelkeller.

Schwesig in the Schlegelkeller Karl Schwesig’s name appears on an August  1, 1933, list of 87 Communists from the Lower Rhein and Ruhr Valley regions who were arrested by the Third Reich “for contributing to the publication and dissemination of pamphlets against the Hitler-regime.”62 After the war, on 2 January 1946, and again on 30 May 1949, Schwesig gave testimony detailing elements of his Düsseldorf arrest during the Third Reich. These data, with others that mention Schwesig, including a second Gestapo file, all impart similarly detailed accounts of events in the summer of 1933.63 For a variety of reasons, including postwar compensation and Schwesig’s continued interest in seeing perpetrators punished in the aftermath of World War II, Karl Schwesig was put in the position of recounting repeatedly his experiences.64 But even in the prewar period after his first arrests, Schwesig was invested in documenting, through art, his encounters with the Third Reich.65 A key to understanding Schwesig’s almost ritualistic retellings of the torture that he endured and the artworks that he produced during and in its aftermath is to know that psychologically the retellings both reveal and obfuscate elements of deeply painful and repressed experiences, according to Professor of Psychiatry Sander Gilman.66 Careful examinations and readings of these retellings, nevertheless, highlight corroboration between what Schwesig documented in a prewar series of 50 to 52 woodblock prints, his postwar subpoenaed testimonies, his communications to friends, and the legal testimonies offered by others (see Figure 1.2). Recalling the Düsseldorf arrest, Karl Schwesig remarked: On July 11, 1933, two men in civilian garb appeared at my studio, then [located] at Immermannstraße 66. With contempt, they ordered me in the name of the Criminal Police to come [with them]. They got into a car

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  23

FIGURE 1.2  Vor

dem Eingang zum Folterkeller (Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany)

[with a retractable roof, literally, ‘an open car’] with me. Its number-plate was covered with a red, number-plate. In front of the grain house located [on] the Bismarckstraße, the car stopped. I was led through the gateway, across the yard and to a cellar.67 Schwesig recollected clearly the sights and sounds that he encountered in the Schlegel Brewery. He said: A man led me quickly into a cellar room, which was smaller than the orderly room. At the cellar’s entrance, I saw a woman lying unconscious on a stretcher. Standing in front her, was a girl who appeared to be about 18 years old, sobbing uncontrollably into a handkerchief. I was ushered into a small room where a person was seated at a typewriter. One man shielded my eyes and another man who stepped behind me said, ‘Yes, that’s him.’ Thereafter, I was guided into a larger cellar room, among about 20 other prisoners, who sat on a bench behind a long table. Most of them had badly scraped faces with heads that were bandaged. With mocking laughter and kicks, the SA people placed me among the prisoners. A  cellar window

24  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

made of thickly pressed glass was overhead. Now and then, the footsteps of passersby clopped. Also, the streetcar came. We heard it roll past. On the wall opposite us, to the left, hung about six heavy Hippopotamus whips, studded with square brass buttons. They already had grease on them and [they] had left behind a brownish-red trail on the whitewashed wall. To the right on the wall hung a first aid box with the Red Cross on it. There, in front of the table, sat a SA man, as a duty officer.68 Against this backdrop, the artist introduces in excruciating detail the particularities of what he and others withstood. At about 9:00 p.m. on that Friday evening, Schwesig was summoned into a small interrogation room. There the examination led by Obersturmführer R. and Sturmführer W. began, that is to say, Schwesig notes, the torture ensued.69 I do not use the words “torture” or “brutality” casually or subjectively. Rather, I characterize the treatment of Schwesig and others as torture based on the 1987 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. There torture is defined as: Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.70 Adopting the language of sex used by his torturers, albeit construed differently, Schwesig characterized the first stages of torture as Vorspiel, “foreplay” and likened what followed to rape.71 Schwesig’s use of these figurative nouns depicts the brutality’s escalation during the first evening in the Schlegelkeller specifically, but more generally, to its increased intensity over the course of the four days he spent there. The sexualized metaphor that he employed comports well with the way Nazi officials tortured him and other Communists physically, psychologically, and sexually. For example, in one case, he noted on the second evening, “a younger, taller blond man whose scrotum was swollen because it had been stepped on.”72 To a similar point, Schwesig also reported that he (Schwesig) used his hands and arms to protect his head against the stream of blows leveled at him. In response, his torturers beat his genitals. They did this to encourage him to cover his genitals, which exposed his head to more blows.73 Schwesig’s postwar medical files indicate he suffered injury to both his scrotum and his head during the attack.74 As for the “foreplay” on evening one in the Folterkellar, Schwesig was

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  25

“punched in the teeth,” “had a pistol held to his temple,” and “a gun shot past his head,” before being “stomped by men wearing boots.”75 After this, Schwesig explained, the whipping commenced.76 During the whipping, when he refused to succumb with cries to the first lashes across his back and legs, he was beaten with the broader end of the implement until he screamed for help and relief.77 In Figure 1.3, Schwesig depicts himself during the second evening’s torture. Schwesig stands facing out, his head slightly bowed. Surrounded by SA people, one man cuts into Schwesig’s scalp. In Schwesig’s 1946 testimony, he recalled the evening that Sturmführer W. used rusted, blunt scissors to cut his hair and carve a swastika into his scalp.78 The kindness of his fellow inmates stands in contradistinction to his torturers. Schwesig mentions in his book, Schlegelkeller, that fellow prisoners removed his bloodied shirt and washed it in a bucket of cold water.79 Schwesig’s testimony, which was given a decade after the prints had been produced, is supported. In addition, Heinz Paul Hackenberg, who was imprisoned with Schwesig, testified under oath confirming Schwesig’s account of this event.80 The testimony by Hackenberg is especially important because his account attests the events described by Schwesig’s prints and in Schwesig’s sworn testimony. In the preceding section, I  discussed Karl Schwesig’s arrest and torture and their relationship to his series of prints. As a part of the case that I  make for

FIGURE 1.3  Zweiter

Abend (Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany)

26  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

understanding Schwesig’s artworks as historical documents, I  presented two of these works which are graphic and violent. The point is not to sensationalize his experiences, but rather to compare the drawings with what he and others said occurred. The goal is to test the veracity of the artworks as historical documents. In that discussion, I  mention others about whom Schwesig writes. Thus, the prints have a larger importance that is borne out when reading the case histories of harassment and torture endured by artists, Communists, and the broader Jewish community in Düsseldorf during the early months and years of the Third Reich. There are hundreds of cases attesting how these three groups were treated. When individuals had certain identities or intersecting identities, that is, multiple undesirable or stigmatizing social identities, they seem to have been treated even worse. For example, in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, when 10,000 Jews were sent to Buchenwald, they were treated extraordinarily inhumanely in comparison to the political dissidents who already occupied the camp. By the war’s end, people who like Franz Monjau were half-Jewish or Mischlinge and who may have originally feared less than fully Jewish people did, apparently became more vulnerable as the war progressed.81

Schwesig’s Artist Colleagues Julius ( Julio) Levin, a Jewish artist and KPD member, shared a studio82 with Karl Schwesig in Düsseldorf. Levin was arrested and sent to the Schlegelkeller simultaneously with Karl Schwesig and three other artists, Hanns Kralik, John Sangs, and Franz Monjau. That group was among the 87 other Communists arrested within days of each other. While as a first-generation Polish avant-garde artist, Schwesig’s social identities rendered him stigmatized,83 far from the Nazi ideal, Jewish Communists were even further from the German ideal, or what Erving Goffman has called the virtual social identity, established by National Socialism. Schwesig nevertheless managed to survive; so, too, did Kralik. Of the three artists with whom Karl Schwesig is memorialized, Schwesig wrote the following in a 1948 communication: “These three knew, they jeopardized their lives, they knew the torture cellar and had the occasion to observe the bestial mutilations [of male genitals] since 1933.”84 I have translated the phrase bestialisch Verstümmelungen as “bestial mutilations.” Here, Schwesig’s mention of the physical sexual violence in the Folterkeller finds concordance in a medical certification from Theresien Hospital in Düsseldorf which attests to the injuries to Schwesig’s genitals. In 1948, he was treated for a rupture to his scrotum and an inguinal hernia.85 The 1934 date mentioned in the certification matches with the period when Schwesig was first tortured and then incarcerated in the Folterkeller.86 In the certification, Dr. Frischen asserts: The rupture supposedly existed since 1934; since 1942, the rupture penetrated down under the scrotum. Clinical found an inguinal hernia as big

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  27

as a fist on the right side, which extended to the scrotum. After a typical inguinal hernia operation, which will be conducted by Dr. Frischen, the patient could, on January 7, be discharged home with a clean bill of health.87 The medical certification mentions that the initial rupture in Schwesig’s abdominal wall purportedly occurred in 1934 and worsened over time. By 1942, a fistsized swelling on the right side manifested itself. The doctor’s wording reveals uncertainty or incredulity about when the breach occurred. The German phrase, “Der Bruch besteht angeblich seit 1934” may be translated, “the rupture supposedly (allegedly, or ostensibly) was established in 1934.” Given Schwesig’s description of the torture he endured then, is there a medically viable argument for seeing a causal relationship between the torture Schwesig suffered in 193488 and the inguinal hernia that emerged in 1942? Any pressure on the underlying abdominal musculature, including severe beatings or kicks to the abdomen, could have caused Schwesig’s hernia, according to Wayne L. Poll, MD, board-certified urologist and CEO of Mirabilis Medical, Inc. of Bothell, Washington. Dr. Poll noted, “With an injury like the one described, we would want the patient to have surgery immediately.”89 Schwesig and others suffered catastrophic damage as a result of the abuses they experienced in the Schlegelkeller. Of the Communist-artist colleagues honored with Schwesig in a Düsseldorf monument, none survived the Third Reich except Schwesig. Ultimately, Julio Levin (1901–1943) was killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Peter Ludwigs (1888–1943) was killed in the Düsseldorf Gestapo Prison. Franz Monjau (1903–1945), who was identified as a “radical”90 half-Jewish political dissident, died91 as the result of typhus (“Fleckfieber”) in the medical experimentation building, Barrack 46, at Buchenwald Concentration Camp on 28 February 1945. For Karl Schwesig, Julius Levin, Franz Monjau, Peter Ludwigs, Hanns Kralik, Mathias Barz, Otto Pankok, Adolf Uzarski, Gert Heinrich Wollheim, Adler Jankel, Walter Cohen, Arthur and Elisabeth Kaufmann, and so many others, their art was not divorced from lived, social conditions and processes nor from the ideological views that were in opposition to theirs. Art was a product of sociopolitical processes, whether by choice or because the state foisted it upon them, or some combination of the two. Karl Schwesig noted that his friend Julio Levin, even amidst the torture and psychological trauma, was “one of the most noble and courageous fighters”92 he had known. Reflecting on his youth as an art student, Schwesig says as much in a 1948 letter that describes him and his colleagues. He maintains, from as early as 1928, that several Düsseldorf artists were politically active in a variety of ways. Schwesig and others had all worked as a unit with their colleague, Werner Heuser, a professor of drawing at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art. Attesting their bona fides as artists, Schwesig writes, “[our] pictures hung on the same wall with Heuser’s.”93 Moreover, he mentions, their small union of freed

28  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

friends had since 1933 produced illegal pamphlets to fight tooth and nail against Hitler and his war.94 The period in Düsseldorf that ended with 87 Communists imprisoned began on 5 June 1933, with the arrest of Neuss-born artist Johannes Sangs.95 From that date until mid-July usually small numbers of Communists ranging from one to as many as 22 on June 27, mostly men, but a few women, were taken into custody.96 About 6 percent of the 87 people who were arrested in the summer of 1933 were artists by profession. The vast majority were average people who were either artisans or from a variety of other professions.97 Heinz Paul Hackenberg, a 25-yearold manager and a member of the KPD, was in the Schlegelkeller when Schwesig was incarcerated. Hackenberg recalled in sworn testimony being aroused from his sleep at about 2:00 a.m. on [4] July 1933, summoned at gunpoint by several SA people, and taken to the floor of the Schlegel Brewery.98 Once there, he received a severe beating to his face—the nature of which was so sudden and stunning that Hackenberg recalled losing track of his physical bearings and the immediate surroundings.99 Hackenberg described a 10-day period of being assaulted relentlessly. He noted sometimes being passed through as many as five or six torturers who with leather whips assaulted him beyond the point of recognition.100 Several aspects of Hackenberg’s testimony find concordance or commonality with Karl Schwesig’s and other testimonies. For example, Hackenberg noted the women in the torture cellar, as mentioned in Schwesig’s account, albeit more briefly. Significantly, he attested to seeing the swastika that had been carved into Schwesig’s scalp with sheers by the SA. But, importantly, when asked to identify a particular accused perpetrator, Hackenberg could not recall with certainty the SA person’s face. I mention this part of Hackenberg’s testimony to underscore, as Hackenberg did, the truthful nature of his testimony. In other words, it might be tempting for present-day readers to question the veracity of testimonies given by a group of victims. It could be argued that the concordance is contrived. But Hackenberg, like Schwesig and others, was clear about his recollections as well as candid about those facts that he simply could not remember.101

Jewish Persons in the Prewar Düsseldorf Region Examples of Communists tortured and abuses of Karl Schwesig and his artist colleagues have been discussed. Space does not permit a full exposition of the Jewish communities in Düsseldorf and the surrounding region, but describing how a few Jewish citizens in the region were treated during the prewar era is possible. These stories, given under oath and in the immediate aftermath of the war, with those data about Schwesig’s Jewish artist colleagues and KPD members, are intended to draft a portrait of life in the region during the first years of the Third Reich. Wilhelm Tetsch, a native of Düsseldorf, describes an aspect of the Jewish persecution in 1938. Tetsch, a journeyman butcher, worked with E. L., a butcher from Ratingen.102 Master butcher Peter Klingen employed both men. According

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  29

to Tetsch, a Jewish man named Herz entered Klingen’s Wurstküche. E. L., who Tetsch and Klingen described separately as “a fanatic of the Hitler regime” and a “fanatical Jew-hater” became immediately preoccupied with Hess.103 Klingen also characterized E. L. as follows: “[E.] L. was prepared to be aggressive and dangerous for his surroundings.”104 Without provocation, E. L., a German evangelical of Jewish ancestry who hailed from Ratingen,105 poured garbage-water on Mr. Herz.106 Wilhelm Tetsch and others interceded on Herz’s behalf. But then, E. L. turned his ire against them. He threatened the men with incarceration in a concentration camp because of their “Judenfreundlichkeit” (“Jewkindness” or “friendliness to Jews”).107 According to Wilhelm Tetsch, E. L. claimed that he had just “strangled a Jewish couple while they were in bed.”108 In fact, although unable to substantiate E. L.’s reputation or claims, Peter Klingen noted that E. L. had earned a reputation for having beaten to death several Jewish persons.109 Plainly put, Klingen recalled that E. L. was a “Jew-hater.”110 Tetsch maintained that he was “brutal.” He mentioned also that E. L. had a reputation for having had four or five people arrested and sent to concentration camps.111 For his part, E. L. denied vehemently the claims against him. He argued that he had not participated in the acts described previously because, he said, “It is possible that I had spoken to my work colleagues about the Jewish action, but I don’t believe that I, in the course of my discussion, have been spiteful. I myself am half-Jewish, . . . . One cannot still accept that I, as [a] half-Jew should be spiteful against Jews.”112 Despite E. L.’s disavowal, other witnesses, including Hermann Schmitz, described E. L. as a “good National Socialist” and “a good Nazi,” even as a halfJewish person.113 In other words, being half-Jewish provided no guarantee that E. L. did not abuse other Jewish people during the Third Reich. To think that being affiliated with a religious or racial social group guarantees loyalty to that group is counterfactual. Members of minorities and stigmatized groups who are socialized with other members of their society are equally able to express forms of animus against people who share their same social identities because they have either consciously or subconsciously accepted “the wider society’s negative stereotypes about their group.”114 Thus, members of minority groups perform what scholars call internalized racism.115 From the beginning years of the Third Reich, Jewish businesses suffered harm as a result of formal and informal strategies of institutional racism and bigotry. In 1933–1934, Max Meyer, a Jewish businessman from Langenfeld, Germany, located about 15 miles from Düsseldorf, recalled the Nationalist Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party (NSDAP) boycott of his store. According to Meyer, his store suffered as a result of harassing tactics employed by Nazi party members. SA men wearing large sandwich signs rebuffed customers who attempted to enter Meyer’s store. The three men standing together in the left of the photograph in Figure 1.4 brandished swastikas on their armbands.116 From left to right in the photograph supplied by Meyer, he identified three of the four SA men by name.117

30  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

FIGURE 1.4 Photograph of SA men at an anti-Jewish boycott in front of Max Meyer’s

store (Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany)

Other Jewish businessmen in the Düsseldorf region described similar experiences. Jakob Dahl, the son of a Jewish master butcher from Dormagen, located approximately 22 miles southeast of Düsseldorf, registered a postwar complaint describing the difficulty and persecution his parents and he faced beginning in 1933. For example, Dahl described being denied the opportunity to procure high-quality animals for their butcher shop. Dahl mentioned that his father was told, “These particular animals were not intended for us.”118 At times, Dahl recalled, they were altogether unable to get any meat at all. Dahl mentioned that his father was only able to provide for his customers because Düsseldorf butchers knew him personally and were willing to sell meat to him.119 These examples provide a small window into Jewish communities in and near Düsseldorf. They help us to understand some of the consequences associated with the racialization of Jewish people as a result of National Socialism prior to the outbreak of war.

Schwesig in Exile After a 16-month period of imprisonment by the Third Reich, Schwesig fled Düsseldorf for Belgium. There he rented a space with the parents of a friend from Düsseldorf, Maria Ruttern.120 He earned a living by painting portraits of such luminaries as Camille Huysmans, Anvers’s mayor.121 Notes in Schwesig’s dossier from the Public Safety office describe Schwesig’s desire to remain in Belgium in order to devote himself to his artwork.122 Among other things, the notes recognize Schwesig’s numerous portrait orders and highlight, in particular, an elaborate

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  31

artistic work by Schwesig that had been of interest to Huysmans. Mayor Camille Huysmans provided support for Schwesig.123 It is during this period that Schwesig created the prints referenced earlier in this chapter that depicted his and other Düsseldorf Communists’ experiences in the Folterkeller. On 15 March 1939, Schwesig appealed to American novelist Upton Sinclair for assistance in publishing in the United States his book of artworks about German abuses against political dissidents.124 Sinclair, who had a working relationship with Otis Peabody Swift, a high-level administrator at LIFE magazine, solicited Swift on behalf of Schwesig. Swift, who had regular contact with publishing icon Henry Luce and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, received the manuscript, but by 28 April 1939, it had been rejected.125 Swift wrote to Sinclair, “SCHLEGELKELLER has been carefully studied, not only by our Foreign News Editor, but by other members of our staff here, but I regret to say that it has been found impractical to work it into our schedule.”126 Swift at Sinclair’s request then sent the manuscript to Vanguard Press’s James Henle. In contradistinction to Schwesig’s stalwart expectation that American publishers, despite operating in a capitalist nation, would greet the story about the torture and abuses of Communists by the Third Reich with appropriate concern, Henle, like the Luces, rejected the manuscript later on the very same day. Henle remarked: I received today the volume of drawings entitled SCHLEGELKELLER. They are extremely powerful, but I am afraid we cannot possibly get a public for them. It is very difficult under any circumstance to get much circulation for a book of pictures, and in this case the monotony of the book and its grimness would be heavy handicaps.127 (emphasis mine) Albeit for different reasons, neither Henle nor the Luces were interested in a story about torture. Later, Sinclair turned over the Schwesig book project to his colleague, a New York literary agent, Helen Black. Black made many attempts to get the book published, but all of them were thwarted.128 Karl Schwesig’s exilic activity in Belgium mirrors the initial causes for which he was denaturalized, tortured, and eventually imprisoned in Germany. While living in exile from 1935–1940, Schwesig continued his bold anti-fascist political activism.129 A diplomatic communiqué written by the German Consulate in Brussels discusses at length an anti-Nazi postcard Schwesig created for the 1937 International Arbeitersport-Olympiade130 in Anvers. Among Karl Schwesig’s artworks housed at Beit Lohamei Haghetaot is an apparent prototype of the postcard. The work survived the war and is listed by Schwesig as one of the artworks that he had left in Belgium at the time of his 10 May 1940, arrest, but recovered in 1948.131 The drawing’s exacting size, plus references in Karl Schwesig’s postwar writings, indicate that the drawing is likely a prototype of the postcard mentioned by the German Consulate’s Office in Belgium.

32  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

FIGURE 1.5 Untitled

(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

Transport of Jewish Exiles to the South of France On 10 May  1940, according to Karl Schwesig’s International Tracing Service (ITS) records, the artist was arrested and listed among Jewish persons in Belgium who had either met the same fate or had voluntarily turned themselves in to authorities.132 Several reports written for and to the American Joint Distribution Committee describe in great detail the ignominious treatment Jewish people suffered by Belgian and British forces in Belgium.133 One account of the multi-week degradation depicts how Jewish people were forced to march through streets as crowds of Belgians jeered, threw stones, and demeaned Jewish people by shouting angry epithets.134 The account mentions that Jewish refugees,

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  33

who had been robbed of any valuables, went for days without bread or drinking water even as they were under the threat of death for attempting to flee or being beaten for asking questions about their fate. In the words of one writer, they were “treated worse than cattle.”135 When they received food about four days after being arrested, it was fit for animals. In fact, the man remarked, “Dog’s or pig’s food is better or cleaner, but faced with acute hunger, we ate even this. No spoons; we ate with our hands. Toward evening, after again passing through the streets, with the populace threatening us and calling us Fifth columnists.”136 Then all were loaded onto cattle cars bereft of air and without seats, benches, or even straw to sit on for a 72-hour journey. “When people saw our train, they jeered and made motions as if cutting off our heads. The bravest were the women who threw stones, called us ‘Boches’ and [Fifth] Columnists. . . . I have never seen such a fear of spies, no, not even in 1914.”137 The group of deportees first arrived at a camp in Le Wigrant, France, where they remained for two weeks until being reloaded into seatless trains for the trip to the camp at Saint-Cyprien.138 Several thousands of Jewish Belgians and foreigners arrested at the beginning of hostilities139 experienced indelible, longer-lasting effects as a result of how authorities had treated them. “Under military guard by the Belgian authorities140 a number of these people had their identity papers inexplicably taken away from them and never regained possession of them.”141 Therefore, these people, if they were elderly, ill or foreign Jewish persons, were more likely to have died than allowed to immigrate out of France.142 In Chapter  1, I  provided detailed information about Karl Schwesig’s social locations and with it, introduced through his artworks the abuses of KPD members and artists like Schwesig. The chapter gives an understanding of Düsseldorf ’s ethos both before the rise of Hitler as Chancellor and in its aftermath, during the pre–World War II years. The data the artworks disclose are all enriched by other historical documents, including German government documents from and about the period. I have shown how Karl Schwesig’s personal narrative informs about the broader array of structural struggles experienced by other artists, some of whom were Jewish and Communist Party faithful. The last section of the chapter focused briefly on the maltreatment of Jewish persons and business owners. The sentiments revealed are similar to reports from the American consulate in Berlin. In Chapter  2, attention shifts to Camp Saint-Cyprien where Schwesig and others who had fled to Belgium from Germany and Eastern Europe lived after they were arrested and subsequently shipped out of Belgium in the second week of May 1940.

Notes 1. Karl Schwesig to Melvin Frank, letter, 23 May 1948, Karl Schwesig Papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2.

34  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

2. International Tracing Service records have listed Karl Schwesig’s first arrest as occurring on 11 August 1933 (Karteikarte des Strafgef. U. UHA Düsseldorf-Derendorf, Gruppe P.P, Ordner 1496, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 1.2.2.1, folder no. 1496, doc. no. 11626315, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC). However, in several documents, including Schwesig’s 1946 sworn testimony and in other corroborating evidence from witnesses, the arrest date is listed as 11 July 1933 (Vorgeladen erscheint der Kunstmaler, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Schwesig, subpoenaed testimony, 30 May 1949, Ger. Rep. 0268.00034, Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany, 7). It is also noted as 11 July 1933, in other Schwesig postwar statements, cf. Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946. The confusion may be that Karl Schwesig was listed as one among 28 defendants against whom a warrant was issued on 11 August 1933 (Der Polizeipräsident in Düsseldorf, warrant for arrest and list of defendants, 10–11 August 1933, Ger. Rep. RW0058, 17720, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany). 3. The view that Schwesig and other anti-fascists were grievously harmed is stated in a postwar document written by officials. “Enclosed please find 5 statements made by anti-fascists who in 1933 were ill-treated in the most serious way by SA men in the notorious SA cellar in the Bismarckstraße” (emphasis mine) (Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, cover letter #S496, 2 January 1946, Ger. Rep. 0372.0020, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany. Cf. also, Vorgeladen erschient der Geschäftsführer Heinz Paul Hackenberg, subpoenaed testimony, 30 May 1949, Ger. Rep. 0268.00034, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany). 4. I agreed to anonymize all names of perpetrators that originate from Gestapo files, denazification files, etc. 5. Gegen den A. S., charge document, 28 April 1949, Ger. Rep. 0268.00034, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany. 6. Hannah Arendt, “Race-Thinking Before Racism,” The Review of Politics 6, no. 1 ( January 1944): 36–73. 7. Arendt, “Race-Thinking,” 49. 8. Arendt, “Race-Thinking,” 49. 9. Arendt, “Race-Thinking,” 49. 10. Arendt, “Race-Thinking,” 36–53. 11. Carl Vinnen, Ein Protest deutscher Künstler: Mit Einleitung von Carl Vinnen ( Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1911). 12. Vinnen, Ein Protest deutscher Künstler. 13. Rose-Carol Washton Long, German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism (Documents of Twentieth Century Art) (Berkeley/Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1994), 286, 306. 14. Paret, German Encounters with Modernism 1840–1945 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Uwe Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich: Sprache, Rasse, Religion (Darmstadt: WBG, 2001). 15. Henry Thode, Kunst, Religion und Kultur: Ansprachen an die Heidelberger Studentenscaft Gehalten bei der anlässlich seiner Ablehanung des Rufes an die Berliner Universität Veranstalteten Feier (Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universität buchhandlung, 1901), 4 ff. 16. Thode, Kunst, Religion und Kultur. 17. Thode, Kunst, Religion und Kultur, 1–4. 18. Othmar Spann, “Die Kulturfrise der Gegenwart,” Mitteilungen des Kampfbundes für deutsche Kultur (Vortrag in Auditorium Maximum der Münchener Universität) 1, no. 3 (März 1929): 33–44. 19. Hildegard Brenner, Die Kunstpolitik des National-Sozialismus (Hamburg: Rowohlts Taschenbuch Verlag, 1963), 7.

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  35

2 0. Spann, “Die Kulturfrise der Gegenwart,” 37–38. 21. Vinnen, Ein Protest deutscher Künstler. 22. Annette Baumeister, “Das Junge Rheinland: Zur Geschichte der Künstlergruppe 1919–1931,” in Das Junge Rheinland: Vorläufer—Freunde—Nachfolge, ed. Susanna Anna and Annette Baumeister (Ostfeldern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2008), 9. 23. Brian Crim, “ ‘Our Most Serious Enemy’: The Specter of Judeo-Bolshevism in the German Military Community, 1914–1923,” Central European History 44 (2011): 625. 24. Cf. Crim, “ ‘Our Most Serious Enemy.’ ” 25. For samples of newspapers of this type consult the file, Zeitungen und Zeitschriften 1933–1939, RW 0020.00029, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany. 26. Cf. Herr Schmidt-Rolke to Deutsches Generalkonsulat, letter #604, 30 July 1937, Archives générales du Royaume et Archives de l’État, Brussels, Belgium; Karl Schwesig to Upton Sinclair, letter, 15 March  1939, Karl Schwesig papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany; Entnazifizierung A. S., Karl Schwesig testimony, 30 May 1949, Ger. Rep. 0268.00034, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany. 27. For a brief biographical sketch of Melvin Frank: Glenn Collins, “Obituary for Melvin Frank,” New York Times, 15 October 1988. Based on different handwritten versions of a letter sent by Karl Schwesig to Melvin Frank, it is clear that Schwesig and other colleagues of his had several Hollywood benefactors among whom Frank was one. In the period following World War II these people supplied food and clothing parcels to Schwesig, his wife, Hannilore, and their daughter, Antje. Schwesig remarks, “Without the gift parcels [from] Hollywood, my wife [would not have been] able to dress our baby, because [there] exists for us no cotton, linen [or] leather” (Karl Schwesig to Melvin Frank, letter, 23 May 1948, Karl Schwesig Papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2). The bracketed phrases in the Schwesig quote reflect corrections to his English text. While Schwesig wrote fluently in German and French, he wrote in broken English. From postwar notebooks, it appears that he was either teaching himself the language or being taught it. 28. Karl Schwesig to Upton Sinclair, letter, 15 March 1939, Karl Schwesig Papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany. 29. Karl Schwesig to Melvin Frank, letter, 23 May 1948. 30. Karl Schwesig to Au Comité Nationale de Solidarité, letter, 3 June  1948, Karl Schwesig Papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany. 31. Karl Schwesig to Au Comité Nationale de Solidarité, letter, 3 June 1948. For references about reproductions of Schwesig’s print series and the significance of what Schwesig’s artworks document, cf. A. Busus (illegible) to Karl Schwesig, letter, 30 December  1936, Karl Schwesig Papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany. 32. Heinrich Mann, “Vorwort,” manuscript, Karl Schwesig Papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany. In KPD documents from France, novelist Heinrich Mann is described as the “party-less, president” of a German antifascist group. The document is among KPD papers. However, it is unclear as to whether the document is referring to Mann as the president of the KPD (Report from the Internationale antifascistisches Archiv und Deutsche Freiheitsbibliothek, RG 43.016, reel 20, Archives nationales de France—Police Nationale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC). 33. Cf. Karl Schwesig to Upton Sinclair, letter, 15 March  1939; and Karl Schwesig to Melvin Frank, letter, 23 May 1948. 34. For details about the abuses of Düsseldorf ’s artists, the ill treatment of Communists, and the mistreatment of Jewish persons in Düsseldorf and the surrounding region see: Ger. Rep. 0268.00027, Ger. Rep. 0268.00034, Ger. Rep. 0372.00084, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany.

36  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

35. Legal scholars, sociologists, philosophers, and others use the term intersectional identities to describe the complexities that occur when multiple social identities such as race, gender, sexuality, class status, religion, and ability come together to create advantages or disadvantages for people (Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theories, Application, and Praxis,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38, no. 4 (2013): 785–807). 36. Bastian Fleermann, meeting with author, March 2013. 37. Tina Campt, Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender and Memory in the Third Reich (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2004), 19, 26. 38. Campt, Other Germans, 19. 39. For full discussions about art and the Third Reich, cf. Olaf Peters, ed., Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany 1937 (Munich/London/New York: Prestel Verlag, 2014); and Stephanie Baron, ed., “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991). 40. For a sample critique of the collective and some of its members, Karl Schwesig, Walter Cohen, Gert Wollheim, and Max Ernst, cf., “Das Junge Rheinland: Der Ausstellung in der Kunsthalle,” Düsseldorfer Nachrichten, 12 March 1921. For a list of prominent DJR artists cf. Susanna Anna and Annette Baumeister, ed., Das Junge Rheinland: Vorläufer—Freunde—Nachfolge (Ostfeldern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2008). For a portrait of the Mutter Ey circle, cf. Arthur Kaufmann’s 1925 painting, Zeitgenossen. Please note that membership of DJR and the Johanna “Mutter” Ey circle overlapped. Several artists were in both groups. For insight into DJR’s first exhibit and the range of artists in the first exhibit of DJR and a characterization of the collective, cf. “Das junge Rheinland,” Das Kunstblatt (1919): 274–78. For a different assessment of the collective’s work cf. “Notizen, Das Junge Rheinland,” Das Kunstblatt (1919): 126. For a later evaluation of the collective’s work cf. Alfred Salmony, “Düsseldorf,” Das Kunstblatt (1922): 353–56. 41. Baumeister, “Das Junge Rheinland,” 13. 42. Baumeister, “Das Junge Rheinland,” 13. 43. Baumeister, “Das Junge Rheinland,” 13. 44. This Karl Schwesig letter, in part, describes the reconstitution of the Rheinische Sezession in the postwar era (Karl Schwesig to Dr. Kensel, letter #51011, 8 September 1948, Karl Schwesig Papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany). Cf. also, a newspaper report marking the 25th anniversary of the Rheinische Sezession, “Jubilämsschau der Rheinischen Sezession: Ein Rückblick auf 25 Jahre Düsseldorfer Kunstleben,” Düsseldorf Stadt Nachrichten, 10 October 1953. 45. Baumeister, “Das Junge Rheinland,” 13. 46. For documentation of the arrests of Karl Schwesig and artists listed previously, cf. Pfeiffer, Hans u. Gen. wegen Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat, legal documentation, 1 August 1933, RW0058, 17720, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany. Like Karl Schwesig, Hanns Kralik, who was a graphic artist, produced art in support of the KPD. Kralik was responsible for creating the dust jacket for an Éditions du Carrefour Publication which had published numerous anti-Nazi books, including Bücher der Wahrheit: Über Deutschland unter der Hitlerregierung and Braunbuch über Reichstagsbrand u. Hitlerreich, among others. For a sample report about the activities of Éditions du Carrefour, including a breakdown of publication costs, publication lists, and activities of the publishing house, etc. cf.: “Bericht über Éditions du Carrefour per 31 Dezember 1936” (List of volumes, 31 December 1936, RG 43.016, reel 20, Selected Records from the French National Archives—Police Générale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC). The extensive list of published titles reveals concern about racial fanaticism and the plight of Jews in Germany. Books published on these topics include: Schriften zur Judenfragen Deutschland: Was soll mit den Juden Geschehen (List of volumes, 31 December 1936).

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  37

47. Vorgeladen erscheint der Kunstmaler, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Schwesig, subpoenaed testimony, 30 May 1949, Ger. Rep. 268.00034, Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany, 7. 48. Betrifft A. Siekmeyer by Karl Schwesig, document, 1948, Karl Schwesig Papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany. 49. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York/London/Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 1963). 50. “Atelierbesuche: Junge Düsseldorfer Künstler bei der Arbeit,” DZ am Sonntag, 5 September 1926. 51. Betrifft A. Siekmeyer by Karl Schwesig, document, 1948. 52. The intention is not to be an apologist for Karl Schwesig. In the hundreds of primary source documents by and about Karl Schwesig that I have read, there is no evidence that Schwesig was homophobic. This passage begins with the question asked by the torturers, but Schwesig’s emphasis is on the sexual abuses that he and others suffered at the hands of Nazi authorities rather than the query posed. 53. Betrifft A. Siekmeyer by Karl Schwesig, document, 1948. 54. Brock Bastian and Nick Haslam, “Excluded from Humanity: The Dehumanizing Effects of Ostracism,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46 (2010): 107–13. More recently, Bastian and Haslam have determined the deleterious effects of social disconnection. 55. Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice: The 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Basic Books, 1957), especially, 372–77. 56. Joshua Kaiser and John Hagan, “Gendered Genocide: The Socially Destructive Process of Genocidal Rape, Killing, Displacement in Darfur,” Law & Society Review 49, no. 1 (2015): 69–107. 57. Allport writes about how the racial others are stigmatized. Here, I  have applied Allport’s insight about the racial other and sexuality to a political other and sexual stigmatism (Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, 372–77). The study by Davies found a correlation between stereotypes about gay men and attitudes about them (Michelle Davies, “Correlates of Negative Attitudes Toward Gay Men: Sexism, Male Role Norms and Male Sexuality,” The Journal of Sex Research 41, no. 3 [2004]: 259–60). Together, Allport and Davies seem to capture in their respective scholarship the sentiment expressed by Schwesig’s remarks. 58. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, 373–80, esp. 378–80. 59. Cf. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice and Goffman, Stigma. 60. Cf. Peters, Degenerate Art; Baron, “Degenerate Art.” 61. Carol Poore, Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2009), 8–13. 62. Entnazifizierung A. S., Karl Schwesig testimony, 30 May 1949; Cf. also, Pfeiffer, Hans u. Gen. wegen Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat; Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946, Ger. Rep. 0372.00018, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany. 63. In 2013, Dr. Peter Klefisch, an official at the Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen in Duisberg, Germany reported that Karl Schwesig’s Gestapo file, no. 65860, is inexplicably missing. There are, however, several related files that mention aspects of Schwesig’s activities in 1933, including the Gestapo files of some of his contemporaries and several ancillary files from the early postwar period that describe the nature of Schwesig’s torture, and their lasting impact on him and others. 64. Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946. 65. Karl Schwesig to Upton Sinclair, letter, 15 March 1939. 66. Sander L. Gilman, email message to author, 16 Marc 2016.

38  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

67. Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946. 68. Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946, 2. 69. Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946, 2. 70. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 10 December 1984, United Nations Resolution 39/46. 71. Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946, 2. 72. Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946, 3. 73. Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946, 2. 74. In addition to the brief discussion concerning Karl Schwesig’s medical certification that follows based on a medical certification from the Theresien Hospital in Düsseldorf cf. also, a fuller description of the injuries that resulted from torture and incarceration under the Third Reich: Karl Schwesig, BR 2182.21154, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany. 75. Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946, 2. 76. Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946, 2. 77. Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946, 2. 78. Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946, 3. 79. Karl Schwesig, Schlegelkeller: Mit einem Vorwort von Heinrich Mann (Düsseldorf: Frölich und Kaufmann, 1983), 28. 80. Vorgeladen erschient der Geschäftsführer Heinz Paul Hackenberg, subpoenaed testimony, 30 May 1949, 6. 81. “Buchenwald,” Holocaust Online Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, accessed 12 June  2016, www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article. php?ModuleId=10005198. 82. Pfeiffer, Hans u. Gen. wegen Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat, legal documentation, 1 August 1933, 7–15. 83. Erving Goffman defines stigma as a deeply discrediting attribute, a difference that renders a person (or group) as morally corrupt or untrustworthy, indeed nearly nonhuman (Goffman, Stigma, 3). 84. Karl Schwesig to Landstagfraktion der KPD, description of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, August 1948, Karl Schwesig Papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany. 85. Dr. Frischen-Theresien Hospital for Karl Schwesig, medical certification, 23 December 1948, Karl Schwesig Papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany. 86. Karl Schwesig to Landstagfraktion der KPD, description of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, August 1948. 87. Dr. Frischen-Theresien Hospital for Karl Schwesig, medical certification, 23 December 1948. 88. Prisoner and pretrial card from Düsseldorf-Derendorf, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 1.2.2.1, folder no. 1486, doc. no. 11626315, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. Karl Schwesig was arrested for a second time in Wuppertal on 10 February 1934. The initial injury could have been caused as early as 1933 when he was first tortured or later in 1934, during his second arrest. 89 Wayne Poll, M.D. in discussion with the author, 27 March 2016.

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  39

90. Several documents identify Franz Monjau as a “radical” political dissident. For a sample document, cf. Politische Abteilung, 17 January 1945, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, K-L Buchenwald Ordner No. 202a, Neuzugänge v. 16 January 1945–31 January 1945, 1.1.5.1, folder no. 202a, doc. nos. 5293743_0_1 and 5293754_0_1. 91. While many pages of Franz Monjau’s ITS records note Monjau’s cause of death as either “not known” or a combination of gastroenteritis and bronchial pneumonia, document #171496 lists typhus as the cause of death. Typhus as a cause of death is consistent with where Monjau was housed at Buchenwald—that is, in the barrack where the Hygiene Institute of the Armed SS did typhus medical experimentation on prisoners. For documents listing the cause of death as typhus: cf. Description of cause of death, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 6.6.3.2, folder no. 0171496, doc. no. 87495192_0_1, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2; Franz Monjau’s card, card #T 171496, 14 June 1950, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 6.3.3.2, folder no. 0171496, doc. no. 87495170_0_1, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2. For documents that list the cause of death as “not known” cf. “Materials copied to USFET-War Crimes Branch,” document #T-171496, 20 July 1946, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 6.3.3.2, folder no. 0171496, doc. no. 87495209_0_1, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 36. For documents listing “bronchial pneumonia and gastroenteritis” as the causes of Franz Monjau’s death, cf., G. Wilke to Sigrid Mäurers, letter, 19 June 1997, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 6.3.3.2, folder no. 0171496, doc. nos. 87495193–87495194, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 92. Karl Schwesig to Landstagfraktion der KPD, description of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, August 1948. 93. Karl Schwesig to Landstagfraktion der KPD, description of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, August 1948. 94. Karl Schwesig to Landstagfraktion der KPD, description of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, August 1948. 95. Pfeiffer, Hans u. Gen. wegen Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat, legal documentation, 1 August 1933, 7. 96. Pfeiffer, Hans u. Gen. wegen Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat, legal documentation, 1 August 1933, 7–15. For Karl Schwesig’s arrest date, see note 2. Also note, Karl Schwesig’s arrest date is recorded as 11 July in some documents, but elsewhere as 14 July 1933 (Vorgeladen erscheint der Kunstmaler, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Schwesig, subpoenaed testimony, 30 May 1949; cf. also, Vereinigung Ehemaliger Politischer Konzentrationare und Politisch Inhaftierter Düsseldorf/Rheinbahnhaus, Karl Schwesig’s testimony, 2 January 1946, Ger. Rep. 0372.00018, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany). 97. Pfeiffer, Hans u. Gen. wegen Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat, legal documentation, 1 August 1933, 7–15. 98. Vorgeladen erschient der Geschäftsführer Heinz Paul Hackenberg, subpoenaed testimony, 30 May 1949, 6. 99. Vorgeladen erschient der Geschäftsführer Heinz Paul Hackenberg, subpoenaed testimony, 30 May 1949, 6. 100. Vorgeladen erscheint der Geschäftsführer Heinz Paul Hackenberg, subpoenaed testimony, 30 May 1949, 6. 101. Vorgeladen erscheint der Geschäftsführer Heinz Paul Hackenberg, subpoenaed testimony, 30 May 1949, 6. 102. Many people who in the war’s aftermath gave postwar testimonies are identified by religion. Some files of Jewish people were also stamped with a Star of David. Jewish

40  “I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”

people who gave testimonies self-identified as Jewish, but because Wilhelm Tetsch’s file bears none of these indicators, it appears Tetsch was not Jewish. 103. Metzger Wilhelm Tetsch, testimony, 7 December  1945, Ger. Rep. 0268.00003, Staatsanwaltschaft 2, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany, 1; Metzgermeister Peter Klingen, testimony, 8 December 1945, Ger. Rep. 0268.00003, Staatsanwaltschaft 2, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany, 1. 104. Metzgermeister Peter Klingen, testimony, 8 December 1945, 1. 105. KriminalpolizeiVorladung E.A.L., subpoenaed testimony, 4 January 1946, Ger. Rep. 0268.00003, Staatsanwaltschaft 2, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany, 4. 106. Metzger Wilhelm Tetsch, testimony, 7 December 1945, 1. 107. Metzger Wilhelm Tetsch, testimony, 7 December 1945, 1. 108. Metzger Wilhelm Tetsch, testimony, 7 December 1945, 1. 109. Metzgermeister Peter Klingen, testimony, 8 December 1945, 1. 110. Metzgermeister Peter Klingen, testimony, 8 December 1945, 1. 111. Metzger Wilhelm Tetsch, testimony, 7 December 1945, 1. 112. KriminalpolizeiVorladung E.A.L., subpoenaed testimony, 4 January 1946. 113. Vorgeladen erscheint der Fleischträger Hermann Schmitz, subpoenaed testimony, 30 June 1946, Ger. Rep. 0268.00003, Staatanwaltschaft 2, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany, 22. 114. Dawne M. Mouzon and Jamila S. McLean, “Internalized Racism and Mental Health Among African-Americans, US-Born Caribbean Blacks, and Foreign-Born Caribbean Blacks,” Ethnicity and Health 22, no. 1 (2017): 37. 115. Mouzon and McLean, “Internalized Racism and Mental Health.” 116. Eingriffe gegen persönlich Freiheit eines jüdenischen Geschäftes-Max Meyer, document, 17 October  1946, Ger. Rep. 0268.00003, Staatanwaltschaft 12, 1, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany, 1. 117. Eingriffe gegen persönlich Freiheit eines jüdenischen Geschäftes-Max Meyer, document, 17 October 1946, 2. 118. Aus eigener Veranlassung ercheint der Metzger Jakob Dahl, document, 19 March 1946, Ger. Rep. 0268.00003, Staatanwaltschaft 5, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany, 1. 119. Aus eigener Veranlassung erscheint der Metzger Jakob Dahl, document, 19 March 1946. 120. Akten der Geheimen Staatspolizei Personalien des Maria Ruttern, file, 9 March 1937, RW0058-65266, Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen, Duisberg, Germany, 7. 121. Akten der Geheimen Staatspolizei Personalien des Maria Ruttern, file, 9 March 1937. 122. Extraits du dossier concerne: Karl Schwesig in Schwesig’s Belgian Immigration FileA161905, 4 October 1935, 2. 123. Extraits du dossier concerne: Karl Schwesig in Schwesig’s Belgian Immigration FileA161905, 4 October 1935, 2. 124. Karl Schwesig to Upton Sinclair, letter, 13 March 1939, Upton Sinclair Papers, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana; Karl Schwesig to Upton Sinclair, letter, 15 March 1939. 125. Otis Peabody Swift to Upton Sinclair, letter, 28 April 1939, Upton Sinclair Papers, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. For a detailed account of Sinclair and Schwesig’s attempts to get Schlegelkeller published, cf., Willa M. Johnson and Kirk A. Johnson, “Karl Schwesig’s Schlegelkeller: Anatomy of a Rejected Warning about Prewar Violence at LIFE Magazine,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 30, no. 1 (March 2017): 1–22. 126. Otis Peabody Swift to Upton Sinclair, letter, 28 April 1939. 127. James Henle to Upton Sinclair, letter, 28 April 1939, Upton Sinclair Papers, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

“I Fought National Cannibalism With . . .”  41

128. Johnson and Johnson, “Karl Schwesig’s Schlegelkeller.” 129. Herr Schmidt-Rolke to Deutsches Generalkonsulat, letter #604, 30 July 1937. 130. In 1937, Anvers hosted the last of several workers’ International Olympics. The event sponsored by the Communist Party drew 600 people from 12 countries (Herr Schmidt-Rolke to Deutsches Generalkonsulat, letter #604, 30 July 1937). 131. Karl Schwesig to Au Comité Nationale de Solidarité, letter, 3 June 1948. 132. In contrast to Schwesig’s ITS records, Karl Schwesig’s birth records from the Gelsenkirchen Stadtarchiv indicate that he was born into a family that was Evangelical Christian (Karl Schwesig, “Liste von Juden die in Mai 1940 in Belgien wohnhaft,” International Tracing Service Digital Collection, Malines Ordner 24, 1.1.24.1, folder no. 24, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington DC; Karl Schwesig, birth records, 19 June 1898, Gelsenkirchen Stadtarchiv, Gelsenkirchen, Germany). Schwesig continued to identify as an Evangelical throughout his internment, as noted in his intake records from Camp Noé (Karl Schwesig, intake file Camp Noé, 28 February 1941, côte 1867 W37, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France). 133. “Letter from Saint-Cyprien,” 16 September  1940, file AR3344_00034_00951, 1 (American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY). Cf. also, “Report on the Events from 10 May to 30 July 1940,” report, 26 September 1940, file NY_AR_3344_00034_0929 (American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY). 134. “Letter from Saint-Cyprien,” letter, 16 September 1940, 1. 135. “Letter from Saint-Cyprien,” letter, 16 September 1940, 1. 136. “Letter from Saint-Cyprien,” letter, 16 September 1940, 1. 137. “Letter from Saint-Cyprien,” letter, 16 September 1940, 1–2. 138. “Letter from Saint-Cyprien,” letter, 16 September 1940, 2. 139. These activities transpired “at the beginning of hostilities” prior to Belgian capitulation to the German army on 18 May 1940. 140. A handwritten version of the memo to M. Dronsart about the circumstances of internees at Saint-Cyprien reads, “These people are kept militarily by the French.” However, the typewritten version of the memorandum titled “Note on the Situation of Internees at Saint-Cyprien” omits the term “the French” and the phrase reads: “These people are kept militarily by the Belgian authorities [who] took a number of peoples’ identity papers.” The typewritten version of the memo has been amended with a handwritten note that reads “the English authorities, the Belgian authorities” (“Note sur le situation des internées à Saint-Cyprien, [Pyr. Orient.], memorandum, n. d., reel 3-part 2, folder 003, section 144, RG 65.012, Selected Records from the General Files of the Police for Foreigners, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC). 141. The Belgian Refugee Center at Marneffe stripped identity papers from “some Jewish refugees.” Documents were returned to some of these people at the beginning of August 1940 according to a 2 September 1940 letter from Marneffe (Ministère de la justice-centre de réfugiés à Marneffe to Le Directeur de la sûreté publique, Police des étrangers, letter, 2 September1940, reel 3-part 2, folder 003, section 144, RG 65.012, Selected Records from the General Files of the Police for Foreigners, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC). While denying people their identity papers may on the face of things appear inconsequential, several people at Saint-Cyprien including Karl Schwesig were either actively applying for or hoping to apply for immigration. 142. Willa M. Johnson, “The Treatment of Foreign Jews at Camp Noé and Archbishop Saliège’s Letter of Rebuke and Resistance,” in review.

2 “THE INFERNO OR HELL OF [CAMP] SAINT-CYPRIEN,”1 1939–1940

Camp Saint-Cyprien was one of several beach camps2 situated in southern France along the Mediterranean Sea coast. The camp was located “north of the barracks of l’Aigal and in the direction of Saint-Nazaire” about 15 kilometers (9.32 miles) from Perpignan.3 Initially opened in 1939, Saint-Cyprien’s purpose was to control4 the vast number of refugees who were flooding into French Catalonia as a result of the Spanish Civil War. In a post-World War II report, the French government depicted Camp Saint-Cyprien as a place used for Spanish Civil War exiles and refugees who sought respite from Nazi oppression.5 Yet the report neglects to mention the thousands of Jews who were interned at Saint-Cyprien after having been arrested and expelled from their countries of residence or asylum. Interestingly, the report fails to acknowledge specifically the thousands of Jews who were expelled from Belgium before Belgium’s capitulation to Germany on 18 May 1940, and later, those expelled from places such as Baden and Palatinate.6 This and subsequent chapters show that the outcome for many of these Jewish people and Christians of Jewish ancestry was disease and death as a result of being imprisoned in squalid conditions in France rather than being able to immigrate as many had hoped.7 Before discussing Karl Schwesig’s art and the Jewish and other communities that it captures, it is well worth considering generally why Jewish exiles may have fared as they did. Marrus and Paxton argue that the French defeat caused a seismic shift in French society and helped to open the door to antisemitism’s outward expression.8 The laws put in place by the French government are key to understanding how Jewish people experienced France. On 3 October 1940, the Statut des juifs—laws promulgated against Jews—were established. A bevy of other Vichy laws that influenced how Jews in France were treated throughout World War II followed in subsequent months and years. Thus, considering briefly

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  43

Vichy’s antisemitic laws and their effects on Jewish refugees helps to contextualize why and how Jewish people lived and perished in France. Although more Jewish people per capita survived in France than in other European nations such as the Netherlands,9 foreign Jews who had been expelled from their homes like those from Baden-Palatinate, and other Jewish people who had fled to France pursuing safety from Nazi repression, nevertheless suffered and died from illness and disease as a result of the squalid conditions in the French camps. Other foreign Jews were deported to death camps in the East where the majority of them were killed.10 In the late 1930s, the French suffered the twin problems of xenophobia and antisemitism.11 These affected negatively particularly foreign Jewish persons or stateless Jewish persons such as Algerian Jews, who were stripped by statute of French citizenry. During the 1930s, France experienced a re-emergent antisemitism, according to Vicki Caron.12 Marrus and Paxton maintained that French antisemitic laws were not contrived as a result of German influence or German pressure.13 Considering the French anti-Jewish statutes, even briefly, yields valuable if limited insight into the nature and scope of French antisemitism. There are three key points. First, antisemitism, in France as well as in Europe more broadly, had a long and well-established history.14 Second, Marrus and Paxton argue, French antisemitism during World War II was neither motivated nor influenced by German power. Instead, Marrus and Paxton identify in wartime France a “rival antisemitism.” This epithet emphasizes the independent and coexisting nature of French and German antisemitism.15 These attitudes, which were reified in anti-Jewish laws and policies, therefore merit being characterized as racism. In fact, Jewish internees in the French camps identified the German laws as racist. As with German laws, French laws, statutes, and policies affected directly the plight of thousands of Jews who were sent to the Unoccupied Zone by Germans and eventually interned at Saint-Cyprien (or Gurs) by Vichy officials in 1940, thereby increasing hardship for Jews and in some cases causing severe illness that resulted in death.16 In this way, Jews who had escaped from the Occupied Zone and the reach of German antisemitic laws fell victim to Vichy statutes in the Unoccupied Zone. Marrus and Paxton note specifically the plight of 3,000 Alsatian Jews who in July  1940 were sent by German officials into the Unoccupied Zone with the assurance of freedom, only to be arrested and imprisoned at Saint-Cyprien by Vichy officials. Similarly, on October 22, 1940, 10,000 Jews17 were rounded up by German authorities and deported from Baden and Saarpfalz (Saar-Palatinate) and sent into the Unoccupied Zone.18 According to Marrus and Paxton, as France protested the receipt of the refugees and wrangled with Germany about the unannounced arrival of German Jews into the Unoccupied Zone, the deportees remained stuffed in a shut train as it shuttled back and forth between France and Germany. Eventually, these Jewish people ended up detained at Gurs, Saint-Cyprien, Les Milles, and elsewhere. When the train was finally opened, several people had died. Others were eventually deported to the East.19 There are a few more points worth noting. The New York

44  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

Times’ owner Arthur Sulzberger mentioned in a 7 November 1940 telegram the people who were forced to leave their homes and the American peoples’ request for immediate aid at Camp Gurs. The telegram describes 9,000 people ranging from six months to 98 years of age who had been forcibly removed from their homes in Baden-Palatinate and as a result were in despair. He therefore implored the French authorities to intervene.20 Secondly, a separate archival communication stamp-dated 21 January 1941, reported that 15 days after having arrived at Gurs, Saint-Cyprien, Les Milles, and Le Vernet, these transported people suffered an epidemic of diarrhea that was so severe at Gurs that it lasted more than two months and was responsible for the death of 140 people at Ilôt E, Ilôt I, and Ilôt L at Camp Gurs.21 Sociologically, to use the word racism to describe these and similar acts is to emphasize the structural nature and power dynamics that, when joined with xenophobia and prejudice against Jewish persons, amounted to systemic racialization and dehumanization of a religious social group. The circumstances that Jewish people were forced to live in rendered them disadvantaged socially, politically, and economically. Arguably, if Jews had been called pejorative names like métèque or if they had been made subject to “faulty and inflexible generalizations about [them as] a group,”22 then they would have survived and made their way as they have done throughout the centuries. But French authorities circumscribed Jews as an outgroup. This does not ignore the many altruistic acts by everyday French citizens who risked their own well-being to hide Jews or who refused to turn over Jewish persons to authorities,23 but it does acknowledge the systematic and structural nature associated with the ways that Jewish persons were ill-treated and indeed, racialized. The repeal of the Marchandeau Law on August 27, 1940, and the retraction (which revoked citizenship for Algerian Jews) of the Crémieux decree on October 7, 1940, plus a number of other anti-Jewish laws such as the Statut des juifs, relegated even French Jews to a lower status.24 Marrus and Paxton write: The basic indifference of Pétain and Laval left the field to the zealots. Vichy antisemitism seems to us neither the work of mass opinion nor of the men at the very top. It was pushed by powerful groups and fanatical individuals, given a free hand by the indifference of others ready to abandon the values of the hated ancien régime.25 France’s measures against foreigners and antisemitism together amounted to great hardship, especially for foreign Jews. Denis Peschanski notes, quoting Pierre Laborie: “In fact, ‘the problem of foreigners remained between 1938–1946, one of the nervous areas of the French social imagination.’ In this imagination, the foreigner is more and more associated with the undesirable until they merge and result in xenophobic rejection.”26

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  45

In accounting for main aspects of the problem faced in France, Denis Peschanski listed first the French crisis of national identity. This, he remarked, was the initial sign that the foundational references of the Third Republic were lost.27 Today Saint-Cyprien and southern France are regaled for the majestic Pyrenees Mountains and its pristine white beaches. Its stunning natural beauty stands in stark contrast to the conditions that existed at the internment camps. An American Jewish Joint Distribution Center Report notes that the Spanish refugees who had lived in the camp for about a year by the time the report had been written dubbed the camp “the Inferno or Hell of Saint-Cyprien.”28 Saint-Cyprien’s beastly hot summers, poorly constructed dwellings, the inadequate amounts of food and clean, drinkable water, paired with rampant disease in the face of poor sanitation, a lack of basic living supplies such as soap and medicines, and violent weather conditions during October 1940 together converted this would-be paradise into anything but. Karl Schwesig’s artworks reveal insights into all of these conditions. As in Chapter  1, all of the data used for triangulation have multiple points of congruence. Reports from aid groups, particularly those from the American Friends Service Committee, who had been active in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and subsequently went to southern France, are useful for stitching together information about one of the largest constituencies in southern France—the Spanish Civil War exiles and Republicans—as are victims’ letters and reports from the American Joint Distribution Committee. Governmental institutions, including the French Ministry of the Interior and the United States Department of State, offer startlingly frank assessments about the early conditions at the camp, the kinds of assistance made available, and the unwillingness of the US government to aid the French government. Newspaper articles, especially those by The New York Times when compared with US State Department press releases, are important. While Chapter  1 integrated subpoenaed testimonies by Schwesig and others and letters that Schwesig wrote, I  rely more on historical documents that Schwesig had no part in crafting for this and the remaining chapters. Since Schwesig’s experiences were central to Chapter 1, it was appropriate to rely on his writings and testimonies linked to the prints. The purpose of focusing on other documents here and in subsequent chapters is to emphasize their degree of concordance in support of the book’s major thesis. Therefore, I limit use of Karl Schwesig’s rich body of postwar writings, including his book-length manuscript titled Pyrenäenbericht.29 A significant number of letters written by detainees who shared a common path of persecution with Karl Schwesig are featured in this and the following chapters. In some instances, these people were arrested in Belgium at or around the same time that Schwesig was, and they, too, were incarcerated at SaintCyprien, transferred to Gurs, and some were hospitalized eventually at Camp

46  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

Noé at approximately the same time as Schwesig was. These records provide a richer backdrop for understanding the social conditions and environments that Schwesig portrays in his artworks. Disease, food deprivation and methods of eating, religious identities, concerns about confinement or liberty, structure versus agency, male rape, the weather, natural environment, and disaster emerge as themes in Karl Schwesig’s artworks about Camp Saint-Cyprien. The social conditions that migrants experienced against the camp’s stunning natural landscape put the daily lives of internees in great relief. This chapter introduces Saint-Cyprien from its origins as a refugee camp established to accommodate Spanish Civil War refugees and Spanish Republican exiles, many of whom were amputees who eventually were recruited into France’s Groupement de travailleurs étrangers (G.T.E.), the French foreign work force, as forestry employees, agricultural laborers, and miners. Second, the chapter delineates the circumstances under which Karl Schwesig and the Jews of Belgium who arrived at Saint-Cyprien in mid-May 1940 lived until November or December 1940. Later, after Belgian Jews had arrived at SaintCyprien, German Jews were brought there, also. The natural challenges posed by Saint-Cyprien’s extraordinary physical environment—hot days and windy nights punctuated by the record-setting torrential rains during the third week of October and the floods—were formidable foes. In the wake of historic rains and floods in French Catalonia, detainees were evacuated to Camp Gurs in Pau (or other regional camps) beginning in early November, just prior to the Camp SaintCyprien’s closure. Internees’ cognitive labor is contrasted with the actual physiological conditions at Saint-Cyprien and the impact of these conditions on interned populations. Internees’ pragmatic daily needs for food, clothing, shoes, toilet paper, and medications are addressed. The immense contributions by rescue organizations that sought to ease the burden of those interned at Saint-Cyprien counterbalance the nearly unfathomable need at the camp. Varian Fry’s Emergence Rescue Committee assessed artists and gathered scientists for the purposes of emigration out of Europe. At Saint-Cyprien, some, like Karl Schwesig, harbored hopes for deliverance from France. Walter Benjamin, who was at Saint-Cyprien during the same time as Schwesig, was among the intellectuals selected to leave, but died en route. Schwesig had hoped to be chosen, but he was not.30 The chapter ends with a full discussion about male rape, as depicted in a scene that Schwesig painted at Saint-Cyprien.

Saint-Cyprien’s Origins In 1938, French civilian authorities, aided by military support, were charged with developing camps des circonstances31 for certain categories of Spanish refugees. In

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  47

May 1938, Saint-Cyprien, Canet, Argelès-sur-Mer and Mazemale were simultaneously birthed as a result of this directive.32 Saint-Cyprien’s physical contours and outlines of plans for creating the camp had a direct bearing on who was interned there, how they were segregated, and why. By May 15, 1940, additional plans discussed how the government would accommodate other migrant populations, including people deported from Belgium.33 These origins provide a context for understanding Camp Saint-Cyprien and an overview of events at the camp in the year before Schwesig’s arrival and life during the six months of his internment at the camp. Camp Saint-Cyprien was established on an approximately 300  m wide and 1,800  m long expanse of land located south of and adjacent to Canet Plage. Officials hailed the location as a place with “unlimited capacity” for refugees,34 according to a 1938 report. Physically, Saint-Cyprien was described as healthy, sandy terrain slightly above sea level, covered with a little sparse grass and that presented dull or flat sun with “no fear of floods.”35 The report also notes the availability of a 3 m or 4 m by 50 m source of drinkable underground water. The analysis that follows addresses this description particularly as it relates to claims of Saint-Cyprien’s invulnerability to flooding and the impact of the sun. Although the camp was fairly close to the Elne train station, one disadvantage of its location was its inaccessibility due to poor, barely passable paths.36 The underlying goal of these camps de circonstance was first and foremost to secure France’s interior order by regrouping certain types of refugees.37 The French Ministry of National Defense and War directive that resulted in the establishment of Camp Saint-Cyprien and the other camps along the Mediterranean Sea coast argues that the camps were necessary to deal effectively with increasing numbers of refugees who would cross the French border as a result of the escalating Spanish Civil War. The documentation makes the purpose of the camp clear and different than portrayals in a postwar description of Saint-Cyprien. The secret memorandum acknowledges concern that Spanish governmental armed forces would transverse the Spanish-French border with the intent to remain in France for prolonged periods of time. Therefore, the memo notes, such a situation “must be prevented from now on.”38 Clearly, the French government anticipated but did not welcome the rush of Spanish refugees. Official guidelines for the camps required that the designated land be enclosed with barbed wire prior to occupation. Officials noted that refugees would live initially in tents and later barracks would be built.39 By 10 May 1938, a request for sleeping bags with temporary lodging for two camps for 2,000 men in the Department was being made.40 According to Denis Peschanski, the Spanish exiles actually built the barracks at Camp Saint-Cyprien. He notes, “Other than the barbed wire, the internees were the first to erect the barracks’ basics. The camp of Saint-Cyprien was thus constructed for the Interior by the thousands of Spanish themselves, framed by the companies of miners from different regiments.”41 Peschanski alludes to a lack of

48  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

methodical, long-term thinking and decision-making about where camps would be located, how they would be built, and what types of structures would be erected.42 While officials were forced in some respects to act in response to events, even when possible, Peschanski implies that improvisation rather than deliberation about key issues related to building the camps seems to have prevailed.43 The two biggest challenges highlighted by planners were the establishment of kitchens and bathroom facilities. Although the guidelines acknowledge the need for available healthcare service and delousing, nothing more concrete was set forth than mentioning that military medical professionals would suffice until local civilian professionals could be established.44 The French government’s plan coordinated cordoning off Spanish refugees from the mainstream of French society. Even though the plans evolved, they still failed to consider the full range and variety of refugees who would come and the incumbent needs associated with the influx of so many thousands of people. For example, in addition to the Spanish Republicans and other exiles at Saint-Cyprien and camps throughout southern France, by February 1939, France was faced with German and Austrian members of the International Brigades who were also fleeing Franco’s Spain but were unable to return to their native countries because as antifascists they had been declared state enemies.45 Thereafter, Melanie Krob maintains, a second wave of refugees composed of Germanspeaking Communists from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria joined camps such as Saint-Cyprien. After September 1939 when France declared war on Germany, these people who had initially sought political asylum in France were then “herded into concentration camps” and deemed enemies of France.46 Two days after Schwesig’s arrest with Belgium’s Jewish populace and about two weeks before he and approximately 40,000 other people who were living in Belgium arrived in southern France, officials designated the camps at Saint-Cyprien, Argelès-sur-Mer and Barcarès as the main sites of internment, according to a telegram dated 12 May 1940.47 The zone at Saint-Martin des Londres had also been set aside for use if necessary.48 At this point, Saint-Cyprien was to be available “as a matter of urgency” “to accommodate the Belgian recruits,”49 according to a 15 May 1940, communiqué. On 21 October 1940, Camp Saint-Cyprien was declared a locale for indigent foreigners who did not have the means by which to live and who at the time, were not allowed to leave French territory.50

Saint-Cyprien 1939: First, a Camp for Spanish Republicans Most Spanish refugees who were interned at Saint-Cyprien had arrived there in 1939, about a year before the arrival of Karl Schwesig and exiled Jewish people. Generally, Schwesig’s war-period drawings and postwar prints include a great number of Spanish Republicans. This demographic in his work focuses on two

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  49

particularly interesting aspects: 1) the type of work provided by Spanish Republicans in southern France; and 2) that some of this work was done by disabled exiles who were amputees. With the Spanish Republicans, Jewish communities are Schwesig’s most frequent subjects. For all of the difficulties and pressures that the joint influx of refugees added in southern France by 1940, the Spanish Republicans and those who fought with them in Spain as a part of the International Brigade bolstered French labor capacity. For example, according to a December 28, 1939, statistical report on labor by Spanish refugees from Saint-Cyprien, 7,575 refugees worked in the Préfecture Pyrénées-Orientales. Of those, 536 workers were engaged in agriculture.51 This contribution was important both before France had signed the armistice with Germany and afterwards. Before the signing, manpower shortages would have increased severely due to the numbers of men engaged in war-related activities. Presumably, this labor shortage was felt even more acutely in agriculture because of the drastically increased populations in southern France and the concomitant need for food.52 Later, as Germans began exporting French agricultural products, pressures mounted further. Until the time that the Préfecture Pyrénées-Orientales’ camps were reorganized to accommodate the impending arrival of mostly Jewish refugees in midMay 1940,53 Camp Saint-Cyprien lodged 90,000 Spanish Republicans, according to a 1 March  1939 New York Times report.54 While The New York Times article highlights 10,000 Spanish Republicans who returned to Spain, it mentions also that as of 1 March  1939, “155,000 women, children and wounded men [had been] established in refugee centers in France.”55 Astonishingly, statistics cited in a 5 November  1939, Commissariat’s report reveal that the number of internees at Saint-Cyprien varied dramatically, ranging from as many as 84,569 in early October  1939 to 18,726 women and children at Saint-Cyprien as of 4 November  1939.56 Thus, even though both The Times and internal French reports document exiles returning to Spain and elsewhere, and despite the immigration of Spanish exiles to locales such as Mexico, China, and other countries, there was simultaneously a steady flow of refugees out of Spain into camps like Saint-Cyprien.57 Quoting Mr. Atrís-Gener, a Spanish Republican who went to Camp Prats-de Molló about 43 miles south of Camp Saint-Cyprien, Francie Cate-Arris depicts the arrival of refugees: We arrived at the concentration camp marching four abreast, watched over by guards who flanked our stumbling columns. It was, simply put, the embryo, the outline of a concentration camp, where there was a surplus of evil and a shortage of all goodness. The only thing they had set up was the barbedwire fence. . . . The only physical marker that denotes the place of a camp, the internee-authors all agree, is the ubiquitous barbed-wire fencing.58

50  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

Exile Juan Carrasco’s powerful caption to a photograph of the refugees arriving at the camp articulates the overwhelming surprise and depth of dismay refugees experienced: “Here the long trek ends, this is the endpoint that each of us was wondering about. It’s a harsh reality: a deserted beach!”59 For the new arrivals in places like Saint-Cyprien, these camps were more unformed and unfinished ideas than destinations.60 These Spanish internees had landed in a country with immense needs and very limited means. Understanding this dilemma helps explain the grave conditions that the French government confronted. These structural problems were widespread, from physiological needs of severely disabled peoples to fractured social units such as broken families. Arrivals from Spain were imprinted with war’s punishing effects. In response to the desperation and fear of separation of families, some Spanish women reportedly packed their infants into suitcases to avoid being denied entry into the camps at Argelès-sur-Mer and Saint-Cyprien,61 even though Camp Saint-Cyprien was billed as a family camp. In February and March 1939, as internees arrived at Camp Saint-Cyprien, they were forced to sleep “in hollows scraped in the ground without a shelter and with little food.”62 This “it was claimed resulted in internees with rheumatism, chest and other ailments.”63 By September  1939 French authorities had constructed wood huts, which were buildings without floors. These small changes with better nutrition improved health conditions among some Spanish exiles. However, the emotional devastation caused by war and exile weighed on the internees’ mental health.64 To combat this desperation, a large number of intellectuals, engineers, doctors, teachers, and other professionals who were in Camp Saint-Cyprien united to open camp schools and to make other educational opportunities available.65 Likewise, aid organizations’ records of internees’ correspondence dated to 1939 provide a sense of these groups’ goodwill, but more importantly, the exiles’ aspirations and grit. The vast number of Spanish intellectuals and professionals at the camps taught “classes in every subject with technical knowledge all day” “to forget the despair and lift their comrades.”66 Another glimmer of the refugees’ enthusiasm to better their situation is evident in an exchange of letters between four Spanish teenagers aged 15–18 who lived at Argelès-sur-Mer, and Miss Mary Elmes, an aid worker.67 Elmes passed along the request from these boys for a French-Spanish dictionary. When inquiring about how to provide the dictionary, Elmes also asked for boxing gloves and a basketball for leisure at the boys’ school at Argelès-sur-Mer. To that letter Elmes attached a list of educational materials for the boys’ school at Canigou, Saint-Cyprien. Concerning these Saint-Cyprien boys Elmes wrote, “They worked with great enthusiasm and dedication at SaintCyprien and I believe that you will find them worthy of your benevolence.”68 As of 11 September 1939, the camp of Saint Cyprien had 400 students, all of whom “[had] also received sufficient exercise books, pencils, etc. for all their immediate needs, and an assortment of 280 textbooks and works of general literature.”69

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  51

Education was important to more people than the youths. There were attempts to teach a large segment of people. Educational opportunities were extended to workers, including hospital staff members at Saint-Cyprien and available for companies of workers.70 Separately, the Friends Delegation at Perpignan provided art materials for professional Spanish artists who were a part of “Groupe Beaux Arts” at SaintCyprien.71 Spanish painters in several camps including Camp Saint-Cyprien experienced a rapid growth in numbers during the spring and summer of 1939. At Saint-Cyprien, there was “a barrack gallery where works created in oils, watercolors, and drawings often represent the scenes of camp life.”72 From this perspective, one year later, Karl Schwesig’s artworks followed a rich tradition of artists cataloging daily events. Nevertheless, despite all of these attempts to normalize life at Saint-Cyprien, the originally bare, barbed-wire sandy enclosure where exiles slept, sometimes with borrowed, tattered French army blankets (and at other times not), proved anything but a hospitable environment.73 At Saint-Cyprien, refugees were segregated by dint of their political philosophy. This practice continued into the period when Schwesig joined the camp. Thus, the Ilôt spécial was reserved for those exiles who were deemed dangerous to France’s national interests and security. These internees included people classified as anarchists and political extremists, among others. A list of dissidents or suspicious Spanish detainees reveals that most who were deemed dangerous were labeled “militant Communists.” These were internees who were officers in Communist cells or propagandists. They were held in Camp Saint-Cyprien’s Center of Repression, or the Ilôt spécial. With them, other Spanish refugees who had been suspected of criminal wrongdoing or had committed infractions against camp rules such as corresponding with citizens of Moscow or possessing arms were all segregated from the larger population. By 8 February 1940, many of these indésirables were transported out of Saint-Cyprien to Camp Le Vernet.74 This brief summary of Camp Saint-Cyprien provides a view into the camp as it existed for Spanish exiles, before Karl Schwesig and Jewish refugees from Belgium entered it. Whereas the first part of this chapter outlines the origins of Saint-Cyprien, an official communication written by the US Embassy in France described Camp Saint-Cyprien in the autumn of 1940: This camp situated near the French-Spanish border today interns approximately 6,800 people. About 80  percent of them are Belgian and Dutch Jews, who were dispatched then detained at this camp after having received some French authorities’ reassurance that they did not have to fear detention. German Aryans were the remainder of the prisoners who belong to one of the two categories: political detainees or criminals. From the beginning, the internees were treated with brutality. Five to 600 persons were crammed together in the barracks, which could

52  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

conservatively receive 60. At night, the doors were locked and people were not permitted the right to leave. They did not have any sleeping material, thus, the prisoners slept on the ground on straw of slender thickness. The floor of the barracks is sand and in the first weeks of their internment, many persons contracted inflammations of the throat resulting from the dust of the sand. The lights are forbidden in the barracks, the internees were thus, deprived of the few poor means of distraction that they were allowed without it. There is not a hospital at Saint-Cyprien, and the sick must sleep on the ground on straw. Medicines are in absolutely negligible quantities, in such a way that the healing of sick people or suffering is left purely and simply to chance. The fountains are unusable, [they] are polluted. Dysentery is widespread in all of the camps.75 This description with the insights that internees provided are especially useful as they were written independently largely between June and November of 1940, close in time to the events. In most cases, these documents, whether reports to agencies or appeals for aid from detainees, represented individual appeals. Occasionally, letters mention several family members who were in the same predicament, and at least one letter was intended to represent the needs of the entire camp. It was on behalf of 5,000 detainees at Camp Saint-Cyprien who had been deported on 10 May 1940.76 In many cases, the letters were written to draw attention to extraordinarily difficult physiological conditions and the immense suffering at Saint-Cyprien. Many other letters solicited help from aid organizations. Reports filed by officials at non-profit organizations were for the purpose of assessing conditions at Saint-Cyprien, developing plans to mobilize resources, and contriving systems to deliver much-needed aid to the impoverished detainees who had been stripped of all of their assets en route to Camp Saint-Cyprien. The fact that many of these letters emerge from people who shared a similar path of persecution77 with each other and with Karl Schwesig bears reiteration, as does the fact that these autonomously derived privately written letters and reports from the French government and aid agencies provide triangulation and reveal concordance with Schwesig’s artworks. To put into perspective the quantity of letters, reports, and artworks about conditions at Saint-Cyprien, qualitative sociologists agree that an adequate sample size exists when the researcher begins seeing repetition in responses to questions posed.78 In other words, they posit that queries should be asked until the answers begin to be repeated.79 Here, the unsolicited letters, survivor testimonies, and reports have reached saturation when a large number of similar responses to an issue about SaintCyprien emerge. In this context, a condition known as saturation is sufficient to confirm the validity of Karl Schwesig’s artworks. Religious identification, health, sickness, vermin infestations, death, food and starvation, poverty, and

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  53

weather conditions all emerge from my examination of Karl Schwesig’s artworks. Significantly, archival data shows that internees, aid providers, and government officials alike raised the very same issues. In the following section I  utilize these letters and reports with Karl Schwesig’s artworks to explore Camp Saint-Cyprien.

Jewish and Political Refugees After the Evacuation On 10 May 1940, with the German invasion, Belgian authorities began rounding up and arresting Jewish citizens,80 migrants, and immigrants from Germany and other “enemy states,” many of whom were in Belgium seeking safety from the Third Reich. Not only orthodox Jews, but also Communists and Christians of Jewish ancestry, Mischlinge, were among them. I will return to the subject of Mischlinge later in this chapter and elsewhere.81 A very extensive account of the evacuation from Belgium delivers a blowby-blow description of some people’s arrest experience by Belgian authorities in Brussels on May 15, 1940, just five days after Karl Schwesig and the others had been arrested. Refugees who had been lodged at centers at Merxplas, Marneffe, and Marchin, among others, most located in the military zone in Belgium, were forced to flee with the assault of German aircraft.82 An AJDC report noted, regardless of socioeconomic status, all Jewish people were under varying forms of duress. Those who were in places that were being bombed fared even worse than the others.83 During the period of incarceration and transport from Belgium, detainees were warehoused “as if they were cargo.”84 Detainees were fed only sporadically and sparingly a soup-like substance or bread and dirty water, if at all.85 The days en route to Camp Saint-Cyprien were grueling. Internees were packed and locked in train wagons, 60 men per car. They were deprived of air and water. Since Belgian authorities had absconded with these men’s possessions even prior to their departure from Belgium in most cases, they had little more than the clothes on their backs86 when the men arrived at Saint-Cyprien. Saint-Cyprien also became home for some of the Jewish refugees who were on board the S.S. Saint-Louis. The ship had been turned back to Europe without allowing passengers to disembark in either Cuba or the US, thus setting awry the plans of Jewish refugees who were seeking to immigrate to North America.87 Some of those travelers had received asylum in Belgium and others in Holland or England. But after 10 May 1940, these former passengers were sent to France where the male members of families had been interned at Saint-Cyprien.88 By 31 July 1940, the Kochmann family, Alice (wife), and Hilda (daughter), with hundreds of other women and their children had reached Saint-Cyprien, but were without admittance to the camp.89

54  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

A 16 July 1940, report highlights the fate of children and focuses on Jewish boys aged 15–18 years old. It argued for keeping these boys in France where they could do agricultural labor.90 M. Goldschmid-Brodsky wrote: Do not abandon these children, I implore you! I know them well, they are kind and of good will to adapt to any life; 10 to 12, big boys 15 to 18 years old and are capable of cultivating the land and one could get for them perhaps, the permission to remain in France for this purpose. But it is necessary that someone take the thing in hand and allow me to suggest to you, that you send one of your delegates who could take care also, I hope two of our boys at Saint-Cyprien (Pyrénées-Orientales), Kurt Moser protégé of Mr. Heinemann et Berthold Elkan, protégé de Madame Bénédictus of Brussels (but where are these protectors?).91

Structure, Agency, and Institutional Lapses at Camp Saint-Cyprien The phrase “camp structure” implies social control and evokes questions about concomitant responsibility for events that occurred at Camp Saint-Cyprien. Agency is demonstrated by internees’ pushback against these social constraints. This is visible in several works created by Schwesig. Detainees’ reactions to the internment of thousands at Camp Saint-Cyprien in comparison to the responses by governments, which had institutions at their disposal, were extraordinarily different. Vichy’s and foreign governments’ reactions to conditions, when considered in tandem with the reactions of internees, the media, and aid organizations’ perspectives about events in southern France, yield a multivalent and nuanced understanding of the camp. This multidimensional perspective is useful when considering Karl Schwesig’s satirical artworks, which are introduced in the section that follows. Even though the first refugees evicted from Belgium and Germany arrived at Camp Saint-Cyprien as early as the fourth week of May 1940, the document governing Saint-Cyprien (and Argelès-sur-Mer) is dated 13 November  1940, about a month before the camp was being dissolved.92 Thus, it is unclear as to whether the 13 November  1940, document was a way to formalize what was already in practice at Camp Saint-Cyprien. However, it is clear that rules for camp behavior existed in earlier documentation.93 The degree of control implicit in the document and the reasons cited for the regulations reveal the camp as more prison-like94 than refuge. The rules describe anticipated communal behaviors among internees and regulate the detainees’ personal liberties as a stipulation for remaining in the camp.95 Article I of the regulations fixed hours for detainees to wake, eat, work, and go to bed. Nine additional Articles, spanning four doublespaced pages, governed every intimacy: when and for how long people washed, shaved, and got haircuts; which books, newspapers, and magazines they received;

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  55

the parties with whom they corresponded and what they could communicate; and who was permitted visitation rights. Violations of these regulations constituted grounds for sanction by the camp’s director.96

Privacy, Liberties, and Hygiene Through whatever sociological prism that might be employed to analyze the regulations established for Camp Saint-Cyprien, it can be said that the rules impose a structure, but the artwork and commentary by Karl Schwesig with the numerous letters written by Saint-Cyprien’s internees all represent agency in action—a pushback against not merely the rules, but also the systemic force that was responsible for the conditions that existed. Karl Schwesig’s drawing depicts detainees who are hurriedly attending to personal hygiene. The scene in Figure 2.1 educes the frenzy associated with time pressures, like those elucidated in Articles I–II of the camp regulations. The regulations allowed “internees a half an hour per day after awakening to be occupied with cleaning one’s body.”97 The ethos of chaos in

FIGURE 2.1 Untitled

(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

56  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

the drawing is conjured by the multitasking men who are helping each other to clean themselves. In the foreground, a rotund man haphazardly stands, suspenders unfastened, pants sagging with one shoe on, the other off as he assiduously scrubs his penis with a small brush (or gestures vulgarly). At the same time, with a toothbrush in his other hand, he brushes another man’s teeth. A third man wearing a yarmulke extends a short, makeshift hose from which he and the taller person in front of him dampen the larger man’s scant hair and scalp. To the right is a youth who seems to be falling but must continue the task of washing his hair. With right hand splashing water on his head, the young man’s left arm is hooked around the left leg of the tall man in boxers as if for stability. The absence of privacy and the difference between freedom and incarceration is apparent. Wittingly or not, the prominence of the large man cleaning his penis while brushing another man’s teeth as central figures in the work bespeaks Vichy’s intrusion into the detainees’ lives, stripping them of the most miniscule personal liberties and invading their intimate spaces.98 It appears Schwesig conveyed these intrusions deliberately given that this drawing is one of several satirical works that is centered on Vichy’s actions. Moreover, Schwesig continues this form of bold political expression at Camp Gurs, where he creates other, more pointed assessments of Vichy. At Gurs, he critiques Vichy by employing the French Revolution motto: “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” in drawings that depict the motto’s antithesis. Ironically, the political drawings mocking the Third Republic seemingly failed to represent the majority view in France at the time, as Robert O. Paxton argues.99 In a painfully humorous moment, Schwesig teaches that to portray a thought or idea or to convey accurate commentary about ongoing events, a drawing need not be literal. Schwesig created several caricatures that are lighter in tone, but are nevertheless revelatory about events at Camp Saint-Cyprien. Like the earlier hygiene-related drawing, the drawing in Figure 2.2 that features relaxation is also elaborated on by the corroborating history. Of the dozens of letters about life at Camp SaintCyprien, Max Heimann’s letter of September 18, 1940, exposed “the lamentable state of this camp”100 to the American Friends Service Committee.101 C. Bleuland Van Oort replied to Heimann’s letter on behalf of the AFSC and assured him that the Quakers would work with the French authorities to ameliorate camp conditions at Saint-Cyprien. Heimann listed among the major problems at the camp: food, diseases, rats, and infestations by parasites.102 Heimann introduced himself by stating the origins of his status: “I am ‘stateless’ because of my anti-Hitlerism and pacifism as a journalist and contributor to a few English offices.”103 Heimann writes, “Bath: the access to the beach is practically free from 8:30 a.m. to 9:15 a.m. . . . A person must leave the beach at the moment when the temperature begins to become pleasant! and from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. (at the latest). For the best hours, between 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (autumn!) the baths were prohibited.”104 Karl Schwesig’s drawing conveys the beach-time freedom that is indicative of the afternoon hours allowed internees that Max Heimann described. Figure 2.2 captures five men apparently at leisure. In the foreground of the drawing, at the

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  57

FIGURE 2.2 Untitled

(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

feet of an obviously malnourished man, his antithesis, a stout man stands, scratching his head. He appears to be daydreaming or lost in thought. A dragonfly flutters just above him. It hints at a moment of whimsy and lightness. The second man in the foreground lies prostrate with a makeshift pillow under his head. In the middle ground of the picture a man is bent over, as if to investigate something near the water’s edge. His rear facing the viewer reveals a thinness such that his bones appear nearly to pierce the skin of his buttocks. In the background, a man who is barely visible save his stomach and head floats in the water with eyes closed. To his right, a bearded man wades in the sea with his arms stretched out to either side. In the autumn, Max Heimann notes, the men were allowed in the water for longer hours, from 11:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. However, they were not allowed to bathe then, according to Heimann.105 In addition to Max Heimann’s letter, there is a photograph of Karl Schwesig creating an artwork on the beach at Saint-Cyprien. In the photograph there are three men in the distance; one is nude and the other two men are scantily clad. All three men seem to stand close to the sea. Similarly, Figure 2.4 shows five men exercising on the beach, their arms outstretched in unison as a sixth man holding a bucket stands in the foreground. It cannot be demonstrated with absolute certainty that Schwesig’s caricatures of nude men shown in Figures 2.2 and 2.4 are a part of what he was drawing in the photograph in Figure 2.3. Certainly, the photograph in Figure 2.3 shows both Schwesig drawing and nude men with outstretched arms in the distance. The combination of the photograph, the drawings, and Max Heimann’s letter validate that there were periods of leisure on the beach for the men interned at Camp Saint-Cyprien.

58  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

FIGURE 2.3  Photograph

of Karl Schwesig on the beach at Camp Saint-Cyprien,

1940

Diarrhea, Disease, and Death Apart from the issues of liberty and individual freedoms—that is, the lack of privacy for even the most intimate bodily care—hygiene and sanitation were matters of life and death at Camp Saint-Cyprien. Insufficient amounts of soap

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  59

FIGURE 2.4 Untitled

(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

and useable water supplies promoted uncleanliness. There were limited, if any, clean garments. Bedding, where it existed, was infested with fleas and other parasites.106 A letter writer describes these problems and their causes succinctly: “in fact, we have neither underwear nor soap, nor toilet paper, nor shoes and our same clothes are completely ruined.”107 These material deficits with a verminous environment created a perfect storm for sickness and disease to surface and spread among the detainees. Health conditions such as diarrhea might be considered mundane under other circumstances where soap and clean water, clean clothing, and shoes were readily available. Yet, at Camp Saint-Cyprien, diarrhea was sometimes emblematic of ruinous disease for internees. Typhus,108 tuberculosis, and malaria109 were more exotic and afflicted internees. Eventually, the camp was shuttered due to “deplorable sanitation” that increased the prevalence of illnesses, according to a Comité international de la Croix-rouge report.110 The Schwesig drawing in Figure 2.5 features two men, one seated at the long wooden latrines and the other man approaching them. The latrines are located directly behind unidentified buildings and a short distance from the infirmary. The man approaching the latrines is clad in a blanket. The combination of the latrines accompanied by this man wrapped in a blanket calls attention to a passage from a detainee’s 1940 letter to the American Joint Distribution Center. Indeed, the anonymous letter writer restates some of the same themes that Schwesig’s drawing highlights. The writer remarks, waxing poetic at one point: Sandstorms come especially during the day. Lasting three days and all week returning, so that only a person shrouded in a blanket can exit the barrack

60  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

FIGURE 2.5  Die Durchfall Krankheit (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

when a person must relieve him/herself. Sanitary facilities mock all description. One does not know toilet paper. Dysentery, diarrhea etc. because a person had drunk what s/he had received, the root of all kinds of inflammatory bowel diseases—illnesses of all types and deaths. Nowadays, water established the danger of Typhoid fever, but now also erupted vaccinations thanks to German doctors, nevertheless, mortality.111 The letter explains that detainees regularly wrapped themselves in blankets112 when it was necessary to brave the sandstorms at Camp Saint-Cyprien in order to use the latrines. The writer infers that contaminated water was the cause of intestinal illnesses. Because water was polluted and toilet paper nonexistent, sanitation was inconceivable. Thus, despite vaccines, the onslaught of disease and death was difficult to hold back. Another letter writer observed: “In this one finds a strongly deplorable disregard for the exigencies of basic hygiene, dilapidated barracks, unusable latrines.”113 Unfortunately, even when the camp leaders gained access to disinfectants and materials to remedy faulty structural issues, including the vast sanitation problems, the supplies were disproportionately small to the size of the problems.114 Living in these circumstances, it is not surprising that a number of detainees were quarantined due to illness.115

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  61

By revealing the proximity of the latrines to the barracks, Karl Schwesig’s drawing powerfully connects the health and hygiene matters (Figure 2.5). Describing internees who were transferred from Camp Saint-Cyprien to Camp Argelèssur-Mer in November 1940, the International Red Cross reports: “a certain number [with] typhoid fever. There were 200 cases of typhus coming mainly from Saint-Cyprien and a large number of tubercular patients.”116 Arié Leib Lewinnek, who was detained at Camp Saint-Cyprien, recalls: “At the camp there had been plenty of typhus and at certain times, I had that which is called “green diarrhea” and I recall that I spent a few days in the infirmary of Camp Saint-Cyprien. There I had high fevers and I remained a few days in the infirmary, there it left a little mark on me.”117 By calling attention to diarrhea, Karl Schwesig’s drawing initiates other important lines of inquiry about health at Camp Saint-Cyprien. The first set of questions is related to the infirmary pictured in the drawing. How was the infirmary staffed? Was it functional? How effective was it? What diagnostic equipment and medical supplies were available? Fortunately, a variety of historical documents shed light on some of these matters, at least partly. Among internees at Camp Saint-Cyprien were several highly qualified physicians.118 While infirmaries officially fell under the auspices of the Ministry of Public Health, their effectiveness was undoubtedly hindered by the paucity of medical supplies. Nevertheless, these physicians’ work was not daunted entirely by it.119 Suspecting typhus among patients at Camp Saint-Cyprien, Dr. Richard Baer crawled under the barbedwire fence and made his way to a facility where blood was tested to confirm the typhus diagnosis.120 As a result, Dr. Baer limited the outbreak of typhus at Camp Saint-Cyprien. After World War II, the Portuguese Red Cross awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal for his work.121 In addition to Dr. Baer,122 there were at least two other physicians working to ameliorate health conditions for detainees at Camp Saint-Cyprien—Drs. Heinrich Mayer and Richard Reich. Dr. Heinrich Meyer was “doctor-in-chief of the Central Hospital at the Camp of St. Cyprien (P.O) until transferred to Gurs, the infirmary of Ilot J and [he was] doctor of a section of Ilots.”123 Dr. Richard Reich, who was arrested in Belgium on the same day as Karl Schwesig, “acted subsequent to June  14th until November  1st [1940] as surgeon to the Central Hospital of the Camp of St. Cyprien and since November 1st doctor-in-chief of Ilot J of the Camp of Gurs.”124 The physicians who staffed the infirmary were obviously extraordinary, but they were faced with severe limits. As of October 1940, laboratory equipment that aid organizations had ordered was operational at the infirmary, although the full order of equipment for the lab had not been received.125 Extra medical supplies beyond what the Prefecture provided had been delivered to Saint-Cyprien126 and a portion of the costs of medications was defrayed through aid organizations, but there remained considerable need, especially after the 10 May  1940

62  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

influx of detainees.127 One report discloses the medical deficiencies at Camp Saint-Cyprien: These people suffered many vermin. Because of the intestinal illnesses, which already were introduced frequently, the insufficient medications was felt to be a nuisance; the doctors of the camp recommended prophylaxis by vaccine. There also would be some bandages as well as disinfectant and some soap. At the present time, it is impossible for us to replace glasses or glasses in glasses cases. It was necessary also that we be able in cases of emergency to procure some hernia bandages. At this moment, fault with necessary instruments [made it] impossible for us to come to the aid of the internees, who are suffering toothaches.128 Given the vast health challenges caused by vermin, physicians suggested the administration of prophylactic vaccinations to protect detainees against typhoid fever. However, insufficient medication complicated that fact. Seemingly simple tasks such as replacing an eyeglass lens or a pair of glasses was exceedingly difficult. Acquiring hernia belts, medical instruments, and relief for detainees afflicted by dental problems were all uncommonly difficult. Therefore, even with very highly skilled physicians, the infirmary at Camp Saint-Cyprien faced severe limits on what it could do.129 Numerous aid organizations provided for refugees. Although the monthly reports cited are authored by the American Friends Service Committee, they credit a comprehensive list of contributing agencies including: the American Joint Distribution Committee, the American Red Cross, the Belgian Red Cross, Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés, and the Polish Red Cross, among others. In addition to medications, agencies donated food and milk supplements for severely ill refugees, particularly in the last half of 1940. Examples describe “a gift sent to Saint-Cyprien from the American Joint Distribution Committee and was for the sick Jewish refugees hospitalized in Perpignan.” Also, aid agencies collected and distributed clothing when it was available. Within the context of medical care, it is useful to view clothing as a vehicle for improved health given the vast problems with parasites. In this section under the broad rubric of structure and agency, I have discussed the Camp Saint-Cyprien’s regulations and juxtaposed these against questions of privacy, liberty, and intimacy; and I  set the problems related to health, hygiene and medical need at Saint-Cyprien against the inadequacies at an overcrowded camp. Ultimately, just as detainees exercised on the beach to promote their own well-being, physician-detainees used scant resources to push back against grave institutional shortcomings. In the next part of this section, I introduce three Karl Schwesig works that bring to the fore challenges associated with living in the “tumbledown barracks” that were devoid of windows and without floors, but located in a region of France renowned for its high temperatures and excessive flooding.

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  63

Weathering Camp Saint-Cyprien The drawing in Figure 2.6 features three men. Two are apparently shoveling waste into trash pits. They are dressed in radically different ways. One man is wearing a dark suit and hat while the other is casually sporting a pair of shorts and an undershirt. A third man dressed in shorts stands in the distance with his back to viewers. His posture infers the need for privacy. The man in the suit introduces Camp Saint-Cyprien’s Hasidic Jewish population. The drawing raises important questions about: 1) the camp’s demography and its subcultures; 2) the camp’s structure and labor; 3) Camp Saint-Cyprien’s natural physiological environments; and 4) detainees’ preparedness to cope with these environmental factors. At this juncture, I turn to the matter of camp labor and the region’s weather.130 According to data from Camp Saint-Cyprien, there were several working teams that were either a part of the Groupements de travailleurs étrangers (G.T.E., “Group of Foreign Workers”) or Compagniers de travailleurs (C.T., “Company of Workers”). The French government formed the G.T.E. and contracted with men to work in mining, foresting, and agriculture. The workingmen shown in Figure  2.6 were not a part of a G.T.E., although several G.T.E. companies were associated with Camp Saint-Cyprien.131 Instead, these three men formed one of the cleanup squads composed of refugees. These squads were established under the network of loosely constructed leadership that supplemented the French camp administration to govern refugees. According to an AJDC report, “refugees [were] employed in the kitchen, the canteen, the infirmary, and in the cleanup squads.”132 Workers of this kind demonstrate one of the ways that refugees

FIGURE 2.6 Untitled

(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

64  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

organized and took some control of an uncertain fate. Their work was especially important at Camp Saint-Cyprien in view of what was described as “French carelessness and administrative inability.”133 As such, the organization and interaction with French administrators represents an interesting element of Camp SaintCyprien’s governance and therefore, its social structure. Another but vastly different aspect of the drawing in Figure 2.6 causes consideration of the impact on internees of extremely high temperatures in southern France during the spring, summer, and autumn of 1940. In Figure  2.6, as in almost all of Karl Schwesig’s Saint-Cyprien artworks, the majority of the men are either entirely naked or sparsely dressed,134 with the exception of the men who were Orthodox Jews as seen in Figure 2.6. The excessive heat in the region encouraged minimal clothing. An AJDC report notes: “The refugees walk about entirely nude, or wearing only shorts, from morning to night. On the other hand, they shiver at night for it is very cool.”135 A letter from one of Camp SaintCyprien’s internees remarks, “By day it is oppressively hot, the nights damp, cold. On one side the Pyrenees on the other side the Mediterranean Sea. . . . Water [is] undrinkable.”136 From 1925 to 1940, the average monthly high temperatures from May to October ranged from 88.7°F to 101.7°F. In June and July, the high temperatures of 96.3°F and 97.3°F were only moderately less than the August and September highs of 98.2°F and 101.7°F.137 Arié Lieb Lewinnek, a survivor of Camp Saint-Cyprien, described the sun as “burning.” In a 2001 interview, Lewinnek mentioned that having lived at Camp Saint-Cyprien in such grueling heat still provokes tremendous angst in him.138 William Fischer, another Saint-Cyprien survivor, acknowledges the nudity at the camp, but offered another explanation for it. He said, “We were sleeping on the sand and running around half-naked, I mean because you had nothing.”139 Fischer’s comments point to another serious problem suffered by detainees at Camp Saint-Cyprien that may account in part for refugees’ nudity or partial dress—a clothing shortage.140 The survivors’ testimonies about the blistering heat and the AJDC report all signal excessive temperatures. Other materials, including the photograph of Karl Schwesig painting with nude and half-clad men frolicking in the background, seem to tell a similar story. Detainees confronted a two-edged sword in the spring, summer, and autumn characterized by unbearably hot days and chilly nights. The mean minimum temperatures from 1925 to 1940 ranged between 41.5°F in May to 34.2°F in October with the warmest lows of 52°F occurring in July and August. One detainee wrote, “We find ourselves in the wood barracks exposed to the rain and the cold [we] are in a state of exhaustion.”141 Here again, the concern about temperature elicits a related problem by the letter writer, namely, the state of housing. The barracks did not provide refuge from the excessive heat, cold, or precipitation. An AJDC report describes the barracks as: planks, poorly jointed, covered with corrugated iron and without boards underneath. Several narrow windows, placed near the roofs, are clearly

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  65

insufficient to ventilate a barrack where 80 people sleep, at 25 cm. space one from the other, in two rows a meter apart, on straw which is placed directly on the sand. No furniture whatsoever, just a few boxes in the barracks. During the summer the heat on this beach, situated between the mountains, and completely exposed to the sun from dawn to dusk, is unsupportable. In order to hide from the scorching rays of the sun, there are only the overheated barracks where one suffocates on entering.142 Weather and the natural environment at Camp Saint-Cyprien also presented challenges during the autumn and winter “when sandstorms [made] life in the camp impossible.”143 Between 2 September and 22 October  1940, Karl Schwesig created three other artworks from which weather-related data can be extracted. Within this 40-day period, those inhabiting Camp Saint-Cyprian experienced a dramatic weather shift that culminated in a cataclysmic natural disaster, echoing the equally tumultuous human epic144 that was already unfolding in the camp. As a result, these works open for consideration another layer of complexity to the problems already faced by newly occupied France, the Vichy government, and the internees. A  candid September  1940 memorandum written by Howard Kerschner, Director of AFSC work in France, describes Camp Saint-Cyprien: The generous French people continue to share blankets, bedding and medical supplies to these uninvited refugees: another testimony to the great kindness of the French. Our services for men will continue through the month of September as heretofore indicated. But beginning October 1st we must discontinue them and confine ourselves to food and clothing for women and children. There is still some slight possibility that an exception might be made in favour of mutilated, ill and old men, but I am not very hopeful. Restrictions concerning the transfer of money from America are becoming more strict all the while. Public sentiment makes it more and more difficult to obtain funds. With great regret I must therefore say that we are faced with the necessity of gradually reducing our work.145 Cataclysmic flooding, the natural disaster that paralyzed Catalonia in midOctober, left regions of France and Spain imperiled for several years. One week before the disaster struck, a letter written by Mary Elmes, an AFSC worker, on October  9, 1940, outlines the gravity of internees’ position at Camp SaintCyprien. Elmes notes that two blankets per detainee were distributed with plates and spoons to replace the tin cans out of which they had been eating, and that the third of three anti-typhoid injections had been given to the men at Camp Saint-Cyprien. While the typhoid epidemic had been stemmed, Elmes mentions also the deficit of medications and dressings, and the pervasiveness of infected, open sores due to fleabites.146 Elmes notes also arrangements to build rudimentary

66  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

beds that would give internees a place other than the ground to sleep and to thoroughly disinfect barracks in an attempt to stem “the plague of vermin.”147 Little is written about precisely what occurred at Camp Saint-Cyprien during the floods, but copious data shed light on the broader event and its aftermath. Documents and newspaper articles about neighboring locales such as Canet Plage, which abutted Saint-Cyprien; Elne, located 8 km (4.97 miles) from SaintCyprien; and Argelès-sur-Mer are key.148 The Schwesig seascape in Figure 2.7 captures the quietude of the beach in late September 1940, but Figure 2.8 illustrates the aftermath of the floods visible on Saint-Cyprien’s debris-ridden beach and reported in contemporaneous newspaper coverage. The flood was caused by extensive, heavy Mediterranean rains centered on the snow-capped Canigou Mountains. The rains dumped nearly 2,000 mm (78.7 inches) of water on Catalonia between 16 October and 20 October. In the southern-most region of the Canigou Mountain range, floodwaters were so powerful that they swept away riverbeds, demolished riverbanks, and upended tree trunks.149 It is unclear whether Camp Saint-Cyprien or any of the camps Barcarés, Canet Plage, Le Vernet, Argelès-sur-Mer or Rivesaltes, were evacuated prior to the natural disaster, which claimed more than 300 lives in Catalonia, including 50 people in France. However, scholars note, “the plain of

FIGURE 2.7 Untitled

(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  67

FIGURE 2.8 Untitled

(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

Argelès-sur-Mer, [which is 11.77 km or 7.31 miles from Saint-Cyprien] was drowned under a meter of water.”150 Furthermore, newspaper accounts mention that internees at Camp Argelès-sur-Mer, with its large population of amputees, self-evacuated in the middle of the night amidst the torrential rains and flooding.151 Ironically, despite the region’s history of flooding, the French government in 1938 had declared the readiness of the terrain where Camp Canet Plage, Camp Saint-Cyprien, and Camp Argelès-sur-Mer were established. These three reports repeat verbatim the land description: “[this] land which is a little above sea-level, is sound and there is no fear of floods.”152 Unfortunately, the absence of a “fear of flooding” resulted in arguably foreseeable devastation for the refugees who were detained in these places during October and November 1940.153 The confluence of weather conditions rendered French Catalonia isolated and distressed. Railroad tracks, bridges, and all telecommunications were rendered inoperable. “In total, thousands of hectares of agricultural land were either swept away, hollowed out or covered under thick layers of sediments.”154 Village residents in Latour-bas-Elne, which included Saint-Cyprien, lost electricity. On the Saint-Cyprien side, three bodies—two men and a woman—were discovered across from a restaurant, according to one newspaper report.155 Newspapers recounted the terror of residents who sat anxiously in water-soaked homes night

68  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

after night awaiting food, drink, and medical aid.156 Given the other severe conditions, it seems very likely that the dirt road from Elne to Camp Saint-Cyprien was washed away or at best, impassable, leaving refugees at Camp Saint-Cyprien a degree further from assistance than even their neighbors in nearby towns and villages.157 Astonishingly, none of the news reports at my disposal158 even mention Jewish refugee populations, whereas several describe Spanish refugees and their experiences.159 One pre-flood assessment less than a month before the floods describes Camp Saint-Cyprien: “I was able to realize that, no matter what changes might be undertaken regarding the organization of the camp, one could never make it habitable”160 (emphasis mine). Considering the pre-flood assessment of Camp Saint-Cyprien with the degree of flood damage on the natural environment, the infrastructure, and the loss of lives, homes, and farms, it is difficult to imagine that the internees’ barracks, described elsewhere as “tumbledown” buildings with sand floors survived with much if any integrity. Analytically, then, all of Karl Schwesig drawings and paintings, even seascapes and landscapes, convey either internal or external narratives and sometimes both. The internal narrative of Figure 2.6 provides data about the nature of Vichy and copious information about Camp Saint-Cyprien. Specifically, it reveals information about the nature of labor at the camp. Elements as mundane as the style of clothing that the three men are wearing contributes information about the religious composition of the camp, the nature of labor performed by internees, the organizational structure that deployed these small crews of refugee workers, and the impact of weather on internees, especially within the context of the larger body of data about the camp and its conditions. Furthermore, elements of the drawing elicit data about the organization of the camp and labor. They impart information about the social structure and thus, are a part of the external narrative about Camp Saint-Cyprien. Proofs of the empirical validity of these two narratives are implicit in the historical data. The point is that whether the artist’s intent is known or unknown, specific historically valid meaning can emerge from the artworks and is knowable. Here the internal narrative leads to an understanding of the effects of weather on internees and the external narrative demonstrates that detainees’ labor as part of a kind of self-governance at the camp. In the next section, focus shifts to religious identity at Camp Saint-Cyprien. If Jewish detainees like Rabbi Leo Ansbacher and Dr. Heinrich Mayer, who were involved with self-organized governance at Camp Saint-Cyprien, functioned remotely similarly to the ways that they did at Camp Gurs, then there is sufficient cause to think religious identity played an integral role in the social structure of Camp Saint-Cyprien. In any case, sociologists would argue that religion supplied a system of coherent values that connected individuals to a community, and therefore, provided a sense of hope.

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  69

Religious Identity and Food at Camp Saint-Cyprien Sociologist of religion George Lundskow argues that “religion . . . is crucial for the long-term survival of any community, because it not only justifies the particular values and lifestyle of a community, but reinforces purpose and meaning, and thus connects the present with the past and future.”161 Lundskow also maintains that religion functions to answer questions about the human condition, issues motivated by theodicy or the existential conundrum.162 Karl Schwesig’s drawing, “Jewish Bones, God’s Dismal,” in Figure 2.9 directly challenges the notion of a benevolent God by focusing on the starving but nonetheless devout worshippers from Camp Saint-Cyprien’s Orthodox Jewish community. But Saint-Cyprien was not comprised exclusively of Orthodox Jews. Letters written by Maximillan Jacobsohn, George Behrens, and others with William Fischer’s postwar testimony give a nuanced understanding of the diversity that existed within the Jewish population and in the larger religious community at Camp Saint-Cyprien. Within the Jewish community, some were Orthodox Jews, as shown in the Schwesig drawing. Still others were designated as Jewish by laws passed by the Third Reich and Vichy, despite the fact that these people of Jewish ancestry self-identified as

FIGURE 2.9  Juden

Israel)

Beins Gottes dismal (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee,

70  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

either Protestants or Catholics. All of these people constituted parts of the religious community at Camp Saint-Cyprien. In the background of the Schwesig drawing in Figure 2.9 stands a barbed wire enclosure and an armed guard. Orthodox Jewish men who are at morning prayers populate the foreground. All of the men are bearded and have the traditional side curls. Many are regaled in their dark suits and hats or yarmulkes, tallits (prayer shawls) with tzitziots (fringes)—the garment worn usually at weekday morning prayers. Some of the men in Schwesig’s depiction also wear tefillin (a small black box containing four biblical verses from the Torah) affixed on their foreheads163 and have prayer books in their hands. Corroboration of an Orthodox community at Saint-Cyprien comes from Rabbi Ansbacher, who arrived from Brussels at Saint-Cyprien without his wife and family on 10 May 1940.164 An “orthodox rabbi of the refugee congregation and of Belgium orthodox Jews”165 and rabbi of Saint-Cyprien, Rabbi Ansbacher argued for an opportunity to live simply, as did his ancestors, but notes obstructions to doing this at Saint-Cyprien. He remarks, “though we can work in this camp, we cannot do it on religious and social lines as we have been used to.”166 Problems such as non-kosher food proved a hindrance to orthodoxy. William Fischer mentions devout Jews refused meat on the infrequent occasions when it was available.167 Ideas of religious observance, orthodoxy, and food emerge elsewhere in historical documents that corroborate Schwesig’s drawing. The author of a 16 September  1940, letter portrays arriving at the way station, Le Wigrant, between Brussels and Saint-Cyprien. The letter writer remarks: “We received the first drinking water on the following morning and the first piece of bread on the Saturday morning. One calls that humanity! Some who had not observed last Yom Kippur (a whole fast day) made up for it.”168 This informs us first about the dearth of food supplied to the men on their journey to Saint-Cyprien, but the sentence also tells us that among the deportees not all were religiously devout. After all, fasting for Yom Kippur, a high holy day, is expected and an act that the religiously devout would not neglect. Even amidst what many detainees describe as “the nearly insurmountable” circumstances en route to and indeed, at Camp Saint-Cyprien, wry humor prevailed for some. There are several other very significant aspects of religious identity at Camp Saint-Cyprien that merit consideration. While Schwesig’s artworks from this camp do not include the group who Germans called the Mischlinge (“a mixedrace person”),169 his larger body of artworks from the French camps does.170 Based on these and the cross-section of people who were detained simultaneously with Schwesig at Camp Saint-Cyprien, Gurs and Noé, I  wondered if the artworks from Noé were indicative of a Mischlinge at Camp Saint-Cyprien. Sufficient primary documentation171 reveals that a Mischlinge community did in fact live there during Schwesig’s tenure. The Mischlinge were interned ostensibly because they had Jewish descendants or were by some other connection with Jewishness deemed “corrupt.”172

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  71

Alfred Revi’s letter articulates an aspect of the problems experienced by Saint Cyprien’s Mischlinge. He writes, “I have been brought as Civil Internee to the Camp St. Cyprien, now by change of political circumstances I am considered as ‘not wanted’ by the local authorities.”173 Revi’s remarks exemplify racism’s effect on the Mischlinge. Having used the term racism to describe the way Revi and other Mischlinge were treated, the term and its relationship to the concepts, anti-Judaism and antisemitism require further clarification. The problems French Jewish and foreign Jewish persons, including Mischlinge, encountered as a religious social group varied to some extent, but this collection of concerns returns us to the question that opened this chapter, that is, how Jewish and half-Jewish persons were racialized in France (and throughout Europe) during World War II and earlier. Ascertaining what French people thought is difficult. Nevertheless, the statutes discussed earlier demonstrate, at a minimum, Essed and Goldberg’s definition of racism: “a way of thinking about racial and ethnic difference that justifies and preserves the social, economic and political interests of the [dominant] group.”174 I use the terms antisemitism and racism interchangeably because I view antisemitism as a form of racism. Until fairly recently, many scholars have distinguished anti-Jewishness from racism and antisemitism.175 Early treatment of Jews by the Jesus movement is appropriately called antiJudaism or anti-Jewishness; it characterizes prejudice and treatment of Jews until roughly the 4th century. The centuries-old prejudices supported by institutional and structural power transformed anti-Jewish sentiment into racism and its effects were felt in laws passed to limit Jews’ civil rights and to diminish their economic and social statuses.176 Marrus and Paxton point out that French antisemitism was a part of the Western tradition that “no Christian people had been exempt from.”177 Describing the legacy of French antisemitism, Marrus and Paxton assert, had not every churchgoer for a millennium heard the priest on Good Friday denounce ‘the perfidious Jews’ who ‘wanted to have the Lord Jesus Christ killed?’ Traditional society, grounded in orders and corporations, had considered the Jews as forever alien from Christian tradition that they rejected.178 In France, “Jews were tolerated,” Marrus and Paxton claim, so long as they “fulfilled certain prescribed roles.”179 In fact, even following the French Revolution when Jews by statutes in 1790 and 1791 had received full civil rights, Marrus and Paxton note rightly: statutory interventions seldom transform with ease centuries-old patterns of thought and action. Old ways die hard. Throughout Europe the nineteenthcentury advance of Jewish emancipation went together with new, secular justifications for old habits of exclusion. Along with civic rights were found secular, modern reasons to deny them. Where once the Jews had been

72  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

made pariahs because of their religion, they could now be singled out of a supposed Jewish character—itself ascribed variously to race, upbringing, or education.180 Modern Christianity formed mechanisms to circumscribe anyone remotely related to Judaism, including the Mischlinge and those in interethnic marriages, etc., despite the weight and force of doctrinal change implied by such assertions.181 Even baptism could not remove the dross attributed to Jews.182 While the Spanish Blood Purity Laws diminished and excluded converted Jews from serving in positions within the Church hierarchy, laws contemporaneous with the Third Reich, whether in France or Germany, resulted in the internment and death for people with Jewish ancestry.183 Although Heschel’s study focuses on Protestant antisemitism, John Connelly and other scholars demonstrate “Catholic racism” against Jews during the period of the Third Reich.184 Ironically, the Mischlinge experience at Camp Saint-Cyprien (and elsewhere) was similar to the racism exhibited by the 16th-century Spanish Pure Blood Laws when Jews who had converted to Christianity and had been baptized were ostracized as inauthentic Christians. Now converted Jews were considered threats to German purity.185 Heschel highlights literally and figuratively the problems miscegenation posed: “Within Christian theology, supersessionism provided the model for Judaism’s infiltration and the cultural dangers of religious ‘mixed breeding.’ ”186 To take Heschel’s argument a step further, negating peoples’ chosen religious identity, and subjecting them to the chaos of forcible evacuation and internment with a possible consequence of death is a form of authoritarian racism. Authoritarian racism underscores an underlying religious or ethnic element while also reckoning with the racialization of Jewishness spawned and maintained by nationalisms.187 In addition to the 5,000 Jewish men deported from Belgium to Camp Saint-Cyprien, this iteration of racism affected 120 Protestants who were classified as non-Aryans and 150 Catholics, some of whom were also non-Aryans, according to letters from Saint-Cyprien.188 Some in the Mischlinge community at Camp Saint-Cyprien viewed their plight as an artifact of racism. The Helling brothers—Karl, Ernst, and Kurt—found themselves interned at Camp Saint-Cyprien. In a September 6, 1940, letter they write: “We are three brothers, Protestants, half-Aryans who because of the racist German laws voluntarily left . . . in order to immigrate to the United States.”189 The Hellings connect the cause of their internment unequivocally to being Mischlinge and to “racist German laws.” But if German laws caused them to leave Germany, French statutes were the cause of their internment at Camp Saint-Cyprien. Coming from a mixed heritage or being deemed Mischlinge sometimes had serious repercussions within camp structures. It meant that refugees and their families were without identifiable and willing communities of support and these were necessary to navigate everything from obtaining daily food and clothing to obtaining more complex assistance such as intervention for funding or for release

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  73

from the camp. On 18 December 1940, Maximilian Jacobsohn summarized the dilemma of the moitié aryen (“half-Aryan”) shortly after departing Camp SaintCyprien for Camp Gurs: I have not been able to obtain the help of Jewish aid organizations because I am Catholic, on the other hand, I had not been authorized to return to Belgium because I am only half-Aryan. Thus, I remain [in a dilemma] like the Jews but I do not receive the subsidies from their organizations.190 (emphasis mine) Jacobsohn is at once neither sufficiently Christian nor deemed Jewish. Paul Weiss was in a related but different situation. His circumstances are delineated in a letter penned just after Camp Saint-Cyprien closed. The letter “[concerned] people in Camp St. Cyprien, presumably now in Gurs.”191 A. Burns Chaimers of the AFSC wrote the following to a colleague: I wish also to turn over to you the case of Mr. Paul Weiss who is an “Interné civil P.W.” at the Camp Gurs. He is old and ill. His wife is in Belgium and is a [P]rotestant. Her husband being a [J]ew, she addressed herself to the Israélite Consistors de Marseille, but they said they could not do anything for him because he had married a Christian. So I wish you could talk to this poor man and see if something can be done for him. I think there is a Jewish Center near the Camp. You might also talk for him to the [P]rotestant Workers who live in the camp.192 Jacobsohn and Weiss occupied similar but distinctive places in this liminal space at Camp Saint-Cyprien. Jacobsohn was prevented from returning home to Belgium “because [he] was only a half-Aryan” and yet, he could not receive aid as a detainee from Jewish aid organizations.193 Weiss, who was Jewish but in a mixed marriage, was not recognized as Jewish by at least one Jewish organization, according to A. Burns Chaimers.194 Although there was an interfaith league assisting refugees at Camp SaintCyprien, based on Jacobsohn’s and Weiss’s experiences, being mixed-race person ostensibly mattered to some of the organizations engaged in this work. A third example is provided by one of George Behrens’s letters. Behrens, a member of the Protestant Committee at Camp Saint-Cyprien, wrote a series of letters requesting help on behalf of the Protestant community there. Behrens implies that religious aid organizations were providing immigration and other assistance to constituencies based on religious identity. He claimed the American Joint Distribution Committee was helping Jews, another group Catholics, therefore Behrens wrote to the American Friends Service Community requesting financial assistance for Saint-Cyprien’s poorest Protestants.195 According to Behrens, some Protestants were so impoverished that they could not afford food beyond the small portions

74  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

provided.196 In reply, the Quakers promised they would send food parcels when practicable in lieu of money that he had requested.197 Not only religion, but political affiliation was a part of the calculus concerning who could receive aid from some aid groups.

Foodstuffs and Cans Reports about conditions at Camp Saint-Cyprien and dozens of letters written by internees from the camp have food or hunger as a major theme. One report dated 17 September 1940, notes the following about food supplies: A considerable food shortage made itself immediately felt, as all foodstuffs and raw materials are being shifted to the occupied territory and to Germany. Only recently, 14 wagons carrying foodstuffs, etc., were sent off from Lyon alone, Germany bound. The purchase of almost all food requires ration cards. The following examples may illustrate the food situation: one person may buy as little as 100 gr. rice, 250 gr. noodles, one pound of sugar, and 125 gr. Soap, per month. Milk, butter and eggs are almost unavailable, and the same refers to coffee.”198 As meager as provisions were for French citizens, detainees, especially foreign refugees, had so much less. Legal measures in France that required the review of all citizenships granted after May 1927,199 and with the Statut des juifs passed in October 1940 and June 1941 respectively, increased pressure on the non-French Jewish internees.200 Karl Schwesig’s drawing of an emaciated immigrant in Figure 2.10 attests to the letters and reports describing nutritional deprivation and starvation. As of 30 September 1940, Vichy spent about 75,000,000 francs per day on refugees. However, the distribution of these funds was uneven and chaotic interdepartmentally. The 75,000,000 francs201 provided approximately 12 francs (24 cents) per adult and six to eight francs per child (12–16 cents).202 An official communication by the United States government about the upkeep of internment camps in France notes: “The French government spends an average of 10 francs (around 20 cents) per day and per internee. Food in the camps is uniformly insufficient.”203 On 20 October 1940, within days of this report detailing Vichy’s expenditures on refugee relief, the French government implemented a system of rationing.204 By 31 December1940, Title II of the policy required that foreign Jewish males who were between the ages 18 and 55 be prioritized for incorporation into the company of foreign workers or receive aid from charitable organizations.205 Food is broached in a way that focuses on more than the difficult problem of its paucity at Camp Saint-Cyprien. The Schwesig drawing in Figure 2.11 summons

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FIGURE 2.10  Émigrant

du Mer (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

FIGURE 2.11 Untitled

(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

76  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

attention to the quantity of food, how detainees ate, and the makeshift utensils internees were forced to employ. This drawing also shows three men all holding cans. An AFSC report explains: The great part of internees has neither plate nor cup, nor spoon or fork. Moreover, the lack of a kitchen for the recipients food is distributed in the old cans saved, many internees eating from the same can and one spoon must be used by two persons. The same tin can must be used for drinks. It was urgent to remedy this state of things.206 The report explicates precisely why the three in Schwesig’s drawing have cans. It notes that most of Camp Saint-Cyprien’s detainees did not have a plate, cup, spoon, or fork. Moreover, food was distributed in old cans. Most internees ate from the same can, two people using one spoon. These same cans then doubled as cups. William Fischer’s survivor testimony confirms the drawing, photograph, and report and gives salient details about quantity and detainees’ methods for acquiring a receptacle. Fischer remarks, The food what we got in the day was interesting. It came in cans and for six people we got a can of soup [a] day and we could keep the can—we all ate from the one can. We could keep [it]— . . . and . . . after a week everybody had a can.207 By drawing and painting the everyday experiences of Camp Saint-Cyprien’s internees, Schwesig again captures features of life that, while average, were by no means ordinary.

Male Rape in Its Aftermath or at Saint-Cyprien? Of approximately 525 war-period works that Schwesig produced in France, only one is devoted to sexual assault or violence. Likewise, only this event lacks external historical documentation from the period and place where it was created. Yet, Karl Schwesig addressed the problem of sexual torture as I have described in Chapter 1. The fact that so little exists on the subject strengthens the justification for exploring Schwesig’s painting here. Social scientific data about somewhat analogous situations, namely, sexual assault in prisons and prison camps during genocide or the behaviors of people following sexual assault, may help explain why external documentation is lacking in Camp Saint-Cyprien’s historical documents.208 Karl Schwesig’s painting examined in view of Mark S. Fleisher and Jessie L. Krienert’s recent thoroughgoing examination of rape and sexuality in prisons argues for a carefully nuanced consideration of the topic. This is especially important in view of the fact that the Fleisher and Krienert study was commissioned by the US Department of Justice to gather and assess data about

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  77

the occurrence of male rape in US prisons.209 Their findings refute the notion that excessive rape occurs, but that prison creates an atmosphere in which some men choose intimacy with each other and that these consensual relationships are more common than sexual assault. In conjunction with these findings, I am not arguing that rape was widespread, that it occurred at Saint-Cyprien, or that it was used as a tool throughout European camps during the Holocaust, as it has been in other wars, genocides, or armed conflicts. The fact that neither men nor women discussed even consensual sex helps us to understand how difficult describing sexual assault may have been, and why. If male rape myths then resembled what they are today, notions about hegemonic masculinity may have prevented most men from discussing rape. In fact, it would have been common for men to hide sexual assault for fear of being stigmatized as weak, or scapegoated for “allowing it to happen.” In any case, discussing sexual assault of males would have been as taboo as it is today. At the same time, Les Zusammenbrechende reveals an anguished and struggling man fighting against two other men (see Figure 2.12). A third man lurks in the background. However it is difficult to see anything of him except his disturbingly attentive gaze. One of the two aggressors has reached through the upper inseam of the victim’s right pant leg lunging toward his genitals. The second man

FIGURE 2.12  Les

Zusammenbrechende (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

78  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

standing to the right of the victim is nude from his waist down. He restrains the victim by clutching his left arm. His nudity leaves the onlooker wondering about his role in the assault. It is unclear who specifically is committing the rape. It is all too common for perpetrators of genocide to sexually assault the male enemy to humiliate, assert dominance, degrade, and impair the enemy from reproducing his or her group, either by occupying the womb—that is, forcibly impregnating women— reducing men to sexual dysfunction or both.210 During the Bosnia-Herzegovina genocide, beating and squeezing male genitals was the preferred way of dominating other men during rape. This commonly used form of assault all but ensured future erectile dysfunction or other related problems. The title, Les Zusammenbrechende, literally means, “the breaking-down ones.” However, Schwesig curiously combines the French plural definite article with the present participle from German. It refers simultaneously to the rapists and the end result of their violent act, that is, the destruction of the raped men’s personhood and their sexual selfhood.211 Until I read Karl Schwesig’s postwar writings discussed in Chapter 1, I found that few concordant materials addressed the issues raised by this painting, whereas multiple points of reference confirm all of the other Karl Schwesig artworks analyzed. Whereas the painting shows what happened, it does not indicate whether the rapists are inmates, camp administrators, or German overseers who may have visited the camp. The use of a French plural definite article with the German present participle left me wondering if the mixed-language title may have significance that is not readily apparent. Findings from the Loncar et al. study point out that men do not discuss sexual assaults partly due to the ways that they are socialized, perceptions about masculinity, and fear of social stigmatization.212 In the case of Karl Schwesig and other Communist artists in the Düsseldorf jail, stigmatization of Schwesig as gay and his work as perverse was the point of the sexual violence they experienced. Moreover, the Loncar study finds that when men are victimized by rape, they disclose their experiences when specifically asked about them and when facilities are available to treat them. When these two conditions exist, the numerical gap in statistics between rape of women and rape of men is dramatically reduced.213 Neither of these two conditions existed for men (or women) during World War II. The problems here are not whether Karl Schwesig experienced rape during his years incarcerated under Nazi rule—that is abundantly clear—but rather where and when the rape depicted in Figure 2.13 occurred is not. Because posttraumatic stress disorder is so intimately associated with sexual assault214 it is possible that the painting in Figure 2.13 is linked to the events described in Chapter 1. Because Holocaust survivors were encouraged to remain mum about the traumas they endured, it is unsurprising that no corroborating evidence exists about such an intimate violation like rape.215

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The extraordinary rate of concordance between Schwesig’s other artworks, the historical data, and the circumstances surrounding male rape makes it possible if not likely that what is portrayed in Les Zusammenbrechende is historically accurate based on what we know about the function of hegemonic masculinity in genocides, male rape myth, and the underreported nature of rape, especially male rape. Yet, it is essential to note that I have found no basis for triangulating rape in the French camps in the records that I examined.

Institutional Roles and the Closing of Camp Saint-Cyprien It is useful to recall the hardship that France was enduring by November 1940, but these pressures do not fully account for why Camp Saint-Cyprien from its inception in 1939 was riddled with the same kinds of problems as the internees who arrived in May 1940 experienced. Generally, the overall welfare and physical care of refugees was left largely to aid organizations that did most of the heavy lifting. Yet, some tasks required governmental institutional support such as facilitating immigration. In some instances, people detained at Camp Saint-Cyprien had in their possession affidavits and other key documents for immigration. Institutional mire had costly, negative outcomes for some of these detainees. A cursory examination of Jewish men’s and women’s files show that upon their arrival at Camp Saint-Cyprien (and Camp Gurs), a noticeable number of refugees, although aged, had plans to immigrate. However, with the difficulties resulting from poor sanitation, minimal medical care, and the rampant spread of deadly diseases in Camp Saint-Cyprien, then Camp Gurs, plus immigration delays, internees sometimes ended up fatally ill, transported after Gurs to either Camp Noé or Camp Récébédou, then to hospice care or sanatoriums where they died, sometimes within a year of arriving at one of the two hospital camps.216 If, with regard to immigration, Vichy acted sluggishly, the United States performed with detached empathy. According to US State Department diplomatic communiqués from the last quarter of 1940, both the French and United States governments appeared less concerned about the deleterious effects of the conditions at Camp Saint-Cyprien than their own countries’ interests. This conclusion is based on two bodies of responses exemplified in notes written by US State Department officials bemoaning the conditions at Camp Saint-Cyprien and Camp Gurs and the official US response to the French government’s requests for assistance with sharing responsibility for detainees by accepting immigrants into the United States and encouraging other North American countries to do the same. First, regarding empathy, on 15 December 1940, an American State Department official, Mr. Snow, writes about an intercept of a letter written by Erich

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Ollenhauer to Victor Schiff on December 6, 1940.217 The letter details conditions at Camp Saint-Cyprien and Camp Gurs. Snow’s comments reveal pity, but no viable solution for Camp Saint-Cyprien’s internees. Snow writes: A most distressing document and comes just after another one revealing appalling conditions at St. Cyprien. It is difficult to suggest any plan for ameliorating the condition of these unfortunate German and Austrian refugees from Nazi oppression. Presumably the Red X cannot investigate on their own and are also exposed to a refusal by the French if they ask for leave to investigate. While if they investigate and frame recommendations the French cannot be obliged to carry them out.218 Later, in the same note by Snow, it becomes evident that the US State Department official was not even sure where Camp Saint-Cyprien and Camp Gurs were located. Snow asks, “Could the French Department first kindly tell us whether Gurs and Saint Cyprien are in unoccupied France?”219 On 25 November 1940, the French ambassador to the United States delivered an official request for US assistance with the French refugee problem.220 The 2 January 1941, response from the United States reveals disinterest in and unwillingness to extend its immigration quotas to accommodate refugees from Nazi oppression.221 Indeed, Vichy specifically requested that the United States seek a way to accept refugees, especially “people of German nationality and the Jewish religion”222 and to contribute to the transfer of political refugees. France also requested that the US begin talks to persuade other North American countries to accept German and Austrian, mostly Jewish, refugees as a means of ameliorating the crisis in southern France. For its part, the US, under the guise of not participating in “forced migration,” gratuitously noted that the United States of America would not deny immigrants based on either racial or religious criteria. Nevertheless, the US refused to enlarge its immigration quotas to accommodate refugees, citing economic conditions and the need to “maintain the social equilibrium of all.”223 This response to the French requests had a disproportionately negative effect on foreign Jewish detainees because it was precisely the Jewish refugees and political detainees to a somewhat lesser degree that the French specifically mentioned in their request to the United States. In contrast to the assertive role manifested by the camp rules described earlier in this chapter, the French government apparently viewed immigration as remediation for the existing refugee crisis and perhaps, for this reason, conditions at Camp Saint-Cyprien (and elsewhere) remained difficult for detainees. Historically, in cases such as the 1915 Armenian genocide and subsequent to the Holocaust, the Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda genocides,224 for example, the US government has claimed to need corroborating evidence to substantiate

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witness claims about human rights abuses and mass killings.225 In the case of unoccupied France, the United States government, the High Commission for Refugees, and the Vichy government all knew about, and the first two characterized as “appalling,” refugees’ multiple dilemmas at Camp Saint-Cyprien. The 1940 US Department of State records include news articles, letters from detainees, and intercepted communiqués all discussing conditions especially at Camp SaintCyprien and Camp Gurs. Ironically, behind the scenes, Jewish leaders at Camp Saint-Cyprien endeavored to work with local Saint-Cyprien officials, leaders in the Préfecture PyrénéesOrientales, and the American Joint Distribution Committee to address refugee needs and concerns. They strategized also about long-term macro-level problems, namely, the best ways for Jewish internees to contribute to the ongoing economic life of France, and they also addressed microlevel relief for camp inhabitants.226 In comparison, the French government all but ignored the daily problems that internees vociferously raised. According to US State Department records, at least one request by Sir Herbert Emerson to investigate conditions at Camp SaintCyprien and Camp Gurs went unanswered by the French and conditions continued to decline.227 One element of the problem was bureaucratic. One phase of the refugee problem in France, perhaps the most important of all is in the light of recent developments, that is emigration, has not thus far been reestablished. This is chiefly the result of the fact that the technical emigration agency known as the HIAS-ICA, which evacuated from Paris to Marseille, has not as yet been able to secure permission from the Vichy authorities to resume its work.228 (emphasis mine) Difficulties such as these problems and other red tape aside, immigration policy changes would have been necessary to adequately address the scope of the problem and the United States refused those possibilities out of hand.229 Ironically, by the time that the French government officially made its request of the United States on 25 November 1940, the October 1940 floods had already bombarded the Préfecture Pyrénées-Orientales and the doors of Camp SaintCyprien were being shuttered. Internees were sent to camps that seem to have been in even worse decline, according to a Comité internationale report. However, neither the internees’ relatives nor aid organizations knew with certainty who was sent where.230 Despite identifying what US officials considered “appalling conditions” at Camp Saint-Cyprien experienced by foreign Jewish refugees and political dissidents like Karl Schwesig, two groups that the US had an opportunity to help, American national interests rather than humanitarian ones won the day. In the end, both nations—France and the United States—relied heavily on the

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contributions of aid organizations to carry the weight of providing for refugees at Camp Saint-Cyprien as they wrangled over immigration policy. While Karl Schwesig, too, harbored hopes of immigrating to the United States, he wrote from Saint-Cyprien the following excerpt from an unfinished, unmailed letter that became the back of one of his drawings: There are certain chances for liberation of artists and scientists who [are] in danger, by obtaining for them a war time danger visa! This visa should be applied for by [an] American citizen at the State Department, Washington, D.C. My situation has become catastrophic because I have no money. My last money was gone in September.231 On 17 November 1940, Commandant Lt. Colonel Le Clere from the XVI Division Militaire at Camp Saint-Cyprien sent a letter notifying the American Friends Service Committee that the camp at Saint-Cyprien was dissolved and the files forwarded to camps at Gurs and Argelès-sur-Mer. The notification informed the AFSC that the commandants of these camps would be responsible for answering queries about former Camp Saint-Cyprien detainees.232 Rather than immigrating to the United States Karl Schwesig instead arrived at Camp Gurs on October 29, 1940, where he would remain for four months before being sent to Camp Noé.233

Notes 1. “Report on the Events from 10 May to 30 July 1940,” report 26 September 1940, file NY_AR3344_00034_00929, American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY, 5. 2. In April and May 1938, the French government recognized the need for and began planning to establish several “beach” refugee camps including the one at SaintCyprien, but also camps at Argelès-sur-Mer, and Canet Plage. The 1938 memoranda mention the necessity for opening camps to accommodate “certain categories of refugees” who were in the départementale Pyrénées-Orientales (Le Général Commandant la 16 région to Le Préfet du département des Pyrénées-Orientales à Perpignan, note #317 A/4, 7 May 1938, côte 1287 W1, Archives départementales des PyrénéesOrientales, Perpignan). 3. Le Général Commandant la 16 région to Le Préfet du département des PyrénéesOrientales à Perpignan-Nationale gendarmerie to compagnie Pyrénées-Orientales, note #317 A/4, 3 May 1938, côte 1287 W1, Archives départementales des PyrénéesOrientales, Perpignan, France. 4. Ultimately, the conditions revealed at Saint-Cyprien (Gurs and other French camps) seem to have caused the French government a great deal of international embarrassment. More importantly, the conditions challenge the notion that the camps were places of succor for detained Jews and others seeking respite (“Rapport definitif no. 31: Camps de France,” 30 December 1951, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 2.3.5.1, folder no. 19b, doc. no. 82370980, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC). Prisoners wrote vociferously to aid organizations and the US State Department decrying the devastation at SaintCyprien. French officials seemingly had not established a long-term plan for dealing with the potential problems that would be caused by the entry of vast numbers of

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Spanish and Jewish migrants and refugees into southern France, nor did they consider the effects of detaining Jews in camps (Denis Peschanski, La France des camps: L’internements camps, 1938–1946 (Paris: Gallimard, 2002), 97–147). The justifiably caustic outcry by detainees about conditions in the camps contest the early postwar French retrospective about the purpose of Camp Saint-Cyprien as a place developed to benefit refugees fleeing Nazi oppression. The perspective in the 1951 report is especially challenged by the fact that some Jewish people who had been detained in the Unoccupied Zone eventually were deported to the East. 5. “Rapport definitif no. 31: Camps de France,” 30 December  1951, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 2.3.5.1, folder no. 19b, doc. no. 82371074_0_1, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 710. 6. Le Président de la commission de controle télégraphique de Pau to Paul Fabre,” letter #232, 8 November 1940, côte 996 W167, RG 43.137, Selected Records from the Departmental Records of the Haute-Loire, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 7. Many of the people who were interned at Camp Saint-Cyprien ended up at Camp Gurs, then Camp Noé. For a discussion about many of those people, particularly foreign Jewish people, cf. Willa M. Johnson, “The Treatment of Foreign Jews at Camp Noé and Archbishop Saliège’s Letter of Rebuke and Resistance,” (in review). 8. Michael L. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1981), 14. 9. Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller, “Anti-Jewish Policy and Organization of the Deportation in France and the Netherlands, 1940–1944: A Comparative Study,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20, 3 (2006): 437.. 10. Johnson, “The Treatment of Foreign Jews at Camp Noé,” (in review). 11. Vicki Caron describes “the socioeconomic dimension of antisemitism.” She writes: “While antisemitism was a part of a symbolic protest it also reflected very real socioeconomic differences between Jews and non-Jews, differences rooted in the very process of Jewish emancipation.” To suggest that antisemitism was, at least in part, motivated by real socioeconomic conflicts between Jews and non-Jews is not intended to justify or excuse it. Caron’s article, however, explains in great detail the degree to which antisemitism was embedded in the socioeconomic structure of France during the prewar years. The article demonstrates that antisemitism in France must be understood in more than simply ideological terms (Vicki Caron, “The Antisemitic Revival in France in the 1930s: The Socioeconomic Dimension Reconsidered,” The Journal of Modern History 70 (1998): 28). Pointing to the very structural nature of antisemitism in France forces readers to view antisemitism as much more than prejudice. Similarly, I have argued previously that antisemitism is indeed an expression of racism, a point that will be discussed more fully, especially in the last chapter of this book. 12. Cf. Caron, “The Antisemitic Revival in France”; Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews; Peschanski, La France des camps, 33–102; Anne Grynberg, Les Camps de la honte: Les internés juifs des camps français, (1939–1944) (Paris: Decouvertes Gallimard, 2013), 442–500, Kindle. 13. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 12–13. 14. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 27. 15. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 12–13. 16. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 9–12. 17. The telegram describes 9,000 Jews forcibly evacuated from Baden-Palatinate and eventually sent to Gurs (Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Le Commandant du camp de Gurs, letter, 16 November 1940, côte 996 W167, RG 43.137, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Haute-Loire, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC). However, the newspaper reports that a total of 10,000 Jewish deportees arrived in France (“Reich Jews Sent to South France;

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10,000 Reported Put into Camps,” New York Times, 9 November  1940). Of the 10,000 deportees, 9,000 were sent to Camp Gurs, as the telegram from Sulzberger notes, but an additional 1,000 Jewish men were sent to Camp Saint-Cyprien, Camp Milles, and Camp Le Vernet. 18. “Reich Jews Sent to South France.” 19. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 10–12. 20. “Le Président de la commission de controle télégraphique de Pau to Paul Fabre,” letter #232, 8 November 1940. 21. “The Condition and Fate of Jewish Deportees from Baden-Palatinate at Gurs,” note, 21 January 1941, côte 996 W167, RG 43.137, Selected Records from the Departmental Records of the Haute-Loire, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 22. Gordan W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice: The 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Basic Books, 1957), 9. 23. Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews (Lincoln, NE: The University of Nebraska Press, 1993). 24. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 3–4. 25. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 19. 26. Peschanski, La France des camps, 33. 27. Peschanski, La France des camps, 33. 28. “Report on the Events from 10 May to 30 July 1940,” report, 26 September 1940, 5. 29. Karl Schwesig noted the role of the American Friends Service Committee in his writings. (Karl Schwesig, Pyrenäenbericht, unpublished manuscript, accession no. 1988.5.21, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC.) 30. Karl Schwesig to Unknown, drawing #2044 (back), Beit Lohamei Haghetaot Art Archive, Western Galilee, Israel. 31. The term “de circonstance” (“of circumstance”) means “inspired by the situation not by a sincere concern.” (Larousse Dictionary Online, s.v.“de circonstance,” www.larousse.fr/ dictionnaires/francais/circonstance/16137/locution). Saint-Cyprien was, according to several documents, one such camp des circonstance. This designation for the camp should be understood as a place that inspired concern about the consequences associated with the increasing numbers of Spanish Republicans entering France (Le Général Commandant le 16 région to Le Préfet du départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales à Perpignan, note #316 A/4, 3 May 1938, Archive départementales des PyrénéesOrientales, Perpignan, France). 32. Le Général Commandant le 16 région to Le Préfet du département des PyrénéesOrientales à Perpignan-Nationale gendarmerie to compagnie Pyrénées-Orientales, note #317 A/4, 3 May 1938. 33. Général Ménard to Le Général Commandant le 16 région, letter # 3578 C/E.M. A.-M, 15 May  1940, côte 1287 W1, Archives départementales des PyrénéesOrientales, Perpignan, France. 34. Le Général Commandant le 16 région to Le Préfet du département des PyrénéesOrientales à Perpignan-Nationale gendarmerie to compagnie Pyrénées-Orientales, note #317 A/4, 3 May 1938. 35. Le Général Commandant le 16 région to Le Préfet du département des PyrénéesOrientales à Perpignan-Nationale gendarmerie to compagnie Pyrénées-Orientales, note #317 A/4, 3 May 1938. 36. Le Général Commandant le 16 région to Le Préfet du département des PyrénéesOrientales à Perpignan-Nationale gendarmerie to compagnie Pyrénées-Orientales, note #317 A/4, 3 May 1938. 37. These and other factors help to explain, at least in part, why Saint-Cyprien was perceived as inhospitable to the new arrivals (Francie Cate-Arries, Spanish Culture Behind Barbed Wire: Memory and Representation of the French Concentration Camps, 1939–1945

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[Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2004]; Peschanski, La France des camps, especially 97–102). 38. Le Président du conseil ministre de la défense nationale et de la guerre to Le Général Commandant 16 and 17 régions, note #0I530-3E.M.A., 29 April 1938, côte 1287 W1, Archives départementales des Pyrénée-Orientales, Perpignan, France. 39. Le Général Commandant le 16 région to Le Préfet du département des PyrénéesOrientales à Perpignan-Nationale gendarmerie to compagnie Pyrénées-Orientales, note #317 A/4, 3 May 1938. 40. Le Général Commandant Goudot, note #315 A/6, 2 May  1938, côte 1287 W1, Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales, Perpignan, France. 41. Peschanski, La France des camps, 99. 42. Peschanski, La France des camps, 98–102. 43. Peschanski, La France des camps, 98, 100–102. 44. Le Président du conseil ministre de la défense nationale et de la guerre to Le Général Commandant 16 and 17 régions, note #0I530-3 E.M.A., 29 April 1938. 45. Melanie G. Krob, “Imprisoned in Paradise, Antifascist Germans in the French Wartime Internment Camps, 1939–1940,” Journal of European Studies 38, no. 1 (2008): 54. 46. Krob, “Imprisoned in Paradise,” 54. 47. Général Ménard to Le Général Commandant le 16 région, letter # 3578 C/E.M.A.M, 15 May 1940. To make room for the new Belgian arrivals, a 14 May 1940, memo marked “urgent” directed officials to relocate certain Spanish refugees to Camp d’Argelès-sur—Mer. Among the relocated were “men incapable or unsuitable for work, but who could be used by the Ministry of Labor; women and children able to work; those with severe amputations or who were incurably ill; and those who had been dismissed from their work company or workplace due to misconduct” (Général Ménard to Ministre de l’Interieur, note #3599, 14 May  1940, côte 1287 W1, Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales, Perpignan, France, 2). 48. Général Ménard to Le Général Commandant le 16 région, letter # 3578 C/E.M.A.M, M15 May 1940. 49. Général Ménard to Le Général Commandant le 16 région, letter # 3578 C/E.M.A.M, 15 May 1940. 50. Directeur Général de la sûreté to Observer dans les camps d’étrangers, document, 21 October 1940, côte 1260 W129, Selected Records from the Departmental Archives of Pyrénées-Orientales, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 51. The December  1939 report divides the 536 workers as follows: 442 agricultural laborers placed in the interior and 94 agricultural workers placed in the Préfecture Pyrénées-Orientales. The report records 392 industrial workers, 2,877 workers functioning in capacities other than agriculture and industry; and 3,780 refugees worked in Argelès-sur-Mer, Rivesaltes and at the Hôpital Perpignan (“Statistiques des réfugiés à la date du 28 décembre 1939”, camp report, 28 December 1939, côte 1287 W1, RG 43.036, Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales, Perpignan, France). 52. According to a New York Times report, the population of the unoccupied zone of France swelled to between eight and 10 million people. “Purge by Petain Reported at Vichy: 20 Persons Chiefly Jews and Leftist Journalists, Are Said to Have Been Held,” New York Times, 15 July 1940. For details about the availability of food in France during World War II, cf., Shannon Fogg, The Politics of Everyday Life in Vichy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 23–24. 53. Général Ménard to Le Général Commandant le 16 région, letter # 3578 C/E.M.A.M, 15 May 1940. 54. “10,000 to Quit France and Go Back to Spain: Small Part of Republicans Who Fled Elect to Return,” New York Times, 1 March 1939. 55. “10,000 to Quit France.”

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56. “Report sur le commissariat spécial du camp de Saint-Cyprien,” report, 5 November  1939, côte 1287 W1, RG 43.036, Archives départementales des PyrénéesOrientales, Perpignan, France. 57. “Report of the commissariat spécial du camp de Saint-Cyprien,” report, 5 November 1939. 58. Cate-Arries, Spanish Culture behind Barbed Wire, 147. 59. Cate-Arries, Spanish Culture behind Barbed Wire, 146. 60. Cate-Arries, Spanish Culture behind Barbed Wire, 147. 61. “Slip Babies into Camp: Spanish Women Strive to Keep Families Together in Exile,” New York Times, 12 February 1939. 62. “Report on the Cultural Work: The Refugee Camps in Southern France,” report, 11 September 1939, box 6, folder 3, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, 1933–1950, Washington, DC. 63. “Report on the Cultural Work,” report, 11 September 1939. 64. “Report on the Cultural Work,” report, 11 September 1939. 65. “Report on the Cultural Work,” report, 11 September 1939. 66. “International Commission for the Assistance of Spanish Child Refugees, 22 September–9 October 1939,” report, box 6, folder 3, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 67. Mary Elmes to Le Chef d’escadron maréchal, letter, 16 January  1939, box  16, folder 90, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 8. 68. Mary Elmes to Le Chef d’escadron maréchal, letter, 16 January 1939. 69. “Report on the Cultural Work,” report, 11 September 1939, 3. 70. “Supplementary Report on the Cultural Work,” report, April 1940, box 6, folder 4, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. Even after working 10-hour days, laborers worked to learn French and were anxious to withdraw books from the library (“Report 12,” report, 29 May  1940, box  6, folder 4, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1–2). 71. “Matériel offre aux artistes du groupe Beaux Arts du Saint-Cyprien,” list, 11 December 1939, box 16, folder 90, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 72. Grynberg, Les camps de la honte, 962, Kindle. 73. “180,000 Spaniards Remain in France,” New York Times, 14 January 1940. 74. Le Préfet des Pyrénées-Orientales to Le Ministre de l’intérieur, letter, 8 February  1940, reel 10, RG 43.036, Selected Records from the Departmental Archives of the Pyrénées-Orientales, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. For another reference about undesirable detainees who were being sent from Camp Saint-Cyprien to Camp Le Vernet, cf. also, Le Commissaire spécial détaché de Camp Saint-Cyprien to Le Préfet des Pyrénées-Orientales, letter, 8 February 1940, reel 10, RG 43.036, Selected Records from the Departmental Archives of the Pyrénées-Orientales, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 75. “Communication officieuse de l’embassade des État-Unis,” document, n. d., reel 14, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archive-Police Générale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC.

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76. Howard B. Kerschner to Gerhard Glass, F. Brasch, F. Schneider, and F. Gossels, letter R#88, 18 November 1940, box 22, folder 10, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. The initial letter from Glass et al. is not in the file. However, Mr. Kerschner’s reply to the Glass et al. letter on behalf of the 5,000 internees deported from Brussels to Camp SaintCyprien is available. 77. For letters that mention detainees who share Schwesig’s path of persecution cf., Toot van Cordt to A. Burns Chaimers, letter, 25 November 1940, box 21, folder 7, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC; A. Burns Chaimers to Toot van Cordt, letter, 29 November 1940, box  21, folder 7, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC; and Paul Marx to Helga Holbek, letter, 9 December 1940, box 21, folder 7, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. When Camp SaintCyprien was dissolved, officials sent detainees to Camp Gurs and Camp Le Vernet. Several detainees who were at Saint-Cyprien during the same time that Karl Schwesig was there were sent also to Camp Gurs when he transferred there (Colonel Le Clere to American Friends Service Committee, telegram, 17 November  1940, box  21, folder 7, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC). 78. Sarah E. Baker and Rosalind Edwards, “How Many Qualitative Interviews Is Enough?” (2012), Discussion paper, National Centre for Research Methods, Unpublished. 79. Baker and Edwards, “How Many Qualitative Interviews Is Enough?” 80. Even Jewish people in Belgium who had visas and were preparing to immigrate to the United States (and elsewhere) from Belgium, like Fritz and Artur Goldenberg who had family in Newark, New Jersey, were arrested on 10 May 1940 by Belgian security forces and interned at Saint-Cyprien. The Goldenbergs (and others) had their papers confiscated upon arrest. Like the Goldenbergs, many other Jewish internees and their families at Saint-Cyprien appealed to the American Friends Service Committee for assistance to emigrate. (Fritz and Artur Goldenberg to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 15 September  1940, box  22, folder 10, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC). On 7 November 1940, Howard Kerschner, the director of the AFSC, was discussing in a letter the case of refugee Erich Gottfrucht, a detainee from Berlin (and later, Belgium). Kerschner wrote the following: “Since people have learned that some of our workers in Marseille might have a chance to help those refugees interned in camps, we are simply swamped with requests” (Howard Kerschner to Mary M. Rogers, letter #5209, 7 November 1940, box 22, folder 10, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC). 81. Karl Schwesig addresses one part of this constituency in his drawings titled, Badensee [sic] Jüdinnen, Protestant Church at Noé (Figure 4.11), described in Chapter 4. 82. “Report on the Events from 10 May to 30 July 1940,” report, 26 September 1940, 3. 83. “Report on the Events from 10 May to 30 July 1940,” report, 26 September 1940, 6. 84. “Letter from Saint-Cyprien,” 16 September 1940, file NY_AR3344_00034_00951, American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY, 1. 85. “Report on the Events from 10 May to 30 July 1940,” report, 26 September 1940, 5.

88  “The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940

86. “Letter from Saint-Cyprien,” letter, 16 September  1940, 2. Not everyone who was forcibly evacuated from Belgium landed in Saint-Cyprien. Some ended up in homes 30 kilometers from Toulouse. There they eked out an existence. According to a 16 July 1940, report they, too, were “in miserable living conditions” (M. Goldschmid-Brodsky to American Joint Distribution Center, letter, 16 July 1940, file NY_AR_3344_Count_05_00234, American Joint Distribution Center Archive, New York, NY). 87. “Karlheinz Kochmann to James N. Rosenberg,” letter, 13 August  1940, file NY_ AR_3344_00082_01231, American Joint Distribution Center Archive, New York, NY. 88. “Karlheinz Kochmann to James N. Rosenberg,” letter, 13 August 1940, 1. 89. “Karlheinz Kochmann to James N. Rosenberg,” letter, 13 August 1940, 1. 90. “Goldschmid-Brodsky to American Joint Distribution Center,” letter, 16 July 1940, 1. 91. “Goldschmid-Brodsky to American Joint Distribution Center,” letter, 16 July 1940, 1–2. 92. “Projet de règlement des héberges du camp d’Argelès-sur-Mer-camp de SaintCyprien,” document, n. d., côte 1287 W1, Archives départementales des PyrénéesOrientales, Perpigan, France, 1. 93. Directeur Général de la sûreté to Observer dans les camps d’étrangers, document, 21 October 1940. 94. The question of how to understand the French camps in comparison to the German camps is implied in a set of survivor interviews from Saint-Cyprien and other French camps. For an example, cf. William Fischer interviewed by Oscar Nathans, testimony, 11 November 1984, RG .03, file 8252, Yad Vashem-The World Holocaust Remembrance Center Archive, Jerusalem, Israel. 95. “Project de règlement des héberges du camp d’Argelès-sur-Mer-camp de SaintCyprien,” document, n. d., 1. By prison-like, I refer to the aspect of the rules to enforce social control at the camps. The rules were written to address Camp SaintCyprien and Camp Argelès-sur-Mer. The last paragraph of Article I of the regulations reads: “All carelessness and unwillingness in accomplishing the tasks required will be communicated to the camp director who will impose the suitable sanctions to ensure the maintenance of order and discipline” (emphasis mine). 96. “Projet de règlement des héberges du camp d’Argelès-sur-Mer-camp de SaintCyprien,” document, n. d., 1. 97. “Projet de règlement des héberges du camp d’Argelès-sur-Mer-camp de SaintCyprien,” document, n. d., 1. 98. By the time that the regulations cited previously were formalized in writing for Camp Saint-Cyprien and Camp Argelès-sur-Mer, Schwesig had been sent to Camp Gurs. However, the fact that the rules were put into writing in mid-November does not mean that these or similar regulations were already implemented at the camp during Karl Schwesig’s time there. In fact, with or without formal rules, it is clear that detainees under armed guards experienced a loss of personal freedoms. To support the point that these rules likely existed earlier, see the 21 October 1940 communication from Vichy (“Instructions concernant la discipline”, document, 21 October  1940, côte 77  W13, reel 2, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC). 99. Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 20–38, esp. 28 ff. 100. Max Heimann to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 27 August  1940, box 22, folder 11, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1.

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101. C. Bleuland van Oort to Max Heinmann, letter, 18 September  1940, box  22, folder 11 RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 102. Max Heimann to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 27 August 1940, 2. 103. Max Heimann to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 27 August 1940, 1. 104. Max Heimann to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 27 August 1940, 1. 105. Max Heimann to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 27 August 1940. 106. Unknown to American Friends Service Committee, letter, n. d., box 22, folder 11, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 4. 107. Unknown to American Friends Service Committee, letter, n. d., 4. 108. “Exposé pour le comité de coordination, Toulouse,” report, n. d., box 6, folder 3, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2. Several sources mention rats, mice, and lice as the cause for “typhoid fever” and these also note using “prophylaxis by vaccine.” “Typhus,” Medicine-Net website, accessed 4 July  2015, http://www.medicinenet.com/typhus/ page2.htm; “Typhoid Fever,” Mayo Clinic (website), accessed 3 July 2015, www.may oclinic.org/diseases-conditions/typhoid-fever/basics/risk-factors/con-20028553. Cf. also, “Richard Baer, 68, Physician, Dead,” New York Times, 12 April 1965; and Henry Faludi to American Friends Service Committee, letter, box 22, folder 10, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. Henry Faludi’s 18 September  1940 letter was written on behalf of 237 internees, described deeply rooted concerns about Saint-Cyprien. Some people writing letters about health conditions at Saint-Cyprien seem to have confused typhus and typhoid fever. The cause, transmission and pathology of the two diseases are very different. By associating rats and vermin with the diseases’ origins at Camp Saint-Cyprien the writers are in fact describing the causes of typhus, not typhoid fever. Typhus is “transferred to humans by vectors such as fleas or lice that have acquired the bacteria from animals such as rats, cats, opossums, raccoons, and other animals.” Typhoid fever, according to the Mayo Clinic is caused by a bacteria introduced via contaminated water or food. “Epidemic typhus . . . means that a few animals (usually rats) via lice vectors can incidentally infect large numbers of humans quickly when certain environmental conditions exist (poor hygiene, poverty, crowded human conditions are present);” much like the circumstances that describe Camp Saint-Cyprien. In spite of the confusion concerning these two diseases, there is evidence of both a typhus outbreak and an outbreak of typhoid fever in 1940 at Camp Saint-Cyprien. 109. Ernst Lapp to Phyllis Bell, letter, 11 October  1940, folder 29172, RG 59.006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. Ernst Lapp’s letter written to Phyllis Bell on 11 October 1940, and later forwarded to the United States Department of State attests to malaria at Saint-Cyprien. Mr. Lapp, who was interned at Camp Saint-Cyprien describes having malaria, jaundice, and a leg injury that refused to heal. 110. “Rapport du comité international de la Croixe-rouge sur les visites du camp d’internés civils sud de la France, effectueés par son délégués, au mois de novembre 1940,” report, 6 January 1941, Archives du comité international de la Croixe-rouge, Basel, Switzerland, 9. 111. “Letter from Saint-Cyprien,” letter, 16 September 1940, 2.

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112. For another reference with a man wrapped in a blanket to urinate see untitled drawing by Schwesig in Figure 3.9. 113. Unknown to American Friends Service Committee, letter, n. d., 3. 114. Unknown to American Friends Service Committee, letter, n. d., 3–4. 115. Unknown to American Friends Service Committee, letter, n. d., 2. 116. “Rapport du comité international de la Croixe-rouge,” report, 6 January 1941, 3–4; cf. also, “Richard Baer, 68, Physician, Dead.” 117. Arié Lieb Lewinnek interviewed by Myriam Gross, testimony, 4 April 2001, RG 03, file 12006, Yad Vashem-The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. 118. Dr. Richard Reich to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 18 December 1940, box 22, folder 14, RG 67.007M, box 22, folder 10, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2. Dr. Richard Reich was trained and credentialed as a surgeon and a radiologist who had held significant positions in Germany prior to immigrating to Belgium in 1939 and he authored 18 scholarly papers. 119. Cf. “Expose pour le comité de coordination, Toulouse,” report, n. d., 2. 120. “Richard Baer, 68, Physician, Dead.” 121. “Richard Baer, 68, Physician, Dead.” 122. “Commune de St. Cyprien,” note #317 A/4, 3 May 1938, côte 1287 W1, Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales, Perpignan, France; “Copie conforme notifiée A: Intendance-génie-santé,” note #315-A6, 2 May 1938, côte 1287 W1, Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales, Perpignan, France; Peschanski, La France des camps, 98–107; I. Kampf and M. Torczyner to Morris C. Troper, 17 July  1940, report, file NY_AR3344_00034_0765, American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY. In 1939, the infirmary at Camp Saint-Cyprien was under the auspices of the Ministry of Public Health. Under that system a French doctor functioned as the overseer of the infirmary with a Spanish support team. Thus, it is plausible that Drs. Meyer, Mayer, Reich, and Baer functioned in a similar fashion. It is extraordinarily important to qualify the notion of medical need. Despite the impressive ability of these doctors, they were fighting a battle that the camp’s structure by design made nearly impossible to win. For example, while one document describing the creation of Camp Saint-Cyprien depicts the camp’s physical capacity as having “unlimited possibilities,” a second government directive highlights that Camp Saint-Cyprien’s budget could accommodate only 2,000 men. The directive reads: “All proposals and suggestions to be submitted to the Minister for putting in place some necessary materials for lodging, sleeping, medical care and for the organization of camps on the basis of two camps of 2,000 men per department.” The two documents referenced, one of which is stamped “Secret,” suggest that from the beginning, Vichy officials either planned to overcrowd and grossly underfund Camp Saint-Cyprien; or failed to think long-term about the situation in which migrants and refugees would live. Denis Peschanski suggests there was a failure by authorities to think long-term and to instead, improvise. Even without considering the size of the Spanish refugee population, Camp Saint-Cyprien would have provided for fewer than one-third of the estimated 6,000 Jews interned as of 17 July 1940, if we assume Vichy funding remained steady from 1938. 123. Dr. Heinrich Meyer, “Sketch of Life,” document, 18 December 1940, box 22, folder 14, RG 67.007M, box  22, folder 10, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2–3. 124. Reich to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 18 December 1940, 2. 125. “Review of Work in Pyrenees-Orientales District,” report, n. d., box 6, folder 4, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian

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Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, 1933–1950, Washington, DC, 10. 126. “Review of Work in Pyrenees-Orientales District,” report, n. d., 5. 127. “Exposé pour le comité de coordination, Toulouse,” report, n. d., 1. 128. “Exposé pour le comité de coordination, Toulouse,” report, n. d., 2. 129. “Exposé pour le comité de coordination, Toulouse,” report, n. d., 2. Cf. also, George Behrens to American Friends Service Committee, August 16, 1940, letter, box 22, folder 9, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2. Letters dated 9, 12, 18, and 21 November 1940, box 16, folder 83, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. Cf. also, “Report for September 1940,” report, 15 October 1940, box 6, folder 1, RG 67.0007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 6; “Report for October  1940,” report, 21 November  1940, box  6, folder 1, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 6; “List of goods sent to Saint-Cyprien,” list, 12 October 1940, box 16, folder 83, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 130. A discussion of religious identity follows. 131. “Report on Work for the Month of September,” report, 5 October 1939, box 6, folder 4, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 132. “Report on the Events from 10 May to 30 July 1940,” report, 26 September 1940, 7. 133. R. Lichtman to Mr. Weizman, letter, 11 December 1940, folder 29172, RG 59.006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 134. Cf. artworks in Figures 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, and 2.11. 135. “Report on the Events from 10 May to 30 July 1940,” report, 26 September 1940, 5. 136. “Letter from Saint-Cyprien,” 16 September 1940, 3. 137. Météo France, “Statistiques inter-annuelles de 1925 à 1940, Perpignan (66).” 138. Lewinnek interviewed by Myriam Gross, testimony, 4 April 2001, 11. 139. William Fischer interviewed by Oscar Nathans, testimony, 11 November 1984, 10. 140. The clothing deficit was due in part to the fact that many were forced to leave their homes with little or nothing. Several accounts note that whatever these people may have had in terms of resources and property when they left home was taken from them before they reached Camp Saint-Cyprien. In one report, an aid worker reported that she needed “every stitch that she could get her hands on.” This general concern is expressed throughout by AFSC aid workers beginning in 1939 (for example, cf. “Minutes of Staff Meeting Held in Toulouse,” 19 August 1940, box 25, folder 8, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC). 141. Emma Jarousch to La Croix-rouge americaine, letter, 28 September 1940, box 22, folder 11, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 142. “Report on the Events from 10 May to 30 July 1940,” report, 26 September 1940, 5.

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143. “Report on the Events from 10 May to 30 July 1940,” report, 26 September 1940, 8. 144. “Report on the Situation in Free France Beginning in October 1940,” report, file NYAR3344_00034_00861, 27 November 1940, American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY; I. Kampf and M. Torczyner to Morris C. Troper, 17 July 1940, 1. Psychological trauma experienced by internees is described repeatedly in aid reports and letters from detainees. Sources describe fear and anxiety about the conditions at the Camp, the difficulties associated with transit through Spain and the possibility of being turned over to German authorities. An example is summarized in a letter penned on 17 July 1940 by two internees from Camp Saint-Cyprien: “In view of the nervousness prevailing in the camp which resulted in a real panic. Besides we were asked to sign a declaration to the effect that we do not wish to be handed over to the German authorities” (emphasis mine). Undoubtedly, anxiety was exacerbated by several factors. First, communication with the outside world was possible, but unusual and extraordinarily difficult. Second, in several cases, the internees’ only hopes for assistance came from relatives on another continent. Third, camp-assigned refugee representatives charged with interacting with the French administration on behalf of Saint-Cyprien’s refugees’ were “with rare exceptions, sharply criticized and suspected” of putting their needs ahead of those whom they represented. In retrospect, the detainees’ trepidation was with sound cause. In 1942, Vichy turned over foreign Jews who were deported from Camp Noé and Récébédou to “places unknown” as is described in Chapter 4. 145. Howard Kerschner memorandum, letter, 13 September 1940, box 62, folder 87, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 146. “Extract of a Letter from Mary Elmes,” letter, 9 October 1940, box 62, file 87, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 147. “Extract of a Letter from Mary Elmes,” letter, 9 October 1940. 148. Le Général Commandant le 16 région to Le Préfet du département des PyrénéesOrientales à Perpignan-Nationale gendarmerie to compagnie Pyrénées-Orientales, note #317 A/4, 3 May 1938. 149. M. Lang, C. Coeur, A. Bard, B. Barq, T. Becker, et al. “Les inondations remarquables en France: premiers éléments issus de l’eau de l’enquête,” EPRI 2011. Houille blanche: Revue internationale de l’eau (2013): 41, accessed 19 August 2015, https://hal. archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00936942. 150. Lang et al., “Les Inondations remarquables en France,” 41. 151. Le Ministre de la defense nationale et de la guerre to Le Générale Cdt le16 région, letter, 15 May  1940, côte 1287 W1, Archives départementales des PyrénéesOrientales, Perpignan, France. 152. “Commune de St. Cyprien,” note # 317 A/4, 3 May 1938, 1; “Commune d’Argelès,” note # 317 A/4, 3 May  1938, côte 1287 W1, Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales, Perpignan, France, 1; “Commune de Canet Plage,” note # 317 A/4, 3 May 1938, côte 1287 W1, Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales, Perpignan, France, 1. 153. For brief summaries of the history of the 1940 flood in French Catalonia see: Lang et al., “Les Inondations remarquables en France”; and Gérard Soutade, “Les Inondations catastrophiques d’octobre 1940 in Catalogne nord le pourquoi du commemoration,” in L’Aiguat del 40 inundacions catastròfiques i politiques de prevenció a la Mediterrania nord occidental, ed. J. Becat and Gérard Soutade (Barcelona: Generalitat de Cataluniya, 1990), 55–64. 154. Lang et al., “Les Inondations remarquables en France,” 41.

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155. Mónica Batlle and Ramon Gual, “1940 ‘L’Aiguat’: Les inondations de 1940,” Revue Terra Nostra 42 (1990): 55. 156. Batlle and Gual, “1940 ‘L’Aiguat,’ ” 55. 157. Cf. Batlle and Gual, “1940 ‘L’Aiguat,’ ” 7, 23, 52, 55. 158. I attempted to gain access to newspaper reports about Camp Saint-Cyprien, but, newspapers from 1940 were unavailable at the Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales and the local newspaper refused to respond to my requests for access. Studies about the weather that included news reports were kindly provided by a French colleague at Météo France. My assessment is based on the newspaper articles presented in these studies and does not claim to be exhaustive. 159. Batlle and Gual, “1940 ‘L’Aiguat,’ ” 55. 160. “Report on the Events from 10 May to 30 July 1940,” report, 26 September 1940, 8. 161. George Lundskow, The Sociology of Religion: A  Substantive and Transdisciplinary Approach (Thousand Oakes, CA: Pine-Forge Press, 2008), 6–7. 162. Lundskow, The Sociology of Religion, 6. 163. Although it is not visible in the drawing, in addition to the tefillin on the head, one is also bound normally to the arm. 164. Rabbi Leo Ansbacher to Governor, letter, 5 August 1940, file NY_AR_3344_00034_00727, American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY. 165. Rabbi Leo Ansbacher to Governor, letter, 5 August 1940. 166. Rabbi Leo Ansbacher to Governor, letter, 5 August 1940. 167. Fischer interviewed by Oscar Nathans, testimony, 11 November 1984, 10. 168. “Letter from Saint-Cyprien,” letter, 16 September 1940, 2. 169. Additional terms to describe this population include: demi-aryens, moitié aryen, and non-Aryans. This list comes from descriptions used in correspondence by detainees to self-identify. 170. Even though there are no artworks associated with the demographic among Karl Schwesig’s artworks from Camp Saint-Cyprien, there were several “mixed-race” men detained at Camp Saint-Cyprien during the tenure of Karl Schwesig’s internment there. For example, Otto Samuel describes himself as a “Protestant of Jewish origins” and Alfred Revi self-identified as a “Catholic of non-Aryan race.” In contrast, Schwesig’s drawings include Jewish women who are at a Protestant Church (Figure  4.11) which may imply that these women were in fact, Christians of Jewish ancestry. (Alfred Revi to Director of the Camp, letter, 3 September 1940, box 22, folder 14, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC; Otto Samuel to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 10 September 1940, box 22, folder 14, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC.) 171. A 2008 study by Peter Monteath argues for using oral histories to examine this group primarily because he maintains studying the victims from documents that were written by the Third Reich alone represents a “top-down” exposition of the victims’ experiences and does not account for the discrepancies between Third Reich policies and victims’ lived realities. The letters referred to in this chapter from Camp Saint-Cyprien describe Mischlinge experiences at Camp Saint-Cyprien. If Monteath is correct, these letters give us one of the few contemporaneous sources, firsthand accounts about the group. (Peter Monteath, “The Mischling Experience in Oral History,” The Oral History Review 35, no. 2 [2008]: 140). 172. Monteath, “The Mischling Experience.” 173. Alfred Revi to Director of the Camp, letter, 3 September  1940, box  22, folder 14, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to

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Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 174. Maria P. P. Root, “A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People,” in Race Critical Theories: Text and Context, ed. Philomena Essed and David Theo Goldberg (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 2002), 356. 175. The following works provide examples of discussions about antisemitism as racism: Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton/London: Princeton University Press, 2008); John Connelly, From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); and John Connelly, “Catholic Racism and Its Opponents,” The Journal of Modern History 79, no. 4 (2007): 813–47. 176. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Social Inequality (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 106. 177. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 27. 178. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 27. 179. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 27. 180. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 28. 181. Heschel, The Aryan Jesus, 28–33. 182. Heschel, The Aryan Jesus, 54–55. 183. Jerome Friedman, “Jewish Conversion, the Spanish Pure Blood Laws and Reformation: A Revisionist View of Racial and Religious Antisemitism,” Sixteenth Century Journal: The Journal of Early Modern Studies 18, no. 1 (1987): 3–30. 184. John Connelly, “Catholic Racism and Its Opponents,” The Journal of Modern History 79, no. 4 (2007): 813–847; John Connelly, From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965 (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University, 2012). 185. Heschel, The Aryan Jesus, 1–33. 186. Heschel, The Aryan Jesus, 29. 187. Lundskow, The Sociology of Religion, 33–41. Not merely Germany during the Third Reich but also France struck out against Jewish people by means of laws that disenfranchised all Jewish persons, but caused grievous problems for foreign and stateless Jews in particular. 188. Dr. Hubert Jehle to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 10 July  1940, box 22, folder 11, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 189. Carl, Ernest, and Curt Helling to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 5 September  1940, box  22, folder 9, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 190. Maximilian Jacobsohn to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 18 December 1940, box 22, folder 11, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 191. A. Burns Chaimers to Toot van Oordt, letter,, 29 November 1940, box 21, folder 7, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 192. A. Burns Chaimers to Toot van Oordt, letter, 29 November 1940. 193. Maximilian Jacobsohn to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 18 December 1940. 194. Toot van Oordt to A. Burns Chaimers, letter, 29 November 1940.

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195. George Behrens to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 26 July  1940, box  22, folder 9, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 196. George Behrens to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 26 July 1940, 1. 197. T. Bleuland van Oordt to George Behrens, letter, 14 August 1940, box 22, folder 9, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 198. “Report on the Situation in the Unoccupied Area of France,” report, 17 September 1940, file NY_AR3344_00034_00127, American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY. 199. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 4. 200. Memorandum to the United States Children’s Bureau, document, 30 September 1940, file NY_AR3344_00034_00927, American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY. 201. In 1940, one franc was worth approximately 2.0052 cents, based on the average daily exchange rate as of June 1940. Therefore, 75,000,000 francs equaled roughly $1,503,900. (“Banking and Monetary Statistics: 1914–1941,” FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of Saint-Louis, 670, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/38/item/6408). 202. “Banking and Monetary Statistics: 1914–1941,” 670. 203. “Communication officieuse de l’embassade des État-Unis,” document, n. d., 2. 204. “Guerres, crises, économiques et les monnaies: Le rationneement en France pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale,” www.nithart.com/fr39-45.htm. 205. Le Ministre du secrétaire d’état to  Le Préfets régionaux de la zone libre, 2 January  1942, box  21, folder 8, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 4. 206. “Exposé pour le comité de coordination, Toulouse,” report, n. d., 2. 207. Fischer interviewed by Oscar Nathans, testimony, 11 November 1984, 10. 208. Data about Saint-Cyprien is relatively spartan in comparison to several other French camps in the Préfecture Pyrénées-Orientales like Rivesaltes, and Argelès-sur-Mers, Arrondissement Perpignan. For example, only fragmentary monthly reports prepared by the Camp’s director(s) are available in the records and dramatically few documents such as invoices and other camp data are available. 209. Mark Fleischer and Jesse L. Krienart, The Myth of Prison Rape: Sexual Culture in American Prisons (Landham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009). 210. Mladen Loncar, Neven Henigsberg, and Pero Hrabac, “Mental Health Consequences in Men Exposed to Sexual Abuse During the War in Croatia and Bosnia,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 25, no. 2 (2010): 192; Patricia Weitsman, “The Politics of Identity and Sexual Violence: A Review of Rwanda and Bosnia,” Human Rights Quarterly 30, no. 3 (2008): 561–78; Elisabeth Jean Woods, “Armed Groups and Sexual Violence: When Is Wartime Rape When Is Wartime Rape Rare?,” Politics and Society 37, no. 1 (2009): 131–62. 211. Loncar, Henigsberg, and Hrabac, “Mental Health Consequences of Men Exposed to Sexual Abuse During the War,” 194–98. 212. Leslee Kassing, Denise Beasley, and Lisa L. Frey, “Gender Role Conflict, Homophobia, Age, and Education as Predictors of Male Rape Myth Acceptance,” Journal of Mental Health Counseling 27, no. 4 (2005): 324; Loncar, Henigsberg, and Hrabac, “Mental Health Consequences of Men Exposed to Sexual Abuse During the War,” 192. 213. Loncar, Henigsberg, and Hrabac, “Mental Health Consequences of Men Exposed to Sexual Abuse During the War,” 192.

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214. Loncar, Henigsberg, and Hrabac, “Mental Health Consequences of Men Exposed to Sexual Abuse During War,” 193. 215. Tony Kushner provides insight into how testimonies and interviews about the Holocaust were collected, including some of the obstacles and limits involved in the processes undertaken. These may impact why certain types of data are not readily available in the record (Tony Kushner, “Holocaust Testimony, Ethics, and the Problem of Representation,” Poetics Today 27, no. 2 (2006): 275–95). 216. The Book of the Dead and Camp Noé death certificates, côte 1867 W227; côte 1867 W37; côte 1896 W32; côte 1867 W14; côte 1867 W60, dossier 1; and côte 1831 W41, Archive départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. For internee records of patients who went from Camp Saint-Cyprien to Camp Gurs and to either Camp Noé or Camp Récébédou, followed by hospice and death, see the death certificates and the Book of the Dead. 217. Cf. Erich Ollenhauer to Victor Schiff, letter #FG26840, 6 December 1940, folder 29172, RG 59.0006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 218. T. H. Snow, interoffice notes, 23 December  1940, folder 29172, RG 59.0006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 219. T. H. Snow, interoffice notes, 27 December 1940. 220. “Reply to the French Government by the US State Department,” diplomatic communiqué, 2 January  1941, folder 29172, RG 59.0006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 221. “Reply to the French Government by the US State Department,” diplomatic communiqué, 2 January 1941, 2. 222. “Reply to the French Government by the US State Department,” diplomatic communiqué, 2 January 1941, 1–2; and Mr. Butler (Decipher-Washington) to Unknown, diplomatic communiqué #3354, 31 December 1940, folder 29172, RG 59.0006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 223. “Reply to the French Government by the US State Department,” diplomatic communiqué, 2 January 1941, 2–3. 224. During the Rwanda genocide, US State Department officials were ignorant about the difference between Hutus and Tutsis. In the same fashion, US government agencies appear to have been uninformed about basic geography and other data about France, where refugees were imperiled. For example, one memo notes questions about the locations of Saint-Cyprien and Gurs and if they were in the occupied or unoccupied zones of France. 225. Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America in the Age of Genocide (New York: Harper-Perennial, 2002). 226. Zivi Herbert, Isadore Kampf, Paul Kampf, and Torczyner Moise to Le Préfet de Perpignan, letter, 4 July  1940, file NY_AR3344_00034_00768, American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY. 227. Sir Herbert Emerson to T. H. Snow, letter, 31 December 1940, folder 29172, RG 59.0006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 228. Memorandum to the United States Children’s Bureau, document, 30 September 1940. 229. “Rapport du comité international de la Croixe-rouge,” report, 6 January 1941. 230. For letters reflecting the massive confusion as Camp Saint-Cyprien was closing and the uncertainty about where internees were sent, and inquiring about the location and whereabouts of detainees, cf. letters in box 21, folder 7, RG 67.007M, American

“The Inferno or Hell” 1939–1940  97

Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 231. Karl Schwesig to Unknown, drawing no. 2044 (back). 232. Commandant Lt. Colonel Le Clere to American Friends Service Committee, letter #1319/2, 17 November 1940, box 21, folder 7, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 233. Karl Schwesig, intake card, 29 October  1940, Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Pau, France.

3 “MANY OF THESE UNFORTUNATE PEOPLE ARE INTELLECTUALS”1 Art, Culture, Illness, and Death at Camp Gurs

“I don’t know how much I can tell you about Gurs,”2 said a child survivor, Eve Boden, during a telephone conversation with me. The New Yorker recalled, “I was a child when I was at Gurs and I was not there very long.”3 She paused for a moment. “But I do remember one thing: the mud and the rain.”4 This singular snapshot of a childhood recollection nearly universally characterizes Camp Gurs, the place that became the abode for thousands of Jewish people and others, including some male internees like Karl Schwesig, who were transported to Gurs from Camp Saint-Cyprien beginning in late October 1940. Even if the child survivor’s depiction appears vague, her ability to inform comports well with records from the period that depict Gurs in the very same terms. One official report from the United States ambassador about the state of conditions and life at the camps in southern France notes, “[O]ne said it rains about 300 days per year.”5 The physical features and environmental conditions at Camp Gurs place in high relief internees’ artistic, intellectual, and social achievements that are a main focus of this chapter. The genres of Schwesig’s artworks from Gurs are diverse, ranging from those that strike a sharp, politicized tone aimed squarely at French political tradition or Vichy governance and at other times, humorous caricatures of fellow internees. The politicized works may be related to the ways that political dissidents at Camp Gurs were treated. A similar tone is struck in a few of Schwesig’s works from Camp Noé. In response to my description of who Karl Schwesig was, Rose Abrahms, a Chicago, 102-year-old Jewish survivor living in Chicago noted: “We [Jewish people] were treated badly, but it was nothing in comparison to the way that politicals were treated. They had it worse than we did.”6 If not to the treatment of political dissidents, Schwesig clearly objected to the contrast between Third Republic French values and the actual circumstances

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of imprisonment that he witnessed. This is evident in the collection of stamps that Schwesig created while at Camp Gurs. In addition to the social, physiological, and environmental conditions at Camp Gurs, the dynamic social network developed by the Jewish and Protestant communities at Gurs in cooperation with aid organizations such as the AFSC and the AJDC is highlighted. Temporally, the chapter covers in greatest detail the fourmonth timespan during which Karl Schwesig was imprisoned at Camp Gurs from 29 October 1940, through 27 February 1941.7 But to contextualize these months properly and to provide background about Camp Gurs, I begin by describing the conditions that Schwesig and others encountered upon arrival. In this chapter, I therefore explore data about the entirety of 1940 through early 1941. The brainpower and cultural and artistic capacity of the detainees at Camp Gurs was nothing short of awe-inspiring. In addition to Karl Schwesig and the visual artists noted in this chapter, there were many scientists, physicians, journalists, and noteworthy religious leaders. Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Gert Wollheim, and political theorist Hannah Arendt were among the international notables who passed through Camp Gurs, survived internment, and immigrated to the United States. Others, such as philosopher Walter Benjamin, died after leaving Gurs while crossing the border from France into Spain. Several aid reports mention the intellectual hunger and desire among artists, scholars, and average internees. One report describes the Jewish sector of Camp Gurs in January 1941 by saying, “Many of these unfortunates are scholars who are suffering from their idleness and request books of science, philosophy, history, etc. This part of the camp produced on our delegate a very unfavorable impression.”8 It is unclear as to precisely what the report’s author intended to convey by the last part of the comment, but the intellectual curiosity and the desire to remain engaged are obvious in detainee letters. One of Rudolf Pickler’s letters to the AFSC demonstrates an ambitious intellectual appetite: Afternoon I pursue my study of Spanish. Voilà, a response to the question that I give to myself: if I was not here, I certainly would not have the leisure to learn Spanish, and then maybe I derive still some profit. Afterwards, I read.9 In this chapter, I utilize Karl Schwesig’s works as a portal to an expansive, dynamic cultural vista that existed at Camp Gurs. In addition to art and music, I highlight religious observances that occurred during Passover, Hanukkah, Easter, and Christmas as cultural expressions. The discussion of religion and the social structure at Camp Gurs involves some of the same detainees who were with Schwesig at Camp Saint-Cyprien. The experiences provide points of continuity between the previous chapter (Saint-Cyprien), this chapter (Gurs), and the next one (Noé). At other junctures, Karl Schwesig’s artworks are complemented and

100  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

better understood within the rich context of other historical documents about Camp Gurs. The drawing titled Brennenholz Baracke is an example. The chapter ends by discussing the medical environment and the problem of excessive deaths at Camp Gurs due to rampant disease, the lack of medicines, and meager treatment facilities. This may appear gratuitous or repetitive inasmuch as similar points were made concerning Camp Saint-Cyprien and will emerge about Camp Noé. But it is precisely these kinds of patterns that have sociological significance for understanding the French camp system. After all, it could be stated simply that Camp Gurs and Camp Saint-Cyprien had comparable living conditions and health concerns. Methodologically, however, exploring Camp Gurs, even if briefly, and including materials about the Camp’s background makes it possible to distinguish patterns from anomalies in the treatment of detainees at the two camps. Renée Ruth Rothschild, a Gurs survivor, made clear that from her perspective as a detainee, the camps in the South of France were perceived as having clear differences. In an interview, she mentioned “more privacy to dress and undress”10 at Camp Gurs than at Camp Rivesaltes. This seemingly small difference made Mrs. Rothschild, who was then a young woman, feel that Camp Gurs was less dehumanizing and invasive than Camp Rivesaltes.11 Secondly, a detailed examination of social conditions at Camp Gurs (and other French camps) mitigates against the idea that “the Holocaust did not really happen in France,” as one learned scholar told me. Since Camp Gurs was Mrs. Rothschild’s last point of contact with her parents before their deportation and slaughter, an examination of Gurs acknowledges and validates the extraordinary difficulty and harsh conditions that she, her family, and the thousands of other foreign Jewish persons like them negotiated as they passed through Camp Gurs or other French camps on their way to death in the East.12 This chapter ends with letters from three detainees at Camp Gurs who requested transfers to either Camp Noé or Camp Récébédou. These new hospital camps were built and billed as solutions to the troubles prevalent at Camp Gurs, which had earned an international reputation for the desperate conditions that its internees were forced to endure.13 Nevertheless, the hospital camps did little to remediate problems at Camp Gurs. Instead of marked improvements, Camp Noé echoed similitude with Camp Gurs and Camp Saint-Cyprien.

Encountering Camp Gurs Camp Gurs, located in the Préfecture Basse-Pyrénées, was situated approximately 40–45 kilometers (24.85–27.96 miles) southeast of Pau, about 15 kilometers (9.32 miles) from Oloron Saint-Marie near the French national Route 636.14 The camp, which reopened to accommodate Spanish Civil War exiles in 1939, consisted of 434 barracks (372 for militia men), 13 infirmaries, and eight shower rooms.15 The facilities divided into 13 Ilôts and were constructed on a clayey plateau exposed to harsh winds and cold temperatures.16 On 14 March  1939,

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General Menard and the heads of the Préfecture sent instructions about the suitability of this region as the base for a camp that was to hold 20,000 militia men.17 On 5 April 1939, Camp Gurs reopened and received 980 Basques.18 By 25 April 1939, the camp contained an estimated 15,023 militia men.19 According to Howard Kerschner, the director of the American Friends Service Committee, during September 1939, people who were aliens in France at the outbreak of war were also interned at Camp Gurs. Kerschner writes, “[Vichy] put into camps any foreigners formerly receiving relief allowance from the French state.”20 In mid-1940, the total of Spanish refugees at Camp Gurs fluctuated. French authorities allowed Spanish refugees over the age of 48 years to either return to Spain or immigrate to South America if they had the necessary documentation and adequate monies for transportation.21 Simultaneously, French officials transferred nearly 300 injured Spanish Republicans to the hospital at Gurs. They also began sending “French undesirables” to Camp Gurs at about the same time. Howard Kerschner estimates that 60,000 men, women and children were interned at Camp Gurs as of February 25, 1941.22 If Kerschner’s figure is correct, then three times the number of people inhabited Camp Gurs than the camp was intended initially to accommodate.23 Kerschner, who worked cooperatively in southern France with several other aid organizations from around the world, offered the following demographic breakdown: “Of these about 10,000 were women, 4,000 children under 17 and 1,300 old folks over 70, most of these last among the German Jews”24 who had been “forced into exile from their homes in Baden and Palatinate to this part of France.”25 French letters identify 2,509 Jewish people older than 60 years old, with one woman age 104 years old.26 Several documents agree that by the end of 1940 with the arrival of about 9,000 Jewish internees deported from Germany and an additional 4,000 to 8,000 Jewish men from Camp Saint-Cyprien, Jews formed the camp’s majority. The conditions at Camp Gurs were similar to but “far worse than the inadequate conditions at Camp de Saint-Cyprien.”27 In a letter written by the United States Department of State to the head of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees about conditions at Camp Gurs as of 27 December 1940, the following assessment of Camp Gurs was offered: According to one report (about Gurs) they live in semi-ruined huts, with no protection against wind and rain; floors are damp, full of dirt and sewage. For days on end they have no coffee nor other kind of breakfast, at noon and evening some soup which is hardly more than hot water, made with hardly any salt (as there are no supplies of this) with rancid oil and a very little carrot or beetroot. Meat is quite insufficient and is mainly offal. The only solid food is bread, of which the ration is 300 grams (about 12 ounces) is quite insufficient for the prisoners weakened by six months of internment. They have no clothes—only the things they had on when they were arrested in Belgium. These rags give no protection whatever against

102  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

the cold nights and bad weather in the half open huts. Food, warm clothes and shoes are urgently needed.28 The Zionist Organisation/The Jewish Agency for Palestine gave a similar description of Gurs: This camp has won world-wide fame when the Jews of Southern Germany were sent there—a fine p[iece] of French-German collaboration. . . . The camp is divided into “Ilots” separated by barbed wire from each other, and in each Ilot there are a number of wooden barracks. These barracks have no floors and contain no beds. The people are lying on the ground, and many of them have not even blankets. There is a hospital. The difference between the other barracks and the hospital barrack consists in this that the latter has a wooden floor and some iron bedsteads. There are many doctors among the refugees, but no instruments and no medical supplies. The daily food ration is three hundred grams of bread and twice a day some soup. To this Camp Gurs have been sent the 9,000 Jews of Baden and Pfalz—all of them, including the ill and insane and the inmates of old aged asylums up to the age of 95 and also 6 or 8,000 Jews from St. Cyprien who for many months have already been living under similar conditions.29 Conditions worsened exponentially at Camp Gurs with the arrival of thousands of additional internees from Camp Saint-Cyprien, some of whom were ill, according to a November 1940 report generated by the International Committee of the Red Cross.30 The same report argues that conditions were made more difficult to ameliorate at Gurs because of “the poor state of barracks, the nature of the land, the paucity of materials for sleeping and heating, [and] the overpopulation of the camp.”31 In early 1941, Kerschner wrote to the United States Department of State on behalf of humanitarian aid organizations that hoped to win the support of the United States in their quest to help improve conditions in southern France for refugees. Kerschner, who communicated on behalf of the consortium, provided an assessment of the French camps that is in league with the one by the Genevabased Zionist group.32 One distinctive difference and one that I will return to later was Kerschner’s emphasis on the quality of life as perhaps the cause for the rampant disease and high death rates at Camp Gurs. Kerschner writes: Hygienic installations are so primitive as in many cases to augment rather than diminish the dangers to health due to other negative living conditions. Some of these people are now suffering through their third winter in the camps and have never had any supplement to the clothes in which they escaped from Spain 2 years ago. A large part of the refugee aliens here have only the summer clothing in which they left home. There were not

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  103

sufficient blankets in France to supply the Army during the recent hostilities and naturally there are none now to spare for these camps. Besides this, the food is seriously insufficient, partly because of the general lack of provisions in this part of France, and partly because of maladministration. There is an attempt at providing medical and hospital service in these camps but although medical staffs are giving devoted service, there is a grave insufficiency of both hospital space and medical supplies. Unless adequate help can be given soon, thousands of these unfortunates, most of who are interned only because French authorities are unable to support them in any other manner, will die before the winter is over.33 Aid and media reports from November 1940 through February 1941 give even greater substantive details that paint a full and congruous picture about the circumstances facing internees at Camp Gurs, the courses of actions contemplated, and implemented. Interestingly, Karl Schwesig’s drawings echo similar and specific details about life at Camp Gurs. In some instances, the significance of these artworks could be overlooked if not examined within the context of other historical documents. One such Schwesig drawing from Gurs discloses data about the populace at Camp Gurs and the purpose for the activity that engages the men who are depicted.

The Men Cutting Firewood The geographic location of Camp Gurs caused several interrelated problems for detainees, chief among them cold and rain, which made firewood a necessity. One report remarked that the barracks “made of thin wood and roofing felt do not in any way protect from neither wind, cold, nor rain.”34 All reports, whether written by aid agencies, internees, or Vichy officials, agree about the cold temperatures experienced by Gurs’s internees. One aid agency reported: The number of old men and women sleeping on straw on the ground [is] always very precarious. The barracks are not always furnished with windows and by the present great cold, the shutters remain closed and the barracks plunged into darkness. The internees who want to write or work are obligated to catch a beam of light by the crack of a door or a shutter.35 Noting the addition of flooring, an improvement over accommodations at Camp Saint-Cyprien,36 a Comité Assistance aux Réfugiés report claimed that “many of the barracks were without woodstoves”37 as of January 1941. A report to the Secretary of State at the Ministry of the Interior observed the following about heating: “The plateau of Gurs is exposed to all winds; the temperatures are harsh in winter, often by winds from the North or East, accompanied by rain or snow. All of the barracks, must then be heated; the number of woodstoves are inadequate.”38

104  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

Schwesig’s Brennenholz Baracke (Figure 3.1) or Firewood Barrack shows Spanish refugees cutting firewood. Detainees were supplied with a relatively small amount of wood. An aid report addressing internee conditions in the winter of 1940– 1941 remarks: “It is questionable that the management made a serious effort and built up the stock of foods and of wood. The barracks are barely warm; at Gurs, like elsewhere the foreigners are cold. They receive 750 grams [1.65 pounds] of wood per day per person.”39 The artwork indicates not only a task but something about the demographic that comprised Camp Gurs. Brennenholz Baracke introduces disabled people as a constituency at Camp Gurs. Schwesig’s postwar prints also show amputees working in the fields.40 The berets that the men are wearing in addition to their prostheses signal that they were political prisoners, either Spanish Republicans or members of the International Brigade who fought with the Republicans in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Reports from June and July  1940 acknowledge that Camp Gurs received a number of injured Spanish refugees. Other materials concerning workers at Camp Gurs reveal the large numbers of political dissidents, particularly Spanish refugees, able and disabled, who worked as manual laborers, including as agricultural hands, as Schwesig depicts in Figure 3.3. As of 5 November 1940, 500 Spanish men had been integrated into the French workforce41 as members of Compagnies de Travailleurs Étrangers (C.T.E.) at Camp Gurs.42

FIGURE 3.1  Brennenholz

Baracke (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  105

Karl Schwesig’s preoccupation with the disabled population bespeaks his broader interests in politics and notably, the Spanish Civil War. Schwesig viewed the Spanish Republicans’ struggle as essential to the larger cause of Communism. Years later, Mina Werdenberg recalled Schwesig’s passionate engagement in politics when she wrote a retrospective about him.43 Werdenberg, a Swiss ex-patriot who met Schwesig when they lived in Belgium, recalled him as an antifascist.44 She mentioned his attentiveness to the Spanish Civil War in 1936–37: The political events in Germany were discussed passionately in the years 1936/37 [when] the Spanish Civil War was fought. Karlchen took full part for the antifascist side and was already an admirer of the legendary, “Passionaria,” who later immigrated to Russia. Often also, he broke out in the Song, “No Pasarani” and we all fell in as if it was bravery from afar to start singing.45 Several documents confirm the great number of Spanish Republicans who entered France missing one or more limbs and thus, the pressing need for prostheses among Spanish Civil War refugees. They also describe the workshops that the AFSC set up to create prostheses for these refugees who were interned in several camps throughout southern France. In Figure 3.2, a postwar print, Schwesig portrays a man constructing prosthetic arms. This print finds concordance in AFSC records and it partly explains how men who may have arrived limbless in France eventually acquired prostheses thanks to the efforts of the AFSC. For example, at Camp Nexon, one of two camps that housed antifascists and other political dissidents, there was a small, precision shop that built at least one mechanical leg for an internee as of May 1942.46 The reference to the shop at Camp Nexon is especially interesting because Schwesig was detained at Camp Nexon from 6 March 1943, until 1 June 1943, and he would have been privy to the shop’s existence. Other AFSC documents describe a small salon in Perpignan that made orthopedic boots for refugees and a “self-help salon” at Montauban. The “selfhelp salon,” which was started in 1940 by Spanish workmen, most of whom had lost limbs during the Spanish Civil War, produced prostheses for amputees with machinery and tools provided by the Quakers.47 Other reports mention the wooden prostheses of the type depicted by Schwesig in Figure 3.3 as having been provided by the AFSC and worn by the workers who appear in Brennenholz Baracke (Figure 3.1). By the time that Karl Schwesig reached Camp Gurs there were relatively few disabled Spanish refugees left there; most had already been sent to camps at Argelès-sur-Mer, Camp Le Vernet or later, to Camp Nexon.48 In Figure  3.3, Karl Schwesig’s postwar print depicts several Spanish refugee amputees cultivating a field or large garden. The narrative speaks to conditions at both Camp Gurs and Camp Noé, but in different fashions. The print, despite the artist’s original intention, tells us about more than one camp. First, some of the same Spanish Republicans who were housed at Gurs later went to Noé, as

106  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

FIGURE 3.2  (Les

inutiles) Brüderlich Hilfe (Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany)

Schwesig did.49 Éric Malo represents the artwork in Figure 3.3 as depicting Noé, but archival evidence similarly exists for the work as indicative of events that occurred also at Gurs. Schwesig created at least one similar drawing that is labeled Noé.50 In this case, I discuss the print in this chapter because of its representative value. In other words, I am not arguing that this print is of Gurs, but that it reveals elements of life that were also present at Gurs. The print, which I examined in an unlabeled form first, provoked me to inquire about whether gardens or farmland

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  107

FIGURE 3.3  (Les inutiles) Feldarbeit (Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany)

worked by Spanish Republicans existed at Gurs or Noé. I  found evidence in archival data for agriculture or gardens at both camps. Thus, the print tells us about two locations, even though it may have been intended to describe circumstances directly related to one particular camp context.51 Vichy camp reports provide a detailed description of gardens at Camp Gurs. An internee at Camp Gurs wrote about the hopefulness that the spring gardens brought for him. If these factors account for the existence of gardens, is there any reason to believe that Gurs had a constituency of amputees? In short, yes. Gurs was first a camp of Spanish exiles. Letters from February 1940 note that Spanish agricultural workers who were not a threat to public safety or national security would continue to do agricultural work at Gurs.52 Some of these men were in C.T.E.s affiliated with Gurs.53 Other records note the transfer of dozens of injured Spanish exiles to Camp Gurs just a few months prior to Schwesig’s arrival.54 Here again, social scientific scholars of visual work would argue that the artist’s intent is only part of the story. Artists frequently tell more about society than they know or may intend.55 A report dated 11 October 1940, comments three times on the use of gardens or the implementation of planting spaces at Gurs. For example, one mention describing the location of guards’ barracks notes: “These last groups of barracks be in front preferably isolated by gardens.”56 A second describes the usefulness of vegetable gardens: “On the other hand, contrary to the advice given by the locals,

108  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

the tests carried out with the aim of creating vegetable gardens have been satisfactory and are, to our advice, to become widespread.”57 One of several letters written by Rudolph Pichler, a Gurs internee, notes the striking changes that spring at Gurs in May 1941 offered. Pichler wrote: “When you come to Gurs again, you will see the quite striking transformations. You will see the lettuce seedlings, the radishes, the celery, the beans, which have taken root a little everywhere in the fertile earth at Gurs. They are the fruits of internees’ initiatives.”58 The records reveal numerous agricultural workers who were also Spanish Republican amputees. Even though the overwhelming majority of amputees in camp intake files59 were Spanish Republicans, these same files indicate that at least a few German Jewish men at Gurs were amputees, also. Nathan Lévi was an amputee. These data also reveal another Jewish man, Henri Laemle, had a prosthesis or brace on one of his legs.60 However, given both men were in their mid- to late sixties, it is highly unlikely that either labored as agricultural workers at Camp Gurs or anywhere. The normative upper age range for workers was the late forties. Thus, it is unlikely that Schwesig’s amputees are Jewish. In the previous section, the broad contours of Camp Gurs are outlined. There I focus attention on men at Camp Gurs who were attempting to fulfill rudimentary human needs despite too little heat, too little clothing, and little food. In the section that follows I draw attention first to social stature and poverty at Camp Gurs and then, to culture. Sociologists define culture as encompassing language, arts, artifacts, behaviors, norms, knowledge, collective identities and memories, customs, traditions, and values.61 Because religion is comprised of norms, customs, and values, it, too, is discussed as it relates to celebrations of Yom Kippur, Easter, Hanukkah, and Christmas. Religion was so obviously an important part of life at Camp Gurs for Jews and Christians alike. This is apparent in the Jewish and to a lesser degree, Christian social structures62 at Camp Gurs as well as in their worship services. In 1941, plans were underway to erect a chapel at Gurs.63

Poverty, Dignity, and Status at Gurs Karl Schwesig’s drawing, Ein Komponist und ein Philologue introduces the diverse, intellectual, artistic, and cultural community at Camp Gurs, but it also visually qualifies the notion of deprivation at Gurs and with other historical documents imparts data about Gurs’s internees’ economic status and the degree of poverty at the camp. Gesture and body language, as modes of nonverbal communication in the drawing, are key to extracting the various levels of meaning. Susan GoldinMeadow argues that gestures can function as language without verbal signs.64 Elsewhere, Mark Costanzo and Dane Archer maintain, “[N]onverbal behavior discloses critical information.”65 Moreover, they assert, “[R]esearch on social intelligence shows that it is possible to interpret people’s behavior, feelings and relationships from something as simple as a photograph.”66

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  109

These scholars’ works social scientifically ground the analysis of this Schwesig drawing. Two men engaged in conversation stroll away from the barbed wire fence that encircles the camp. The man on the left, who is ever so slightly turned to the one on the right as if to listen attentively or to hear more clearly, holds a slightly more submissive body posture than the man on the right. This is echoed in his quizzical, uncertain glance.67 In contrast, the man on the right appears confident—the dominant figure in the social interaction.68 The hand gesture that the two employ to hold their cigarettes completes a strikingly similar pose to one adopted by cultural elites in 20th-century American photographs and films. In fact, the pose aligns with a report that depicts the camp as having an intense intellectual atmosphere with first-class artists and thinkers, a place where lectures and concerts were given, and theater performed.69 Their posture defies what we know about physical70 and economic circumstances at Gurs. Both men are clad in coats with one arm each exposed to the elements by large rips in their sleeves. Underneath their coats, neither appears to be wearing a long-sleeved shirt and neither man is wearing gloves or a scarf; only one has a hat. Nevertheless, the coats and shoes worn by the men and the cigarettes that they are smoking are all significant status symbols rather than indications of impoverishment as they might be in other contexts. In Schwesig’s postwar manuscript, he notes the availability of some items in southern French camps, such as cigarettes, which internees with money could purchase at camp canteens.71 Schwesig identified another source of cigarette acquisition, namely, the benevolence of foreign relatives who sent care packages72 to the camps, and the kindness of friends who shared the contents of those packages. Schwesig writes: Dr. Stern, for example, obtained from his mother and wife, from a foreign country, a very beautiful Red Cross package; and despite everything, we got some of everything. Neighbor worked and eventually, a rice or noodle soup for 15 men. There was also bouillon, tea, and cocoa for our small circle; and I got cigarettes from him of only a packet of 20 because he could not stand to see me beg for cigarettes anymore.73 A kind of status differential is also implicit in Schwesig’s words. For example, folks who had money or packages as means had increased status. Some like Schwesig were second-hand recipients of goods from care packages. The fact that Schwesig describes himself as in a position of begging for cigarettes reinforces the existence of a status hierarchy at the camp. Thus, supposition concerning the men’s comparative wealth and stature in Figure 3.4 is more than conjecture. In fact, to own basic, reasonably weather-appropriate attire at Gurs—even if tattered and torn—was indicative of being in an upper stratum of the Camp’s socioeconomic hierarchy and therefore, directs attention to a kind of relative wealth. Doris Bieber’s December  1940 letter written on behalf of herself, Hannah Zweig, and Hanna Alterna puts a fine point on this matter. “I have the honor of drawing

110  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

FIGURE 3.4  Ein Komponist und ein Philologue (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Gali-

lee, Israel)

your attention to the punishing situation of us women internees for seven months and in view of the Christmas holiday, permit me to remind you of the extreme poverty, one in which [we] have neither money nor warm clothes.”74 Mrs. Bieber concludes the letter with a wish list consisting of 11 woolen clothing items that she is requesting for the three: one pullover, three pairs of socks, a warm nightgown, two pairs of gloves, one skirt, two pairs of women’s pants, and one coat. An aid report referenced earlier depicted the extremely cold

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  111

weather at Camp Gurs. This explains why the three women requested wool, the warmest fabric then available. That report claimed: “It is cold in the barracks. The firewood distributed is insufficient. The women’s ilôts collect a small supply of coal [which] is also inadequate. The internees are all underfed and empty. Most of the day they complain about the cold.”75 On 10 December 1940, the AFSC responded to Doris Bieber’s request. Harriet Marple noted with regrets that the AFSC “did not do individual distributions.”76 She mentioned that the AFSC “had recently sent a certain number of clothes for Camp Gurs’s women and at the moment, could not do more.”77 Doris Bieber’s plea for warm clothes is representative of many similar requests from Camp Gurs’s detainees during the same period. Taken together, these letters78 inform us about the broader impoverishment at Camp Gurs. They also point to the camp’s socially stratified environment. In other words, Schwesig’s drawing, A Composer and a Philologist, suggests more demographic data about the social conditions at Camp Gurs than the men’s occupations and gender, the two most apparent points. The letters reflect a fourfold hierarchy of concerns expressed by internees in requests to family members and aid organizations. Inevitably, detainees ask for food, clothing, health assistance, and immigration support. For example, when internees experience passable health and are able to make do with the meager food allotted, they seek clothing. If they have functional clothing with relatively good health and are able to sublimate the desire for more food, detainees focus on immigration. Suddenly, Karl Schwesig’s drawing of two sophisticated intellectuals transports our attention away from the individual-level social interaction of the two to consideration of the entire stratified social structure at Camp Gurs that comports to some degree with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.79 In addition to the letters, the pervasive poverty at Gurs is revealed by other corroborating historical documents. An excerpt of the Daily Telegraph dated 18 February 1941, included in a US State Department communication provides a second indication of the overall poverty and the paucity of material goods at the camp. With regard to the Camp of Gurs, the position is at present as follows: To send money there is useful—always better to have some money than not to have—but the interned people cannot buy additional food or clothing because everything is rationed and the canteen in Gurs has nothing to sell: to send food parcels from Switzerland is no longer allowed; and to send food or other rationed articles from within France to the concentration camps is strictly forbidden: owing to the British blockade only milk for French children can be sent from America but nothing for the refugees in the camps. . . . The American Red Cross has large funds but they are not used for our people and even if the administration would decide to use them let us say for Gurs or similar places, then you have the abovementioned difficulties inherent in the war situation operating against it.80

112  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

In vivid contrast to the otherworldliness associated with Romanticism, A Composer and a Philologist discloses multiple daily realities associated with poverty and status at Camp Gurs. The drawing invites inquiry into more subtle data about status, privilege, and poverty at the camp. It opens the way for viewing the Camp Gurs’s population of composer-musicians and philologists among a larger diverse community of intellectuals, filmmakers, musicians, vocalists, rabbis, scientists, journalists, theatrical producers, housewives, craftsmen, manual labors, and visual artists. The hierarchical gradations of social class at Camp Gurs highlight the functions and effects of social stratification on detainees beyond what they wore or whether they had cigarettes. Particularly for artists and intellectuals, these gradations determined who was privileged to receive immigration assistance and who did not. In other words, as in any society or subculture, Camp Gurs had a stratified hierarchy that ranged from the most privileged to the least. In December 1940, this stratification was especially important because the Vichy government changed how it would provide aid. December 1940 also marked the month when director Howard Kerschner noted the AFSC would be forced to reduce the amount and scope of aid that the AFSC could provide, partly due to the limited amount of permissible funds that could be transferred from the United States to France. The combined weight of the French and American laws had a profound effect on foreign Jewish men, the most jeopardized constituency at Gurs. Kerschner writes: Unless adequate help can be given soon, thousands of these unfortunates, most of whom are interned only because French authorities are unable to support them in any other manner, will die before the winter is over. . . . The present situation with regard to aid in France by American organizations is not unknown to us and we fully understand the objections to sending supplies to this country, but aid to those interned in the camps is not open to the same objections. Under present conditions, anything given to the camps will be a supplement to what the French Government can provide and will in no way diminish this aid, already a minimum. Our relations with these camps enable us to guarantee that everything sent there will be used only within the camps themselves and will constitute additions to camp existence, which would otherwise not be made at all. Thus assistance will in no way affect the French national economy.81 These significant shifts portended the increased poverty that ensued at Camp Gurs.

Art and Religious Celebrations Schwesig’s A Composer and a Philologist implies a related set of narratives that brings together religious celebrations and art at Camp Gurs. Considering the

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  113

FIGURE 3.5  Christmas

program from Camp Gurs, December  25, 1940 (Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Pau, France)

conditions at Gurs, the idea of internees interested in religion and art seems implausible, even anathema. Theologically, it might be argued the camp at Gurs represents an absence of the Divine—a very Job-like moment, theodicy incarnate. Nevertheless, religion provides a key set of organizing communal principles for Jews and Christians at Gurs. Religious groups coalesced based on their religious identity and thus, increased social support for internees at Gurs, a matter

114  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

FIGURE 3.5 Continued

to which I turn in the section that follows. In another way, religion intersected with daily life for people at Gurs through artistic programs that were performed by detainees and often linked with religious festivities that benefited the larger community. For example, choral concerts, visual art shows, or theatrical performances were orchestrated during religious holidays. The scenery that illustrated

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  115

or accompanied choral concerts was one of the most important ways that visual art was incorporated into holiday festivities. Several documents corroborate the significance of the art-religion connection. First, in the 1940 Christmas program, two artists, Kurt Loew and Karl Bodek, are thanked for creating the decorations for the program.82 After Christmas, the Office of the Prefect sent a message to the director of Gurs congratulating particularly the visual artists for their contribution to the event. He wrote, “Would you mind thanking the artists who illustrated, for this occasion, the menu for their friends and for the one that was addressed to me?”83 The records from Gurs indicate uneven treatment with respect to how camp officials handled religious holidays for Jews and Christians. While camp rules embraced the idea of religious liberty, in practice it appears that Christians and Christmas were privileged over Jews and Hanukkah. Christmas trees were requested in the name of the camps’ children at both Gurs and Noé, as if all of the children celebrated Christmas. This is a telling decision at a camp with a majority Jewish population. For example, internees at Gurs requested Christmas trees in 1940,84 but in 1941, the camp’s officials asked for one for the camp personnel’s children.85 A separate letter reveals that a Christmas tree was prescribed for delivery on the week of Christmas.86 Fairly elaborate preparations for Christmas meals existed at Gurs (and elsewhere) in comparison to non-holidays. In contrast, for Hanukkah in 1940, Rabbi Ansbacher organized a group of Jewish girls from Ilôt K into the Menorah Club.87 They took responsibility for creating menorahs for the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah.88 As it turns out, the Jewish community so enjoyed the girls’ work that they made plans to duplicate it in subsequent years. The nearly magical atmosphere captured during the 1940 Hanukkah celebration is unmistakable in this report about the first evening of Hanukkah 1940: In the part of the barrack that was reserved . . . the young girls had a joyous meeting. Each girl had gotten dressed up. Their eyes were bright and their countenances radiant. On the holiday they put the holders into the woodstove and spread an unusual warmth. The tables were covered with white paper thinly cut and decorated with fresh greenery. In the background they raised the candlestick with eight arms, made by artists, icons of Hanukkah and of menorahs themselves, called to be lit for the first time that evening and also, to decorate the hall for the long time that Gurs needed to last.89 The remarkable buoyance was punctuated by Rabbi Ansbacher’s thoughtful remarks.90 The celebration and those who participated in it seemed, if only momentarily, removed from the illness and rising death tolls that encompassed Gurs during that time. With religion, we witness the significance of art at Gurs, not simply art as bearer of the historical, but art that uplifted and made religious celebration more

116  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

vibrant. Several internees in addition to Karl Schwesig created visual artworks at Gurs. These artists include: Lili Rilek-Andrieux, Jacob Barosin, Karl Bodek, Kurt Loew, Emmy Ettlinger, Osias Hofstettler, Lou-Albert Lazard (Mabul), and Isquierdo Carvajal. There were other kinds of religious education and worship services in addition to holiday celebrations available for Jewish detainees at Gurs. One report notes: “A rabbinic commission was called together under the leadership of the chaplain of the camp and established a program of study for the young and old. A credit is necessary to buy books and learning materials.”91 Religion at Gurs was thus important for several reasons. It functioned not only as a mechanism around which festivities and holidays were celebrated, but also as a part of ritual that served pragmatic functions. Perhaps more important, Jewish religious life formed the foundation for establishing a vital social network92 that provided life-giving health assistance. The network established by and among Jewish detainees in conjunction with aid agencies is especially noteworthy for providing internees with several basic needs, not the least of which were forms of visible and invisible supports necessary for survival.93

“The Barrack of Death”94 Nearly two months after Christmas 1940, the AFSC reported for the week of 15 February 1941, that Gurs was home to approximately 12,000 internees95 living under conditions that stunned a visiting Red Cross officer.96 This report’s salience is clarified by a 28 December 1940, New York Times article, “Gurs Camp Shocks Red Cross Officer.”97 The AFSC report mentions that aid efforts to assist internees were necessarily limited to the most needy, the people in each Ilôt identified by physicians as especially physically vulnerable. Thus, the AFSC’s feeding endeavors focused on 1,300 people.98 In the same report, about 3,000 people who were exiled with Schwesig from Belgium also received aid. These people “were living in particularly bad conditions in the so-called ‘barrack of death.’ ”99 According to The New York Times, F. Sahlman, the Red Cross officer who visited Gurs during the Christmas season of 1940, noted that 12,000 detainees including 6,000 German Jewish refugees from Baden, Palatinate, and Wuerttemberg, were forced to sustain themselves on rations adequate for just 8,000 to 9,000 people.100 The New York Times recorded the following details from their discussion with Sahlman: “I went to the Gurs camp” he said, “to see for myself how living conditions were and I was shocked at the housing problem. In one small shack without windows and virtually without any ventilation I found 150 people. . . . I had to use a flashlight to pick my way about the hut without treading on the refugees.”

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  117

“The food situation is far from satisfactory. It is understandable that the French cannot do any more for these people than for their own. But there could be some improvement.” “When 6,000 Jewish refugees arrived from the Baden, Palatinate and Wuerttemberg, the commander of the camp received no increase in the food allowance. If this situation continues many of the older refugees as well as the sick and some 500 children will die for lack of nourishment.”101 (emphasis mine) Sahlman claimed that if an intervention did not occur, the lack of food would cause increased deaths, especially among the elderly and children. Perhaps Sahlman based his statement on those who were already in the hospital suffering from edema and starvation.102 In fact, escalating, large-scale death among Jewish internees was already underway at Camp Gurs during the period of Sahlman’s visit, according to data extracted from Gurs Book of the Dead.103 In Chapter 2 I discussed the death of 140 Jewish people who arrived at Gurs on 8 November 1940. Fifteen days after their arrival at Gurs, they succumbed to death as a result of a diarrhea epidemic. It is unclear whether these people from BadenPalatinate were registered and included among the deaths recorded in the Gurs Book of the Dead.104 Even if these detainees were registered and their deaths recorded, deaths at Gurs had already begun to spike significantly well before this group of internees had arrived. During the first nine months of 1940, Gurs’s Jewish population suffered an average of 1.6 deaths per month. This changed dramatically in the last four days of October 1940. Recorded deaths among Jewish detainees rose from two in June, three in both July and August, and one in September, an average of 2.25 deaths per month in the previous four months, to 15 deaths all occurring within the last four days of October. November 1940 brought 199 more deaths—106 females and 93 males, 168 over the age of 60 and 18 adults between the ages of 41 and 59. Two young females died in November 1940: Eveline Blum, who was only 4 years old and a 17-year-old teenager, Sidonie Wilmersdörfer. A  6-year-old boy, Rolf Neumann, also succumbed to death in November. A special report detailing excerpts of letters that had been censored at Gurs describes young Eveline’s death: “Little Eve died five days ago. The child suffered greatly and death was a deliverance for her; however, to die at the age of four years old is too early and a very painful separation for the parents. The grandfather fainted when he learned this terrible news.”105 Even if the number of dead in the Book of the Dead for November includes the 140 people overcome by the diarrhea epidemic described in the 21 January  1941, documentation, there were still 60 other deaths in the month of November. That is, in November, there were 4.2 times more deaths among the Jewish population than had occurred in the first nine months of 1940 combined. The despair among detainees about the rapid increase of death is palpable in

118  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

censored correspondence. These purged fragments of detainee letters were collected and collated in intelligence materials sometimes labeled “confidential” and “secret” by Vichy officials.106 Amidst the desperation inspired by the mounting deaths, one internee’s purged remarks from a letter read: “We are 42 of 63 people remaining, when will this death end?”107 Another detainee addressed a stark and poignant letter to the US Embassy outlining succinctly the escalating problems confronting detainees. The suppressed portion of the letter reads: Since October  25th, I  find myself in this hell of Camp Gurs, one of the world’s worst concentration camps. We sleep in the dilapidated barracks, without windows. We live in the cold and in the mud like pigs with the vermin and without having food. We have become really starved. We worry literally about starving. (We are 15,000–20,000 people). Daily there are many deaths, then the rats gnaw the corpses.108 Paul Lévy, a German Jewish man who was interned with his family at Gurs, wrote: “[T]he death rate is terribly high; since four weeks one counts already 500 burials in the internees’ cemetery. Several days there were 30 to 40 [of them] and it still continues!”109 Lévy’s estimate of 30 to 40 deaths per day is an overstatement in comparison to the number of deaths recorded in the Book of the Dead, which showed 17 as the highest daily total of deaths, on 9 December and 26 December 1940. If Lévy’s numbers are correct, then it is possible that some deaths were not recorded in the Book of the Dead or that death certificates were not issued. Alternatively, it may be that Jewish internees’ deaths were recorded separately from other deaths, and therefore, the data available in the Book of the Dead and presented here are partial. In any case, 354 people had died between 27 October and 14 December  1940, when Lévy was writing. Thus, December  1940, the third consecutive month of increased deaths at Camp Gurs, witnessed the demise of 261110 Jewish internees, the single largest number of deaths in 1940 or 1941. Among the dead were two infants, one who was stillborn and a second child who was less than a year old. Eight deaths occurred of people between the ages of 26 and 40. The brunt of the deaths, however—209—was sustained among detainees who were 60 years of age or older. Figure 3.6 shows a small building against the backdrop of the Pyrenees Mountains with a French flag atop it. Karl Schwesig’s drawing depicts two men carrying a third person on a stretcher. The windows on the building with the flag may indicate the structure is a space occupied by people other than internees; prisoners’ barracks were usually windowless. To the right and in the foreground the rectangular wooden box-like structure resembles the latrines as identified by Karl Schwesig at Camp Saint-Cyprien and described in a document by an AFSC worker.111 The fluttering flag located on the building in the background is again a reminder of the harsh, cold winds at Gurs and the desperate requests of Gurs’s

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  119

FIGURE 3.6 Untitled

(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

internees for warm garments. Emílíe Horlebeck wrote on 1 December  1940: “We left Paris in summer clothes. We are suffering [enormously]112 from the cold, so allow me to ask you to please send me, if possible, warm clothing and underwear, shoes, size 39 and socks.”113 The status and other details about the person on the stretcher in Figure 3.6 are unknown. We have no idea as to whether s/he is sick or dead. At a camp that is otherwise described during this period as vastly overcrowded, especially after the influx of internees in October and November  1940, the desolation in the drawing is evocative in view of rampant illness and death that occurred during Schwesig’s abbreviated four-month stay at Gurs. Several environmental factors may account for why 1) so many people were ill and subsequently died between October  1940 and February  1941 at Camp Gurs and 2) the numbers tapered when they did. But no single problem seems to have been responsible. Rather, detainee letters and other records delineate a complex of reasons that may supply causative and correlative evidence for the sudden changes in death rates: 1) the rapid increase of the camp’s size and its overpopulation; 2) the quantity and perhaps the poor quality of water, inability to shower regularly, minimal supplies of soap; 3) inadequate food to ensure minimal nutrition; 4) the decrepit infrastructure that was insufficient in protecting against cold and vermin; 5) the rapid spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, dysentery, and pneumonia aided by poor hygiene; and 6) the immense psychological burden associated with exile, incarceration, and warfare, in addition to the racialized stigmatization aimed specifically against Jews that made suicide appear

120  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

to some as the only feasible option for escape. Studies pertinent to the trauma of exile, the effects of war, and the physiological and psychological consequences related to racism (referred to as cognitive and emotional labor)114 added to the vast physical and environmental challenges at Gurs. These physiological and psychological consequences of racism include stressors and mental acrobatics that foreign Jews confronted solely because they were Jewish, foreigners by nationality, and members of an outgroup which had been historically demonized by a system of racialization in Europe. The effects of this trauma are understandable, if lamentable. An ICRC report comments that conditions at Gurs were tolerable when the camp’s population hovered at around 3,174 detainees.115 But when Camp SaintCyprien closed and 300 sick internees arrived at Gurs from Camp Tence (HauteLoire) in October 1940, Camp Gurs’s population quickly nearly doubled.116 An additional influx of nearly 12,000 unannounced Jewish detainees then arrived at the camp, 6,000 of whom were from the Palatinate region (and mentioned previously). Paradoxically, the rate of deaths began to decrease slowly in January and February 1941, but deaths were still twice as frequent as they had been in October 1940 when death totals first began to mount at Gurs. The causes of these reduced numbers do not necessarily indicate a diminished death rate, because they do not necessarily include certain high-risk internees. In mid-February, families with children l8 years old and younger were transported to Rivesaltes, while disabled people, tuberculosis patients, and elderly people (those 60 years of age or older) were transferred out of Gurs to Camp Noé.117 Yet, despite these transfers and fewer people from vulnerable populations at Gurs, death rates there continued to be higher than normal.118 The lessened number of burials could, in this way, be deceiving, a point to which I will return later. Howard Kerschner described the infrastructure of Gurs as “so primitive as in many cases to augment rather than diminish the dangers to health due to other negative living conditions”119 (emphasis mine). These circumstances may have contributed to the problem of illness among internees. The high numbers of sick and dead seem to correlate with the apparent dearth of supplies of soap and water. In addition to the limited number of latrines, the camp regulations note that detainees were permitted to shower only once weekly.120 In Figure 3.7, Karl Schwesig’s drawing depicts four men who are washing with bottled water, but no soap. Schwesig drew a similar picture titled Mit Flaschen Waschen (Figure 3.8). Both drawings raise questions about the amount of soap and water available for personal hygiene. In late February, The New York Times reported that various organizations were mobilizing to provide for the needs of internees, but the gulf between the detainees’ needs and what these organizations could provide was great.121 As of December 31, 1940, the French government ended its contributions of food, clothing, and other aid to Jewish men, widening further the need gap despite the efforts made by the AFSC, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, La Cimade, and others who contributed to the detainees

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FIGURE 3.7 Untitled

FIGURE 3.8  Mit

(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

Flaschen Waschen (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

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at Gurs and elsewhere. In fact, if not for these contributions, many detainees would have had no discernible means to survive from day to day. For example, on 2 February 1941, the AFSC provided 200 kilograms of soap to Camp Gurs.122 If this quantity had been divided into 3.25 oz. bars, roughly the weight of a bar of Dove soap—the AFSC shipment would have yielded 2,170 bars of soap. If each of these bars were quartered in order to distribute soap among more detainees, then the AFSC delivery would have accommodated only 6,532 people, roughly half of Gurs’s population. The miniscule size of the soap bars would have meant that they lasted only briefly. In these circumstances, where handwashing was extremely difficult given limited soap and bottled water supplies, and internees were housed in overcrowded unventilated buildings, they were more vulnerable to highly communicable diseases such as bronchial pneumonia, tuberculosis, and dysentery. All of these diseases were reported by internees in letters during the same period as the increasing rates of death at Gurs.123 These illnesses were not the only causes of death. Suicides were also reported. About 23 (or 2 percent) of the people listed in the Book of the Dead had been under psychiatric care. Nevertheless, it is unclear as to whether those who committed suicide were necessarily under psychiatric care. For example, one person committed suicide by taking the drug véronal, a barbituate. He was suffering from bronchial pneumonia when he took his life,124 but the circumstances surrounding his decision are unknown. The diarrhea epidemic which affected several communities in the Basses Pyrénées was of urgent concern.125 In contrast to the public claims reported in The New York Times during the last quarter of the 1940 and in early 1941,126 there was at Gurs an epidemic of cholera and similar diseases that caused forms of diarrhea. Even as Vichy officials were publicly denying the general presence of epidemics, they undertook several studies of drinking water to determine if the water quality was a cause of diarrhea-related deaths. This course appears to have been a suitable one, even if in practice the tests were done less frequently and less thoroughly than may have been necessary. By 1958 World Health Organization (WHO) standards, it is clear that Vichy’s testing infrastructure may not have been suitable to specific camp conditions.127 This is especially important for two reasons. First, heavy rainfall required more-frequent water quality testing, according to scientists from the period. From the studies available in the records about Gurs, it appears that water was tested twice per month, then eventually weekly. But from the number of locales tested according to Préfecture records, it is unclear whether the campgrounds were included, especially the internal sources that delivered water to camp inhabitants. Second, the test results show that the number of coliform bacteria per liter was measured as proposed within sanitation guidelines, but officials used tests to rank the water’s relative purity among the sites rather than to assess the risk levels of human consumption at locales where coliform bacteria existed. Rankings such as “excessively pure,” “very good,” and “mediocre,” in fact, all posed potential problems because any number of bacteria from zero to

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500 coliform bacteria per liter meant that consumers of that water were at risk.128 One report identified the quality of water in some public water fountains as “less good and often very inconsistent,”129 implying that some water samples were fine while others were not. In fact, the report remarked: “This is why, elsewhere the doubtful fountains were indicated to the population by the sign ‘Water not drinkable.’ ”130 In Gan, another community in Préfecture Basses-Pyrénées, bottled water was mandated.131 Wells, the source of the problem in that community, were condemned as impure and were connected to the diarrhea outbreak.132 Several 1939–1940 studies about the bacteriological causes of intestinal ailments, including typhoid fever, cholera, and dysentery among others that have diarrhea as a key symptom, indicate that “among the general population all three varieties [of infection related to dysentery] tended to thrive under unhygienic environmental conditions.”133 A separate study maintained that having a common food supply was often related to outbreaks such as the one experienced at Camp Gurs. Marion Coleman writes, “[E]ven a casual review of the current medical literature impresses one with the relatively high incidence of outbreaks of enteritis of varying degrees of severity, especially in institutions and camps, and, in fact, in any assemblage with a common food supply.”134 This common scientific knowledge may account for why Vichy officials during the height of the health crisis, which affected not only Gurs but the entire Préfecture, issued several warnings about sanitation pertinent to meat slaughtering, meatpacking, and transportation.135 Two other 1940 studies related to the causes of diarrhea may be tied with an aid report and the Karl Schwesig drawing in Figure 3.9, dated to the period from

FIGURE 3.9 Untitled

(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

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November 1940 to February 1941, when escalated illness and deaths occurred. In the Schwesig pen and ink, a naked man wrapped in a blanket urinates near a barrack at Gurs. The report explains: A great number of ailments that begin by cystitis are unquestionably by the necessity, in which the elderly people find themselves, leaving at night, insufficiently dressed, to go find the toilet, which is installed at the extreme end of the islands of barracks (Ilôts). No path leads there, it is really necessary to fight against the clay and mounted mud to reach the goal. Very often people satisfy their needs behind the barracks, exposed to the cold and frequent rain, not to mention the serious consequences of the breach committed against the rules of hygiene.136 (emphasis mine) The aid report suggests that elderly people, unable to fight the environmental challenges associated with getting to latrines, used the area immediately outside of their barracks instead. The significance of the Schwesig drawing independently underscores the report’s claim. Public health findings by two scientists from the period, A. Charlotte Ruys and Marion Coleman, note that pathogens linked to typhoid, paratyphoid, and dysentery were present in human feces and urine.137 But Camp Gurs was also faced with rat infestations, which may have also contributed to the problem of contaminating water sources or infecting detainees with parasites that could do equal harm.138 A Camp Gurs report notes, “The presence of rats in great numbers constitute another source of grave infections.”139 Moreover, infestations of rats raise the possibility that the rats could be infested with lice, which in turn, could infect detainees with contagious disease.140 If, as at Camp Le Vernet, human waste from latrines at Gurs was simply buried with lime, then this, too, may have contributed to contaminating the Camp Gurs drinking water supply.141 The records pertaining to health conditions at Gurs are complex and not always congruous nor completely understandable. Aid reports present a much more dire scenario than French governmental sources do. It is, however, clear by the actions that were taken by Vichy, such as testing the water supply and attempting to minimize the spread of disease through contaminated water or food, that there was concern about the possible causes for the diarrhea and deaths that ensued. Confidential urgent warnings were also issued about the necessity of good hygiene for people entering France from Spain.142 This last warning emerged in view of a typhus epidemic that “raged” in certain provinces of Spain, according to a document from Basses-Pyrénées.143 The appeal to improve hygiene across the board may be linked in part to a broader public health mandate concerning the City of Pau (located just outside of Camp Gurs) and elsewhere in the Préfecture. During the three months before the increase of deaths at Gurs, 15 people died in the City of Pau, seven more than

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had died at Camp Gurs, according to figures in the camp’s Book of the Dead.144 By the first quarter of 1941, patients at Gurs who were suffering from tuberculosis were being sent to the sanatorium at La Guîche.145 In February 1941, Vichy officials mandated the transfer of 1,350 children (and their parents) from Gurs to Camp Rivesaltes; and 300 elderly or physically disabled people who were either tubercular patients or people suffering another infectious disease, were transferred to Camp Noé.146 Internees who were able potentially to immigrate were sent to Camp Les Milles.147 Vichy officials, whether intentionally or not, displaced the problem, but they appear not to have resolved it. Some were being sent to either Noé or Récébédou; others by this time were requesting to be transferred from Gurs to those locales.

Social Network at Camp Gurs Contemporary psychobiological studies show that more than or coequal with any other factor, either close social relationships or perceived social support is necessary for individual health and even survival.148 One study shows that not only does social support improve health behaviors, but it also “exerts a direct effect on physical systems” and functions as a buffer “especially under conditions of stress.”149 The more threatening or aversive a circumstance is, the more effective perceived support is.150 There are several newspaper articles and other kinds of historical evidence about the meaningful work conducted by outside organizations to ameliorate conditions in France. At Camp Gurs and throughout the south of France, the American Friends Services Committee, the American Joint Distribution Committee, the Comité d’Assistance des Refugies, and the Red Cross worked to improve conditions among Jewish detainees. However, no effort was more important to the survival of Gurs’s Jewish detainees than the innovative internal social networking system organized by the camp’s chaplain, Rabbi Kapel.151 A report describing the organizational effort remarks: “The social organization at the interior of Camp Gurs is presently centralized by a central committee of assistance founded by Rabbin Kapel, the camp’s chaplain; grouping delegates of all of the Ilôts of barracks and proceeding to survey and distribute [aid].”152 Rabbi Leo Ansbacher, an orthodox rabbi, and physicians Dr. Heinrich Mayer, Dr. Gerda Boehm, and Dr. Jacque Bachrach, among others, worked with Rabbi Kapel and Dr. Mayer to solicit and distribute additional foodstuffs from outside sources. They provided particularly ill detainees with additional food with the hopes of improving their health outcomes; argued for transporting ailing community members to Camp Noé and Récébédou, which promised more and better health alternatives; and coordinated messages to and from family members in the United States.153 For example, on 25 January 1941, AFSC representative C. Bleuland van Oordt sent Dr. Mayer a list of the foods that the AFSC sent to Camp Gurs on 28 December 1940.154 Shortly thereafter,

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on 20 March 1941, van Oordt wrote again to Dr. Mayer asking that a list of Gurs internees about whom she had likely been asked or received information, be put on the list of those who would receive nutritional supplements.155 In the same letter, Ms. van Oordt inquired about a physician, Dr. Kurt Loesers, who had worked with the Friends in Paris, but presently was ill. Van Oordt also inquired about Mr. Esslinger, who was at Gurs.156 Responding to these inquiries, Dr. Mayer reported examining Dr. Loesers, and he described the nature and severity of his illness. In addition, Mayer noted the daily distribution of AFSC rations by gender and barracks. Dr. Mayer’s studiously rendered account demonstrates the three aspects of the centralized organization’s works mentioned earlier.157 First, it demonstrates the working relationship between an aid organization, the AFSC, and camp internees. Second, it informs about the comprehensive nature of work by Dr. Mayer, including physical examinations of ill patients, which, according to Mayer’s report, included 1,344 vulnerable patients at Gurs in March  1941 and 1,304 patients in April  1941 to ensure that all vulnerable detainees qualified for and received supplemental nutritional rations. Finally, the report tells us how many Jewish detainees were vulnerable as well as how carefully the centralized social network distributed the foodstuffs supplied by agencies such as the AFSC.158 In van Oordt’s 3 May 1941, letter, to Dr. Mayer, we gather insight into the number of people who had been transferred to one of the two hospital camps, either Camp Noé or Camp Récébédou, where internees could at least theoretically have received a greater degree of care.159 The combination of communications between Van Oordt and Mayer demonstrates the kinds of visible support provided by the support infrastructure designed by the Jewish community at Gurs.160 The value of this social network extended well beyond the actual physical support provided to detainees, but also included the invisible support. According to Ditzen and Heinrich, this invisible support would have been equally valuable to the camp’s Jewish community.161 Ditzen and Heinrich write: “Invisible support might therefore exert all of the positive side effects of visible support, while the negative side effects (such as discrepancy between the support demanded and provided) disappear.”162 Rabbis Ansbacher and Kapel communicated with the Ilôt delegates to assess needs and distribute contributions received. In addition to desperately needed clothing, medicines, and food, Kapel requested books to develop a library.163 I  describe this system as centralized because it was intentionally designed so that requests for material goods were made through and sent to the attention of Toulouse’s Rabbi Kapel at an address in Saint-Marie Oloron, or alternatively, to Rabbi Ansbacher, who was detained at Gurs. According to an AJDC memorandum, newly arrived German Jewish detainees, with Dr. Ellenbogen’s assistance, had begun internally organizing to “take whatever steps are possible within the

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camp framework”164 to bring relief to residents at Gurs. Requests for information and inquiries pertinent to internees were sent directly to Rabbi Ansbacher. On some occasions, family members wrote to the AFSC desperately seeking the aid organization’s assistance to get money or to give money, provide affidavits related to immigration, obtain medical supplies, and secure other assistance to their loved ones. For example, on 11 March 1941, A. Bernays sent a letter with a one-time payment of 30 Swiss francs to purchase insulin for a friend’s brother, Max Friedlaender.165 Bernays explained that his own family circumstances would not permit them to do more for this Jewish friend, but the letter makes clear that Bernays was reaching out to the AFSC to purchase and pass along the medication as a last resort to assist his friend’s family member.166 Initially, the AFSC gathered inquiries and sent them to their representative, Toot Van Oordt, who was in the Toulouse office. Van Oordt and others were then tasked with confirming the location and conveying messages of concern to these people. For example, a letter written by A. Burns Chaimers on 25 November  1940, relayed inquiries about several detainees to Van Oordt. In this instance, family members of internees on other continents had difficulty locating their loved ones, who were rapidly moved from Camp Saint-Cyprien to Gurs or elsewhere with little or no advance notification. The Chaimers’s letter read: I have had several requests from Miss Mary Rogers asking me to get in touch with people who were in the Camp of Saint Cyprien. As I know that they all have been moved from that camp into the Camp of Gurs, I presume that they are to be found there, but of course have not other precise indication. Therefore I  enclose Mary Rogers’ letters relative to: Heinz Fritsch, Ernst Rosenberg, Friedrich Frotsche, Alfred Schwager, David Arthur Fleischmann, Bruno Joseph, Walter Silberstein, [and] Willy Kahn and ask you whenever you have a chance to go to Gurs, to try to see them and to report on their situation, either to us or directly to Philadelphia.167 By February 1941, the AFSC functioned as a liaison, providing Rabbi Ansbacher with lists of people at Gurs about whom requests had been made. The field personnel in turn contacted Rabbi Leo Ansbacher, who delivered messages to and from loved ones interned. A  letter from AFSC’s director, Howard Kerschner, provides an example: We have recently sent to Rabbi Leo Ansbacher, President of the Central Social Committee of the Camp, Ilôt J, a long list of inquiries. Could you just check up on this and see if he has been able to answer the inquiries, and if he can undertake to help us in the same way in the future, and if he can

128  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

hurry up and get answers to us as soon as possible. Of course, by the time that you get there we may already have his reply. If so, please thank him.168 Evidence of a Protestant aid organization and the participation of Catholic Christians is also noted in the chapter about Saint-Cyprien. Members of all three religious groups were committed to helping sustain, to the degree possible, people who were easily identifiable as belonging to their religious tradition. Organizations such as the American Joint Distribution Committee, the American Friends Service Committee, the Red Cross, and other organizations helped as many victims of all religions as they could.

A Response to Life at Gurs Throughout the course of this chapter the startling realities of life at Gurs emerge, especially concerning the escalating high rates of illness and death during the fall and winter of 1940. These facts are all the more puzzling since they do not appear in the newspaper account of Sahlman’s Red Cross visit that occurred during the period. While it is impossible to say why some aspects of life at Gurs were omitted, it is a matter of fact that Vichy suppressed news about circumstances at Gurs. Yet even Vichy described the camp as deplorable. We learn these details through Vichy reports containing the remaining fragments from censored letters that Gurs internees attempted to send, but Vichy officials suppressed and preserved in reports about censored materials. Karl Schwesig’s satirical, politicized drawings on stamps are exceptionally interesting in this regard (see Figure 3.10). Schwesig’s stamps created at and about Camp Gurs appear to mark a turning point in his thinking about a number of circumstances, but especially his view of French governance encapsulated in the French Revolution’s motto, “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” Before Schwesig arrived at Gurs, he had revealed a satirical edge in other artworks. By the time he reached Gurs, he had experienced a shift away from Third Republic ideals that are ensconced in the French Revolution’s motto. Thus, wittingly or not, Schwesig’s usage of stamps as a canvas was emblematic. It also draws attention to the ways that Vichy had turned away from the principles in the motto. For example, the stamps raise the specter of arrests of so-called dissident French citizens and the suppression of Communist factions within France. They also conjure the litany of French laws that trapped Jewish populations, particularly elderly foreign Jewish people, who even with resources or possibilities for recourse, including affidavits, destinations, and access to proper papers, ended up succumbing to illnesses and death in camps like Gurs, or later dying in the “hospital camps” at Noé or Récébédou or at one of the hospices or sanatoria which seemingly functioned as quasi-extensions of the hospital camps. Others who were considered well but elderly were rounded up and deported to “places unknown.”

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FIGURE 3.10 Postage

stamps (Leo Baeck Institute, New York, New York)

130  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

Notes 1. “Rapport du comité international de la Croixe-rouge sur les visites du camp d’internés civils sud de la France, effectueés par son délégués, au mois de novembre 1940,” report, 6 January 1941, Archives du comité international de la Croixe-rouge, Basel, Switzerland, 4. 2. Eve Boden, telephone conversation with the author, January 2013. 3. Eve Boden, telephone conversation, January 2013. 4. Eve Boden, telephone conversation, January 2013. 5. “Communication officieuse de l’embassade des État-Unis,” document, n. d., reel 14, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archive-Police Générale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 6. Rose Abrahms telephone conversation with the author, 12 June 2012. 7. Karl Schwesig, intake card, 29 October 1940, Archives départementales des PyrénéesAtlantiques, Pau, France. 8. “Rapport du comité international de la Croixe-rouge,” report, 6 January 1941, 4. 9. Rudolf Pickler to Toot Bleuland van Oordt, letter, 9 May 1941, box 22, folder 14, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1959, United States Holocaust Memorial Archive, Washington, DC, 2. 10. Renée Ruth Rothschild, interviewed by Willa M. Johnson, 9 July 2012. 11. Renée Ruth Rothschild interview, 9 July 2012. 12. Renée Ruth Rothschild interview, 9 July 2012. 13. Steve Fulton, “Gurs Camp Shocks Red Cross Officer,” New York Times, 28 December 1940. 14. “Rapport du comité international de la Croix-rouge,” report, 6 January 1941, 8; “Service spécial d’aménagement du camp de Gurs, rapport de l’Ingénieur, letter, 11 October 1940, reel 14, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives, Police Générale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2. 15. “Service spécial d’aménagement du camp de Gurs,” letter, 11 October 1940, 3. 16. “Service spécial d’aménagement du camp de Gurs,” letter, 11 October 1940, 2; “Rapport du comité international de la Croixe-rouge,” report, 6 January 1941, 8–9; “Communication officieuse de l’ambassade des État-Unis,” document, n. d.; “Rapport sur le camp de Gurs, visite du 19 au 26 Décembre 1940,” report, January 1941, reel 27, RG 43.025, General Association of Jews in France, Camp Commission, United States Holocaust Memorial Archive, Washington, DC, 1; “Service spécial d’aménagement du camp de Gurs,” letter, 11 October 1940, 3. 17. “Service spécial d’aménagement du camp de Gurs,” letter, 11 October 1940, 2–3. 18. “Service spécial d’aménagement du camp de Gurs,” letter, 11 October  1940, 3; “Service spécial d’aménagement du camp d’accueil des refugies espagnols, rapport de l’Ingénieur de Gurs,” report, 2 November  1940, reel 14, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives, Police Générale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 19. “Service spécial d’aménagement du camp de Gurs,” letter, 11 October 1940, 3. 20. Howard Kerschner to US Government, letter, 25 February 1941, file FO371, folder 29172, RG 59.006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2. 21. “Note pour la 3ème division,” memorandum, 10 June  1940, reel 2, RG 43.035, Selected Records of Archives départementale Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 22. Howard Kerschner to US Government, letter, 25 February 1941, 2. 23. “Service spécial d’aménagement du camp d’accueil des refugies espagnols,” report, 2 November 1940, 1.

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  131

2 4. Howard Kerschner to US Government, letter, 25 February 1941, 2. 25. Howard Kerschner to US Government, letter, 25 February 1941, 2. 26. Le Ministre secrétaire d’état à l’interieur to Le Vice-président du conseil, letter, 28 November 1940, reel 14, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives, Police Générale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 27. Cf. Erich Ollenhauer to Victor Schiff, letter #FG26840, 6 December 1940, folder 29172, RG 59.0006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 28. T.H. Snow to Sir Herbert Emerson, letter, 27 December  1940, folder 29172, RG 59.0006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 29. The Zionist Organisation/The Jewish Agency for Palestine to Dr. Weitzman, letter, 11 December  1940, folder 29172, RG 59.006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 30. “Rapport du comité international de la Croix-rouge,” report, 6 January 1941, 1. 31. “Rapport du comité international de la Croix-rouge,” report, 6 January 1941, 1. 32. Howard Kerschner to US Government, letter, 25 February 1941, 2. 33. Howard Kerschner to US Government, letter, 25 February 1941, 2–3. 34. “Communication officieuse de l’embassade des État-Unis,” document, n. d. 35. “Rapport sur le camp de Gurs,” report, January 1941, 1. 36. “Rapport concernant le camp de Gurs, [Basse-Pyrénées-Atlantiques],” report, 25 November  1940, reel 43, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Departmental Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 37. “Rapport camp de Gurs, comité d’assistance aux réfugiés,” report, January 1941, reel 27, RG 43.025, General Association of Jews in France, Camp Commission, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 38. Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Le Ministre-secrétaire d’État à l’interieur,” letter, 22 October 1940, reel 14, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives, Police Générale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 3. 39. “Rapport sur le camp de Gurs,” report, January 1941, reel 27, RG 43.025, General Association of Jews in France, Camp Commission, United States Holocaust Memorial Archive, Washington, DC, 2. 40. “Service spécial d’aménagement du camp de Gurs,” letter, 11 October 1940, 15. 41. “Fate of Political Refugees: Forced Labor in Sahara,” Manchester Guardian, 19 April 1941. Not only were these men workers in France, but Vichy reportedly planned to send a number of Spanish exiles, including functional amputees, to Africa for to help build the trans-Saharan railway based on a report in the Manchester Guardian. 42. Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Le Ministre-secrétaire d’état à l’Interieur, letter, 24 October  1940, reel 14, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives, Police Générale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 43. “Erinnerung an Karl Schwesig,” document, n. d., Karl Schwesig Papers, Galerie Remmert und Barth, Düsseldorf, Germany, 1. 44. “Erinnergung an Karl Schwesig,” document, n. d., 1. 45. “Erinnergung an Karl Schwesig,” document, n. d., 1. 46. Paul Chevalier to Le Secrétaire générale pour le police-2ème Bureau, addendum to letter, 7 May 1942, reel 17, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives, Police Générale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC.

132  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

47. “Report of the American Friends Service Committee in France,” report, 15 April 1942, box 57, folder 1, RG 60.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 11. 48. “Transport d’espagnols du camp d’Argelès sur le camp de Bram,” document #3599, 14 May 1940, côte 1287 W1, Archives départementale des Pyrénées-Orientales, Perpignan, France. 49. Cf. dossiers of internees at Camp Noé, côte 1867 W37, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 50. It is unclear whether Schwesig or some later person who presumed the print was of Noé actually labeled the work. Schwesig was, it appears, very systematic in signing, naming, and dating his works. This drawing seems somewhat differently identified. At best, the identification is atypical of how Schwesig identified many of his works. 51. Marcus Banks, Visual Methods in Social Research (Los Angeles/London: Sage Publications, 2001), 11. 52. Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to le commissaire spécial à Pau et L’Inspecteur du travail à Pau, letter, 3 February 1940, reel 2, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Departmental Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 53. Le Directure des services agricoles to Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées, letter, 9 February 1940, reel 2, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Departmental Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 54. “Liste des réfugiés espagnols,” list, 18 June 1940, reel 2, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Departmental Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 55. Banks, Visual Methods in Social Research, 11–12. 56. “Service spécial d’aménagement du camp de Gurs,” letter, 11 October 1940, 2. 57. “Service spécial d’aménagement du camp de Gurs,” letter, 11 October 1940, 14–15. 58. Rudolf Pichler to Toot Bleuland van Oordt, letter, 16 May 1941, box 22, folder 13, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 59. The records described here are intake files from Camp Noé at the Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne. From these files, I include information about where internees are coming from, their occupation, nationality, and a physical description, including whether they were amputees. 60. Henri Laemle, côte 1867 W14, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France; Nathan Lévi côte 1867 W14, Archives départementales de la HauteGaronne, Toulouse, France. 61. “Culture,” American Sociological Association, www.asanet.org/topics/culture. 62. There was a structure in place operated by Protestants at Camp Gurs. Cf. Madeleine Barot to C. Bleuland van Oordt, letter, 7 February 1941, box 22, folder 9, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1945; C. Bleuland van Oordt to Madeleine Barot, letter, 12 February 1941, box 22, folder 9, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950; and Madeleine Barot to C. Bleuland van Oordt, letter, 4 March 1941, box 22, folder 9, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950. 63. Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Le Conseiller d’état secrétaire générale pour la Police, letter, 18 December 1941, reel 14, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives, Police Générale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  133

Archive, Washington, DC. “Rapport sur la chapelle du camp,” report, 3 January 1942, reel 8, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the PyrénéesAtlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. This report describes Christmas mass in the Chapel while it was still relatively new. 64. Susan Goldin-Meadow, “Talking and Thinking with Our Hands,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 15, no. 1 (2006): 34–39. 65. Mark Costanzo and Dane Archer, “A Method for Teaching about Verbal and Nonverbal Communication,” Teaching of Psychology 18, no. 4 (1991): 223. 66. Constanzo and Archer, “A Method for Teaching,” 223. 67. Cf. April Bailey and Spencer D. Kelly, “Picture Power: Gender Versus Body Language in Perceived Status,” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 39 (2015): 317–37. 68. Bailey and Kelly, “Picture Power.” 69. “Rapport sur le camp de Gurs,” report, January 1941, 2. 70. “Instructions concernant la discipline,” letter, 21 October 1940, côte 77 W13, reel 2, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the PyrénéesAtlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. Gurs was organized and described in Vichy documentation as a “semi-repressive” camp that interned refugees from Germany, Austria, and refugees of the Spanish Civil War. Thus, it is important to balance what is described about the internees with the purposes outlined by the French government (Auren Kahn to Jack Adler, memorandum, 17 November  1949, file G45–54_GR_012_0109, American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY, 1). While some liberties were permitted, it was characterized by the AJDC and in other Vichy documents as a “concentration camp.” 71. Karl Schwesig, Pyrenäenbericht, unpublished manuscript, accession no. 1988.5.21, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 16. 72. Depending upon the time and camp rules, packages, like letters, were censored. Thus, during some time periods Vichy authorities restricted access to care packages. 73. Schwesig, Pyrenäenbericht, unpublished manuscript, 17. 74. Doris Bieber to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 2 December  1940, box  22, folder 9, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 75. “Rapport sur le camp de Gurs,” report, January 1941, 1. 76. Harriett Marple to Doris Bieber, letter, 10 December 1940, box 22, folder 9, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 77. Harriett Marple to Doris Bieber, letter, 10 December 1940, 1. 78. Several letters written by detainees at Camp Gurs requested food, clothing, health support, and immigration support. 79. Abraham H. Maslow, “A  Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review 50 (1943): 372–73. 80. R. Lichtheim to J. Linton, excerpt of letter #W1373, 13 January 1941, file FO371, folder 29172, RG 59.006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2. 81. Howard Kerschner (Marseille) to American Friends Service Committee (Philadelphia), letter, 10 January  1941, file FO371, folder 29172, RG 59.006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 3–4. 82. “Programme,” document, 25 December  1940, reel 45, côte 77 W20, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC.

134  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

83. Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Le Commissaire Principal-chef du centre de Gurs, letter #CD165, 9 January 1941, côte 72 W49, reel 8, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 84. “Programmes des fêtes de Noël,” document, n. d., côte 72 W49, reel 8, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC; handwritten note, 22 December 1940, côte 77 W20, reel 45, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 85. Le Commissaire Principal, Chef du centre du Gurs to Le Préfet des BassesPyrénées, letter, 20 December  1941, côte 72 W49, reel 8, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC; Le Commissaire Principal, Chef du centre du Gurs, letter #842, 24 December 1941, côte 72 W49, reel 8, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 86. Le Commissaire Principal, Chef du centre de Gurs to Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées, letter, 20 December 1941. 87. “Fête de Hanuckah [sic] du club des jeune filles ‘Menorah,’ ” report, n. d., reel 27, RG 43.025, General Association of Jews in France, Camp Commission, United States Holocaust Memorial Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 88. “Fête de Hanuckah [sic] du club des jeune filles ‘Menorah,’ ” report, n. d., 1. 89. “Fête de Hanuckah [sic] du club des jeune filles ‘Menorah,’ ” report, n. d., 1. 90. “Fête de Hanuckah [sic] du club des jeunes filles ‘Menorah,’ ” report, n. d., 2. 91. “Informations no. 2,” bulletin, 1 January 1941, reel 27, RG 43.025, General Association of Jews in France, Camp Commission, United States Holocaust Memorial Archive, Washington, DC, 3. 92. C. Bleuland van Oordt to Ms. Aillet, letter, 19 March 1941, box 22, folder 9, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. This letter and others show that Protestants also performed essential functions that show a vibrant social network existed. 93. Beate Ditzen and Markus Heinrichs, “Psychobiology of Social Support: The Social Dimension of Social Support,” Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience 32 (2014): 149–62. 94. “Report on the Activities of the Toulouse A.F.S.C. Branch for November, December, and January,” report, n. d., box 25, folder 12, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Archive, Washington, DC, 7. The title of this subsection of the chapter comes from an AFSC aid report describing Gurs. 95. “Report on the Activities of the Toulouse A.F.S.C. Branch for November, December, and January,” report, n. d., 7. 96. Fulton, “Gurs Camp Shocks Red Cross Officer.” 97. Fulton, “Gurs Camp Shocks Red Cross Officer.” 98. “Report on the Activities of the Toulouse A.F.S.C. Branch for November, December, January,” report, n. d., 7. 99. “Report on the Activities of the Toulouse A.F.S.C. Branch for November, December, January,” report, n. d., 7. 100. Fulton, “Gurs Camp Shocks Red Cross Officer.” 101. Fulton, “Gurs Camp Shocks Red Cross Officer.” 102. “Rapport sur le camp de Gurs,” report, n. d., 3.

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  135

103. “Cimetière du camp de Gurs,” International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 1.1.9.11, folder no. 1, doc. nos. 11186763_0–11187115_0, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 104. “Cimetière du camp de Gurs,” International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 1.1.9.11, folder no. 1, doc. nos. 11186763_0–11187115_0. The Gurs Book of the Dead consists predominantly of records about Jewish detainees, especially after 1939. From 1938–39, the book records 21 deaths of others. Of these, 11 were deaths of Spanish people. Since the number of deaths in the book of people from groups other than Jewish people was miniscule by comparison, I discuss these as records of the Jewish community at Gurs. There is support for this in the report dated January 1941; Gurs is described as a Jewish camp. “We know that Gurs is a Jewish camp since our correligionists form the overwhelming majority.” 105. “Extraits de correspondences du Camp de Gurs (Bas.-Pyr.), addendum to the 4 December 1940 report,” special report #1752, 21 December 1940, côte 77 W15, reel 45, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the PyrénéesAtlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2. 106. “Extraits de correspondences du camp de Gurs (Bas.-Pyr.),” special report #1752, 21 December 1940. 107. “Extraits de correspondences du camp de Gurs (Bas.-Pyr.),” special report #1752, 21 December 1940, 2. 108. “Extraits de correspondences du camp de Gurs (Bas.-Pyr.),” special report #1752, 21 December 1940, 2. 109. Paul Lévy to Comité d’assistance aux réfugiés, letter, 14 December 1940, box 22, folder 12, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Related to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 3. 110. “Rapport sur le camp de Gurs,” report, January 1941, 3. According to this UGIF report about Camp Gurs, 178 died there in December 1940. This and other monthly totals provided in the same report differ from those in the camp’s Book of the Dead. “Cimetière du camp de Gurs,” International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 1.1.9.11, folder no. 1, doc. nos. 11186763_0-11187115_0. According to the Book of the Dead, 261 people died at Gurs in December 1940. 111. See the discussion in Chapter 2 of this book. Cf. also, “AFSC visit with Dr. Wright,” report, n. d., box 25, folder 1, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 3. 112. The words in this quote are in brackets because the handwriting was not entirely clear. 113. Emílie Horlebeck to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 1 December  1940, box  22, folder 11, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 114. Louwanda Evans and Joe R. Feagin, “The Costs of Policing Violence: Foregrounding Cognitive and Emotional Labor,” Critical Sociology 4, no. 6 (2015): 889. Cognitive labor and emotional labor are parts of the systematic racism faced by African Americans and people of color in the United States, according to Evans and Feagin. Similarly, I  argue this state of harassment and the mental gymnastics necessary to negotiate a world framed by white Christians also are a part of the systematic racialization of religious social groups. 115. “Rapport du comité international de la Croix-rouge,” report, 6 January 1941, 9. 116. “Rapport du comité international de la Croix-rouge,” report, 6 January 1941, 9.

136  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

117. Le Préfet Basses-Pyrénées to Commissaire spécial-Chef du camp du Gurs, telegram no. 523, 12 February  1941, côte 72 W44, reel 8, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC; cf. also letter. 118. Le Docteur Laclau to Monsieur le Commissaire spécial, Directeur du camp, letter, 18 February  1941, côte 72 W44, reel 8, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 119. Howard Kerschner to US Government, letter, 25 February 1941, 2. 120. “Dispositions relatives à l’hygiene,” directive, n. d., côte 77 W13, reel 45, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 121. “Refugees in France Aided,” New York Times, 16 February 1941; and “2 Refugee Groups Join in Fund Drive,” New York Times, 28 February 1941. 122. “Liste de marchandises envoyers au camp de Gurs,” list, 3 March 1941, box 21, folder 7, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 123. “Extraits de correspondences du camp de Gurs (Bas.-Pyr.),” special report #1752, 4 December 1940. 124. “Extraits de correspondences du camp de Gurs (Bas.-Pyr.),” special report #1752, 21 December 1940, 1. 125. “Rapport du Médecin Inspecteur d’hygiène sur les cas de diarrhea qui ont été constatés à Pau,” report, 4 November 1940, côte 1031 W118, reel 45, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 126. “No Epidemics in France,” The New York Times, 10 June 1941. 127. International Standards for Drinking Water, 2nd ed. (Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 1958), 7, 42. 128. Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Monsieur le Générale Laurent, letter, 29 October 1940, côte 1031 W118, reel 45, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 129. “Rapport du Médecin Inspecteur d’hygiène sur les cas de diarrhea qui ont été constatés à Pau,” report, 4 November 1940, 2. 130. “Rapport du Médecin Inspecteur d’hygiène sur les cas de diarrhea qui ont été constatés à Pau,” report, 4 November 1940, 2. 131. Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Le Secrétaire de l’état à la famille et la santé, letter # 230 I.S., 17 November1941, 1031 W118, reel 45, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 132. Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Le Secrétaire de l’état à la famille et la santé, letter # 230 I.S., 17 November 1941, 1. 133. A.V. Hardy, James Watt, Maxwell H. Kolodny, and Thema De Capito, “Studies of the Acute Diarrheal Diseases: Part III, Infections Due To the ‘Newcastle Dysentery Bacillus,’ ” American Journal of Public Health 30 (1940): 57. 134. Marion B. Coleman, “The Differentiation and Identification of Bacillary Incitants of Dysentery,” American Journal of Public Health 30 (1940): 39. 135. Cf., “Memorandum from Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées,” document, 12 October 1940, 1031 W118, reel 45, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC.

“Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”  137

136. “Gurs,” report, n. d., reel 27, RG 43.025, General Association of Jews in France, Camp Commission, United States Holocaust Memorial Archive, Washington, DC, 2. 137. Cf., Coleman, “The Differentiation and Identification of Bacillary Incitants of Dysentery”; A. Charlotte Ruys, “The Isolation of Typhoid, Paratyphoid, and Dysentery Bacteria from Feces and Urine: A Comparative Study of Some Culture Media,” The British Medical Journal (1940): 606–607. 138. World Health Organization, “Microbial Factsheets,” 220, accessed 16 September 2016, www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/GDW11rev1and2.pdf. 139. “Gurs,” report, n. d., 4. 140. “Report,” 10 February  1941, box  25, folder 1, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committees Humanitarian Work Relating to France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 4. 141. “Report,” 10 February 1941, 2. 142. Cf. for examples of correspondence, Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Monsieur le Général Commandant la subdivision des Basses-Pyrénées, letter, 21 October 1940, côte 1031 W118, reel 45, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC; Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Monsieur le Général Commandant la subdivision des Basses-Pyrénées, letter, 5 November  1940, côte 1031 W118, reel 45, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 143. Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Monsieur le Général Commandant la subdivision des Basses-Pyrénées, letter, 21 October 1940, 1. 144. “Rapport du médecin inspecteur d’hygiène sur les cas de diarrhea,” report, 4 November 1940, 1. 145. “Rapport sur le camp de Gurs,” report, January 1941, 3. 146. Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Commissaire spécial, Chef du camp de Gurs, official telegram # 523, 11 February  1941, côte 72 W44, reel 8, RG 43.035, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 147. “Camp de Gurs,” report, n. d., reel 27, RG 43.025, General Association of Jews in France, Camp Commission, United States Holocaust Memorial Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 148. Ditzen and Heinrichs, “Psychobiology of Social Support,” 149. 149. Ditzen and Heinrichs, “Psychobiology of Social Support,” 158. 150. Ditzen and Heinrichs, “Psychobiology of Social Support,” 153. 151. “Informations no. 2,” document, 1 January 1941, reel 27, RG 43.025, General Association of Jews in France, Camp Commission, United States Holocaust Memorial Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 152. “Informations no. 2,” document, 1 January 1941, 1. 153. “Memorandum to Toot van Oordt,” memorandum, 3 February 1941, box 21, folder 7, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to the Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 154. Dr. Heinrich Mayer to C. Bleuland van Oordt, letter, 25 January  1941, box  22, folder 13, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to the Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 155. C. Bleuland van Oordt to Dr. Heinrich Mayer, letter, 20 March 1941, box 22, folder 13, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to the

138  “Many of These Unfortunate People . . .”

Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 156. C. Bleuland van Oordt to Dr. Heinrich Mayer, letter, 20 March 1941. 157. Dr. Heinrich Mayer to C. Bleuland van Oordt, letter, 10 April 1941, box 22, folder 13, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to the Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 158. Dr. Heinrich Mayer to C. Bleuland van Oordt, letter, 10 April 1941. 159. C. Bleuland van Oordt to Dr. Heinrich Mayer, letter, 3 May 1941, box 22, folder 13, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to the Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 160. Ditzen and Heinrichs, “Psychobiology of Social Support,” 151. 161. Ditzen and Heinrichs, “Psychobiology of Social Support.” 162. Ditzen and Heinrichs, “Psychobiology of Social Support,” 151. 163. “Informations no. 2,” bulletin, 1 January 1941, 1–2. 164. American Joint Distribution Committee Lisbon to Mr. Katzki, memorandum #66, 15 November 1940, file NY_AR3344_00034_00881, American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY, 2. 165. A. Bernays to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 11 March 1941, box 22, folder 10, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to the Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 166. A. Bernays to American Friends Service Committee, letter, 11 March 1941. 167. A. Burns Chalmers to Toot van Oordt, letter, 25 November 1940, box 21, folder 7, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to the Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 168. Dorothy Bonnell to Toot van Oordt, letter, 3 February 1941, box 21, folder 7, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to the Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1.

4 “THEY ARE ALL SPECIAL CASES OF ILL AND OLD PEOPLE WHO NEED BETTER CARE THAN THE ORDINARY INTERN”1 Opening Our Eyes to Camp Noé

This chapter examines the complexities of what happened at Camp Noé from the perspective of Karl Schwesig’s artwork, internees’ letters, aid workers’ reports, accounts from The New York Times, and internal Vichy documentation. Specifically, the chapter contrasts health conditions, including dietary concerns and the state of life at Noé, and opportunities for health recovery with the impression that outsiders, including sick internees from camps such as Gurs, their families, and reporters, may have gotten about the camp. By comparing what occurred both with what reporters were told and reported during the period, and with how the French government summarized what happened in its 1951 history of the French camp system, a clearer understanding of Camp Noé surfaces. After The New York Times picked up Steve Fulton’s United Press Associations interview of F. Sahlman, the Red Cross representative mentioned in Chapter 3, who had visited Gurs during the peak of disease and concomitant deaths among internees at that camp, a flurry of other newspaper reports about conditions at the French camp system also emerged in The New York Times. These reports within the context of events that occurred at Camps Gurs and Noé draw attention to the somewhat conflicting nature between the newspaper reports in The New York Times and what was occurring pertinent to the Jewish populations in the French camps. Laurel Leff argues that the inconsistencies that appear in The New York Times’ reporting may be attributable in some degree to Arthur Sulzberger’s editorial posture concerning how The Times should report on matters related to Jewish people.2 Leff effectively argues that Sulzberger, for a variety of reasons, failed to give stories pertinent to Jews the prominent positioning that is accorded normally to the most important news of the day. Given the magnitude of what happened to foreign Jews in France and Jewish persons throughout Europe during the Third Reich, these events certainly qualified. This happened

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despite the fact that Sulzberger was Jewish and had family in the French camps and in Germany. Second, Leff posits that mixed-message or ambiguous news reports may have been linked to the national identity of the two main reporters from war-period France. Lansing Warren and Gaston Archambault, the two New York Times reporters assigned to write from France’s unoccupied territory, were French nationals who are described as having had a natural affinity for French culture, Leff claims. These reporters, Leff maintains, were enamored with Pétain and the Vichy government.3 Thus, Leff argues, The Times’s reporters may have been hesitant to portray the French government’s actions with respect to refugees as anything but generous.4 Finally, Leff suggests that the newspaper may have bowed to the US government’s seeming unwillingness to criticize the French government.5 Whatever the causes, the end result was newspaper accounts that appeared to strain toward silver linings amidst the peril they described among refugees at the French camps.6 Yet, in contrast, Éric Malo maintains that The New York Times with the Swiss newspaper, Journal de Genéve and other press, mounted a campaign that exposed the catastrophic conditions that existed in the French camps.7 As a result of French desires to protect its image and to maintain positive diplomatic relationships with the Swiss and American governments, Vichy undertook several immediate measures, some of which resulted in the reorganization of the camp system and the establishment of Camp Noé and Camp Récébédou.8 Certainly, The Times was among 18 international newspapers to visit the camps, including Camp Noé9 and as is evident in the present study, reported vigorously on events in France. I am, however, reluctant to draw the conclusion that The Times and other international reporting alone caused Vichy to act. It seems more plausible that international news reporting combined with Arthur Sulzberger’s 8 November 1940 telegram to Camp Gurs caught the attention of French officials. The telegram raised the specter of American outcry about the deplorable conditions at French camps.10 French officials’ response to that telegram indicates that it assuredly caused concern.11 The penchant by some Times reports to portray the French camps more optimistically than the accounts by internees and aid workers who had firsthand experiences in the camps points to another problem, that is, the degree to which the claims about changes to the capacity of French camps may have been described too positively. Camp Noé’s function and its understanding of illness and epidemic are significant. One query with respect to the hospital camps of Noé and Récébédou and the sanatoriums to which ill internees were sent is whether they were places that could improve health in the same sense that contemporaries understood the function of hospitals. Implicitly, facilities designated as hospitals and sanatoriums are associated with the relief of illness, if not securing wellness and improved health. I. D. Bobrowitz, a physician, wrote about this in a 1940 journal article: “The primary function of a sanatorium is the fundamental and first in the activities of any hospital, namely,

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care of the sick, and in this instance, the attempt to obtain an arrest and cure of tuberculosis.”12 These expectations appear to have been the same associations that existed for ailing, elderly Jewish and refugees interned in French camps and their families, according to the letters written by sick people at Gurs and their family members who wrote requesting entré into one of the two new hospital camps. These letters reveal firsthand the impending hope and desperation that patients and families felt about places such as Gurs and Saint-Cyprien. Examining first a few ostensibly contradictory newspaper reports within the context of other data to which camp officials were privy but the public was not, shines light on the fuller set of circumstances. These key newspaper reports within the context of the broader historical record, therefore, reveal complex problems and motivations that coexisted as Vichy established the camps at Noé and Récébédou. Utilizing Schwesig’s artworks to develop the categories that are explored in this chapter, the camp’s organization, its infrastructure, and the largest populations of internees—Jewish elderly people and to a much lesser extent, Spanish Civil War exiles—and the conditions that they faced stand out. Since Camp Noé was also the home for approximately 70 to 100 children during Schwesig’s tenure there, Noé’s environmental impact on them forms a part of the chapter. It is important to consider whether segregating sick, disabled, and elderly people provided them with better health outcomes in a facility such as Noé or Récébédou than existed at Gurs. In other words, were the people who entered Camp Noé from Camp Gurs (for example, the 300 internees who arrived at Noé from Gurs during the last week of February 1941) more likely, less likely, or as likely to recover at Noé than at Gurs? Was Noé as vulnerable to disease and epidemic as Gurs was, for example? Daily experiences, particularly of Spanish Republicans as laborers at the camp and Jewish internees at Noé, including women identified by Karl Schwesig as the “Badensee Judinnen,” emerge as salient. By highlighting these women, Schwesig portrays elderly women who existed as something more than people simply awaiting death. I begin by describing Camp Noé from the insiders’ purview. This chapter is bridged to the previous ones by the 299 mostly Jewish patients who were transferred to Camp Noé with Karl Schwesig in the first quarter of 1941, when Camp Noé was receiving its first internees.

Inside Out: An Introduction to Camp Noé (a French Camp-Hospital) In February 1941, Camp Noé opened its doors.13 French officials’ perception of the camp seems to have been different than the views of others, such as reporters, or even different than the results actually achieved by the camp. These data are available to us through reports that the Vichy government created contemporaneously with the camp’s opening and postwar descriptions provided by the

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French government, balanced by remarks about the camp found in correspondence from aid agencies and medical facilities that functioned in coordination with Camp Noé. A thorough, early assessment of the French camp system provided to the American Friends Services Committee by Dr. Wright from the Rockefeller Institute is also particularly important because it reveals this camp’s and other camps’ obvious problems even in its opening months. Camp Noé was an icon of hope for distressed detainees and their families. For family members in the United States, newspaper reports about events in France and the conditions inside the camps were one of the few sources of information about loved ones outside of sporadic letters or other communications facilitated through the American Friends Service Committee, the American Joint Distribution Committee, or other similar aid agencies and Jewish self-help systems within some camps. It appears from the newspaper reports that France suffered international scrutiny for the deplorable conditions that existed.14 Refugees’ accounts with reports from aid agencies seem to have been especially detrimental to Vichy. Some of these reports made their way to the United States Department of State and to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. If one reads only the newspaper reports, it appears that shortly following the negative newspaper stories subsequent reports surfaced describing the steps that the French government had planned to implement in order to rectify the problems delineated. Indeed, Éric Malo asserts these negative perceptions were foundational to the emergence of Noé and Récébédou.15 Newspaper accounts about general conditions in the camps in the free zone of France were inconsistent concerning the interconnected nature of the camps’ entrenched sanitation and pest problems and thus, health conditions. For example, in one June 1941 New York Times report the Rockefeller Foundation is credited with claiming, “that there was no ground for reports of epidemics anywhere in the unoccupied zone of France.”16 But The New York Times reports portray inconsistently the facts about life in Camp Noé. Two February  1941 reports, one written by Dr. Wright, who worked for the Rockefeller Institute, and a second one referring to Dr. Wright’s inspection of the French camps, offer a damaging assessment of the health conditions at the French camps in the unoccupied zone. Wright maintained that it would only be a matter of time before epidemics occurred in places such as Camp Le Vernet and other French camps because of desperate circumstances related to the prevalence of parasitic infestation, vermin, and infectious disease, and limited equipment for delousing, among other factors.17 Thus, the unequivocal and optimistic tone of the June 1941 news story fails to convey the full perspective and force of the Rockefeller Institute’s data gathered during Wright’s inspection of and report about the French camp system, which he also submitted to the Vichy government. Instead, Dr. Wright’s report, Karl Schwesig’s artworks, and other characterizations of these camps by aid organizations, with data about illnesses and death, refugee letters, and even other New York Times articles18 suggest a different and more consistent message

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about the state of the French camps and their inhabitants. In fact, Wright claimed the old camps needed to be entirely overhauled in order to be suitable for human inhabitants.19 Inconsistencies in The New York Times reporting are worth mentioning briefly in order to appreciate the French concentration camp system more fully. For example, the visit by American news reporters to Camp Noé and four other Vichy camps in the winter of 1941 called into question the claim in one New York Times news report that France had shuttered or intended to shutter all camps or even one camp.20 During this period, French camps were placed under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior, but they nevertheless continued to exist. According to a colleague of mine, the late Dr. Joseph White at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, as of 2014, there were 200 known camps in France.21 Newspaper articles about the French camp system also communicate the idea that liberty was intrinsic to life in the French camps. However, as both French wartime and postwar records note, even the hospital camp at Noé was enclosed with barbed wire and both the hospital camp and the sanatorium at La Guîche were outfitted with guards.22 In 1941, 91 guards were assigned to Camp Noé alone.23 Elsewhere, there is correspondence about adding a large contingent of guard dogs for use at Camp Récébédou due to the transfer there of dangerous but ill internees.24 Moreover, Nexon, where Karl Schwesig was interned after he was removed from Noé, was one of several repressive camps that lodged political dissidents and even American and British prisoners of war at one point. Thus these dispel the notion that the French camps were merely benign lodgings designed to assist refugees.25 The point is that people who were the subject of suspicion were under surveillance, even while in hospital camps. The New York Times reporting shows how differently Camp Noé and other camps in the French system looked from the inside, whether that insider perspective comes from detainees, aid workers, or French government officials. Ultimately, newspaper reports provide for us a set of partial glimpses of complex problems. They help us to know what average people then knew, since these newspaper accounts have become the public account of events. The other noteworthy aspect of news reporting that is significant for understanding Camp Noé and its origins is the paradoxical ways in which journalists like Lansing Warren describe France’s role and the camps. He identifies both France’s exemplary kindness by providing “shelter” for thousands of refugees and yet, he also labels “atrocious” the Camp Argelès-sur-Mer for “Spanish militiamen.”26 Ultimately, by August 1942, Camp Noé was at the point of deporting foreign Jews to the death camps in the East. Therefore, no matter what paradise people first hoped Noé would be, nor how helpfully and kindly Vichy appears to have treated foreign refugees, Noé turned out to have been a stop on the path to destruction rather than a benign, neutral, and protective space for foreign

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Jewish people and others. The experiences of Communists and those suspected of Communism at Camp Noé are of special significance. They demonstrate that even a hospital camp functioned on multiple levels and not solely as a place to accommodate or heal the foreigners who were interned in them. The treatment of Communists has special implications for people like Karl Schwesig who was a Communist with a long history of activism in the KPD. By considering Camp Noé as a healthcare facility, other aspects of New York Times reporting emerge as salient. For example, in an 8 December 1940, article, Vichy’s Interior Minister, who admits to poor sanitation in the camps, nevertheless denied the existence of a cholera epidemic in the French camps. Yet, evidence from Gurs’s Book of the Dead for the month of December 1940 reveals a very different story.27 Similarly, a 10 June 1941, news report cites the Rockefeller Foundation as a source also denying the existence of epidemics in France.28 Neither story entirely depicts the health realities at either Gurs or Noé, and although the Minister of the Interior is cited in the 8 December 1940, report denying a cholera epidemic, the report seems much less accurate than one provided by a German doctor who depicted health at Gurs, which is described in the same Times article. Rene Hartogs lived at Gurs during summer and fall of 1940. He portrayed the conditions there as “terrible beyond description.”29 In fact, this depiction of the camps is consistent with Vichy internal records, aid reports, and internees’ letters. At the same time that the June  1941 newspaper report was being written, State of Health reports were also being penned by Noé’s director. According to the death records from the camp, Vichy correspondence, and letters from aid agencies, indeed Camp Noé experienced either endemic or epidemic-level illness. I point out these important conflicts between internal data from camp officials and the information reported by the camp and other French officials to newspapers. It is inconceivable that camp director Mathieu, who signed internees’ death certificates at Noé and authored the reports to the Interior Minister about the state of health at the camp, was simultaneously ignorant about internees’ health status. It is likewise unimaginable that he did not know the causes of these illnesses, the profusion of deaths among German Jewish internees, or the devastatingly high level of tuberculosis among the camp’s two largest populations, German Jewish and Spanish detainees. Documents internal to Vichy and created by officials at Camp Noé from 1941–1942 openly contradict the public newspaper reports and claims attributed to Vichy’s Interior Ministry. To the extent that negative news reports surfaced, they appear to have triggered an ephemeral response from Vichy. According to Laurel Leff, New York Times reporters Lansing Warren, Percy Philip, and Gaston Archaumbault, whether due to loyalty to France or acting to comply with the United States’ war-period strategy for how to portray France, all seemed favorably predisposed to Vichy’s Pétain and France.30 Similarly, Leff argues, they blamed disproportionately Pétain’s second-in-command, Pierre Laval, for the problems that harmed Jewish people, including the Aryanization of Jewish businesses and property,

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the loss of Jewish civil rights, and the internment of Jewish people in France’s concentration camp system.31 This strategy of blaming the second-in-command resembles the way the Times’s Berlin office faulted Hermann Göring rather than Adolf Hitler for the ways German Jews had been treated.32 In any case, The New York Times coverage at best diminished the plight of Jews or attempted to soft-peddle events in France. The government’s kind depiction of Camp Noé contrasted with minimal changes that seem to have been actually instituted, resulting in little if any real material difference for internees at Noé as compared to places like Gurs. The New York Times reporters maintained that the treatment of refugees was connected to France’s own wartime deprivation.33 Journalist Lansing Warren writes: “The food shortage in France is becoming so great that the civilians in some towns and villages are struggling with difficulties almost on a par with the reduced living standards in the camps. The lack of transports and materials is constantly interfering, too, with every undertaking.”34 Even considering these struggles, however, the way that administrators governed Camp Noé further exacerbated an already difficult set of circumstances. According to American Friends Service Committee communiqués, Camp Noé, of all of the camps in the Préfecture Haute-Garonne, was particularly and perhaps uniquely troubled. The last paragraph of one internee’s letter summarizes the sense of despair experienced by people who were ill and thus, the urgency to depart places like Gurs for Camp Noé. On October 17, 1940, Ms. Kate Patzau, a 52-year-old, self-described “ex-Austrian”, made an impassioned plea for transfer “to the Toulouse camp.”35 After describing her drastic weight loss of 20 kilograms (44 pounds), she explains that the “Toulouse camp” would improve both her physical status, but also her social life in preparation for emigration from France to the United States. Patzau exclaimed, “Please hear my S.O.S.—[illegible]!”36 Likewise, Mr. Gerhard Glahs, a Quaker colleague from Berlin, wrote to the American Friends Service Committee from Gurs on February 11, 1941. Glahs’s note followed up on his earlier requests to them for a transfer to Camp Noé where he, like Ms. Patzau, envisioned he could recover prior to his planned immigration to the United States. Glahs remarked: I was asking your help in order to be transferred into a camp, dependent on your committee out of consideration for my state of health, because the state of my health was suffering from a kidney stone. Yesterday, I learned [about] the project to transfer a certain number of internees to Camp Noé, but it is a matter of 65 internees of our ilôt I cannot count on being elected. This is the motif that I addressed the move directly to you. I am able to pay my supplement required by your camp, since it will only be a short time until I immigrate to the United States. Permit me to add that in the letters of September 20, 1940 and October 4, 1940, your Perpignan delegation promised me help in this regard.37

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Miss Harriett Marple’s letter written in response to Mrs. James Corrigan’s inquiry about the conditions at Camp Noé further nuance these excerpts from Glahs’s and Patzu’s letters. Marple’s very frank assessment identifies managerial incompetence at Camp Noé in addition to the cadre of problems in wartime France. Marple explains: “most camps as a rule are very well run, but the director of this camp and his staff were sent from Vichy, and so far the administration has been anything but successful”38 (emphasis mine). Therefore, difficult conditions at Camp Noé may have exceeded those in other camps within the Préfecture Haute-Garonne or even in places such as Gurs, located in the Préfecture Basse-Pyrénées, where a thoughtful camp Commandant reportedly worked carefully to coordinate with the Jewish social structure and others to provide for health, food, and other detainees’ needs as best he could. The ominous clouds in Karl Schwesig’s otherwise bright landscape of Noé in Figure 4.1 capture simultaneously both the hope that desperately sick internees held for succor and the structural problems that impeded and stifled Camp Noé’s potential. Schwesig’s landscape foreshadows the bleakness associated with the roundups of Jewish people, Communists, and dissidents in the summer of 1942,

FIGURE 4.1  Noé

(Haute-Garonne), 1941 (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

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and the deportations of sick and elderly Jewish refugees that followed at Camps Noé and Récébédou.

Vichy’s Camp Noé Enmeshed with these perceptions about the camp were not simply facile inconsistencies, but real practices related to food provision and access to medical care that regulated internees’ quality of life and their life chances. The camp at Noé was located in the countryside, a kilometer from the village of Noé, approximately 32 kilometers (19.88 miles) from Toulouse, in the Préfecture Haute-Garonne, the Arrondisment of Muret.39 On 30 November  1941, a very thorough if willfully optimistic appraisal prepared for the Ministry of the Interior describes the physical layout and key organizational components of life at Camp Noé. The report addresses subjects such as food supplies, health, internee work, and educational and social apparatuses at the camp. Several subsections of the report open by describing the general condition of each area as “good.” But the tone of the inspector’s report in comparison to other internal Vichy documents, many of which Camp Noé’s director Paul Mathieu wrote, tell a different and more disturbing tale. They reveal problems involving everything from the camp’s inability to deal with its tuberculosis crisis to the inadequate amount of food at the camp and these effects on the likelihood of patient recovery from serious illness. These and other data help us to understand the relative rather than absolute nature of the term “good” used to describe Camp Noé in the 30 November 1941, inspector general’s report. More importantly, for understanding the history of Camp Noé, much of the contents of Mathieu’s memoranda echo closely the pictures that internees and aid workers painted. Taken together, these data recount a Camp Noé that opened in the winter of 1941 amidst severe problems that by the first quarter of 1943, the period that this chapter covers, remained unresolved. For the period from 28 February 1941 to 12 March 1943, the period of Karl Schwesig’s internment at Camp Noé, the state of the camp raises important questions about the genesis of the camp’s problems. Were these problems the unavoidable result of the war? Raw ineptitude? Callousness? Or did they occur as a result of a combination of all of these and other factors? One point is clear: while aid agencies, internees, and the second camp director Paul Mathieu all seemed to have identified and to some degree, acknowledged the camp’s problems, Vichy’s officials were apparently less willing to own these conditions publicly. It is my aim to provide as comprehensive a background as the data permit to reveal both Vichy’s view of Noé and Noé from others’ perspectives.

The Structure of Camp Noé and Its Provisions In 1941, the camp at Noé was comprised of 68 pavilions40 built of brick. While the exterior appearance of these buildings was reportedly acceptable, they

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certainly were not without the need for repairs.41 Of the 68 buildings, 17 buildings, most of which were located on the east side of the camp, were allocated for general services to the camp community. These included offices, social clubs, canteens or dining halls, shops from which limited food could be procured when it was available, two showers, washrooms, and facilities for disinfection. A chapel was situated in Pavilion 52 and the synagogue in Building 62.42 At the side of the synagogue there was a store (Building 61), a canteen for foreigners (Building 63), and a parlor (Building 64). Twenty-six barracks were dedicated for lodging internees—13 for men and eight for women and children.43 Five buildings (57, 58, 66, 67, and 68) were reserved for the infirmaries.44 Like Gurs, the barracks were windowless structures, but at Noé, electricity was provided, according to the inspector’s report.45 The UGIF and the Préfecture de la Haute-Garonne records provide detailed information about Noé’s Jewish internees. For example, we know who was housed in which barrack as of 1941; how many females, males, and children lived in each barrack; and whether family members were in the same camp. Information about internees’ financial status is vague but detailed enough to reveal that many internees were entirely destitute by the time that they arrived at Noé, despite the overwhelming number of German Jewish professionals who constituted the ranks of Camp Noé’s internees. The records document not only whether detainees were poor, but also what clothing they owned, and who was ill. In addition to the internees’ age and sex, the records also highlight patients who suffered from mental illness and others who had chronic illnesses such as diabetes. These data also identify those who were lodged separately due to pulmonary tuberculosis. But these records are particularly problematic because fewer tubercular patients are listed in barracks than existed on the rolls of the barracks or the numbers of patients who were transferred to Noé with tuberculosis. It is not entirely clear whether the reorganization of barracks described in a 4 December 1941, memo had taken place before or after the lists that includes demographic data were created. However, the records of barracks’ rosters list women and men in the same barrack numbers as the 4 December  1941, memo does. Taken together, these documents give us a general snapshot of Camp Noé’s Jewish constituency—their age, health, and data about the more localized communities of people who inhabited the camp’s different sectors. An even more intimate glance at the people with whom Karl Schwesig was housed is possible through the intake records for most of the 28 men listed as residing in Barrack 96 in 1941, the majority of whom were Jewish. Barracks 25, 26, 27, 28, 35, 36, 37, and 38 formed the Ilôt for women. Pavilion 48 was reserved for an infirmary, and 18 for children. There were two Ilôts designated for men and four as infirmaries. The men’s barracks included Pavilion numbers 65, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 95, 96, 97–1, 98–1, 97–2, 98–2 with barracks 58, 66, 67, and 68 acting as infirmaries. The painting in Figure 4.2 with unit numbers 66 (left) and 67 (right), then, are

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FIGURE 4.2 Untitled

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(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

both infirmaries. Pavilion 57 functioned as a waiting room, a space for bandages, dressings, the pharmacy, and the chief medical person’s office. Pavilions 105, 107–1, 107–2, 108–1, and 108–2 were the Ilôt housing tubercular patients.46 Based on an in-depth description of Camp Noé, the combination of facilities was distributed in five lots or areas, one which was occupied by the women and children, three by men, and one reserved for internees who were stricken with tuberculosis.47 While the 1951 report claims that pavilions were equipped with iron-framed beds, the 30 November 1941, report mentions that straw for the beds was rotated, with preference given to those who were ill, children, and women.48

Noé Contraindicated for Tuberculosis Patients The 30 November  1941, report boasts Noé’s health provisions, noting, “The health service at Noé is operated by a chief doctor, Mr. Brocard assisted by a chief nurse, three head nurses and 22 nurses.”49 While there is mention about the most seriously ill persons being sent to either the Saint-Louis Hospital in Perpignan,50 the sanitorium at Saint-Gaudens, or the hospital Cours Dillon,51 the report fails to mention overcrowding and the specific hardships that tuberculosis posed at Noé, nor that even as the report was being penned, plans to restructure the

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camp to evacuate tuberculosis patients to La Guîche or elsewhere were already underway by mid-November  1941. The problem of tuberculosis at Noé must be viewed within the framework of the French government or the perception of Vichy’s perspective about epidemics in France. As early as 5 August 1939, the French government was reportedly denying the existence of a tuberculosis problem in France. A report among aid agencies discussing how to address the health dilemma without calling it what it was, mentioned: In order to get some of the latest possible information on this subject [tuberculosis in France] I have asked Dr. Blanco of the Centro Espagnol to make a confidential report from the Spanish doctor’s point of view, of the conditions in the camps (we must emphasize the confidential nature of this for obvious reasons, since the official French attitude at the moment here is, I understand, that there is no tuberculosis).52 It also appears that as late as 9 June  1941, a similar posture about epidemics and disease spread in the French camp system was conveyed to The New York Times. In “No Epidemics in France” the Times reported, “French medical circles remarked that it was in the national interest to stamp out all diseases as soon as the first case was reported.”53 Yet, less than a year after Camp Noé had opened, Paul Mathieu described Camp Noé, where hundreds of tubercular patients and patients with infectious disease54 had been sent, in the following way: “the environment of Noé is contraindicated for tuberculosis.”55 Given that Mathieu used a decidedly medical phrase, contre-indiqué, to describe Noé’s unfitness as a facility to care for tubercular patients, it is stunning that these patients continued to be sent to Camp Noé and had been sent there from its origins, despite the camp director’s admission about the camp’s inability to treat them. In fact, the camp admitted hundreds of tubercular patients from the camps at Gurs, those located near Perpignan, and elsewhere during a very short span of time within the first quarter of the Camp Noé’s existence. The consequences of accepting these patients were twofold. First, tubercular patients admitted had a diminished chance of recovery and second, people like Gerhard Glahs, the internee-patient with kidney stones, a condition that would likely have been remedied more easily than tuberculosis at Camp Noé, were denied entry due to space constraints. Thus, people such as Mr. Glahs were prevented from receiving the kind of help that Noé might have offered, and tubercular patients had little hope of recovery. The decision to accept patients who could not be easily helped was especially onerous since the camp reached capacity as early as 21 February 1941, and was therefore forced to turn down numerous requests for admittance.56 There are several reasons that Noé was contraindicated as a facility for tuberculosis patients. When I compare the accommodations and environment at Camp Noé to 1939–1941 criteria set out in the Journal of the American Medical Association and other medical studies that document protocols for treating tuberculosis from

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the period, particularly the utility of placing patients in sanatoriums, there was no aspect at Camp Noé that comported with contemporaneous medical recommendations. While at least some of the sickest patients had been treated at Hotel Dieu, Cours Dillon, or elsewhere in the Toulouse region, they required much more comprehensive, long-term medical attention at the camp. But judging from a report about an aid worker’s visit to La Guîche, it seems that as of 27 May 1942, the sanatorium designated for tubercular internees had only 96 beds.57 Some patients had received x-rays,58 but it appears that the x-rays were used to refute claims that tubercular internees were not sick enough to be referred from Camp Noé to a sanatorium59 rather than as a tool to judge patients’ progress as a part of a recovery plan.60 The medical literature on tuberculosis mentions the improbability of early diagnosis, thus the difficulty of arresting the disease and ensuring recovery. Rather, medical experts concluded that among the public at large, most patients who had contracted pulmonary tuberculosis were likely already in advanced stages when the disease was discovered. Almost uniformly, medical studies maintained that the disease was extremely difficult to identify and diagnose in its early stages, even under the best of circumstances.61 Among the existing radiological reports it is clear that many patients who were being sent to sanatoriums were already in the advanced stages of the disease and therefore, unlikely to recover from it. For example, Siegfried Lowenstein’s radiological report notes the patient had “bilateral pulmonary tuberculosis, which was characterized by [a] hole under his clavicle the size of a chicken egg with a liberal levels of fluid on the left side infiltrated by ulcer elements.”62 Of those whose radiological reports were included with Mr. Lowenstein’s, nine of the 14 men (64 percent) had been diagnosed already with pulmonary tuberculosis.63 For those who had not been diagnosed, the radiological reports showed worrisome indicators associated with the disease in its active form.64 More generally, it was highly unlikely that patients could acquire adequate rest, get enough food, and obtain the required personal hygiene, proper ventilation, or sunshine that physicians then recommended as necessary for full recovery. In contrast, it was likely that the disease would spread further, making it all but impossible for detainees to recuperate at Camp Noé and even at La Guîche or the other sanatoriums.65 As seen in one of Karl Schwesig’s drawings from 1942 Noé titled, “Jude im Lazarett” (“Jew in the Sickbay”; Figure 4.3), people in the infirmary were situated in rather close proximity to one another. Even if this was not a drawing of a quarantined unit, given the vast difficulty in diagnosing tuberculosis, undiagnosed patients who were in the infirmary were housed such that the disease could easily spread. Nevertheless, factors such as these were ignored in the November 30, 1941, report about the camp, in lieu of much more complimentary commentary about the camp’s accommodations. Noé was a camp for the aged, chronically sick, and the so-called incurables who were sometimes shipped to Camp Noé with patients who had tuberculosis.66 Other than tuberculosis, patients at Noé suffered from pneumonia; bronchitis; cachexia; the effects of syphilis; arterial sclerosis; paralysis; arthritis, and other ailments; the

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FIGURE 4.3  Jude

im Lazarett (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

transfer of patients from the Saint Louis in Perpignan and other reports disclosed.67 Thus, if not left vulnerable to diseases such as tuberculosis in the infirmary once at Noé, both internees and their healthcare providers who were traveling from one locale to another may have been made susceptible to infectious disease during travel. For example, Karl Schwesig’s registration card from Camp Gurs notes that he was transported from Gurs to Camp Noé on or about 27 February 1941,68 after an approximately four-month stay at Gurs. Schwesig was sent from Camp Gurs to Noé with 299 internees who either had tuberculosis or were otherwise ill, according to a document dated 26 February 1941. With the 300 patients, four foreign detainee physicians and a combination of six male and female nurses were sent.69 During the train ride that was scheduled to arrive in Fauga (where Noé was located) at 7:49 a.m. on 28 February, all including medical professionals who were traveling were exposed to contagious patients.70 With the internees and medical professionals, officials from Pau also sent food supplies and enough milk for the sick to sustain them through 2 March.71 Other materials, including empty sleeping bags, bolster pillow cases, two blankets per internee, a bottle, spoon, fork, bowl, and kitchen implements for each internee were also sent.72 Two days earlier, 500 elderly disabled tuberculosis patients were also being transferred to Camp Noé from Perpignan.73 From as early as December 1941, after its first nine months in operation, it appears that the director of Camp Noé and other officials

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associated with the camp were engaged in a perennial struggle: finding space for the people they were equipped to help while constantly accepting and then transferring highly infectious tubercular patients without further spreading the disease. Travel and close proximity in trains and hospital wards not only increased the risk of spreading tuberculosis, but encouraged the spread of other infectious diseases such as typhus and malaria, and infestations of intestinal worms, mites, and lice—all problems experienced at Noé.74 Parasites posed continuous and “considerable risks to the camp population,”75 according to a report written about Camp Noé by Dr. Aujaleu. Paul Mathieu, Camp Noé’s director, expressed alarm that newly arrived, infested detainees (specifically, 400 women from Gurs and 56 detainees from Le Vernet who had been transferred to Noé) were teaming with parasites and therefore, could spread disease readily among the camp’s populace:76 Not to mention the last arrivals in February, the 400 old women from Gurs and this week, the 56 foreigners from Le Vernet were almost all imbued with lice. This complicates, in an abnormal way, our service of delousing _______ despite all of our vigilance we could not avoid that at each arrival a spread of lice was established. It would be very desirable that the attention of the Camp Chief ’s be drawn to the interest that there is from the point of view of the spread of diseases, (especially at this time) so that they only move clean people.77 At Camp Noé, an effective response to the worries about health and the spread of infectious diseases depended on slowing the rate of contagion as well as disinfection, cleanliness, and food availability.

Food as Arbiter of Health Food and nutrition were, according to 1941 studies, extremely important to the healing process for tubercular patients. Sweaney et al. in a Journal of the American Medical Association article argued that vitamin C was essential to repair connective tissue and thus, for healing tuberculosis; and if not healing, certainly important for turning the course of the disease.78 There is evidence that aid institutions attempted to supply internees with vitamin supplements in addition to the extra rations they provided to the sick. In a Toulouse-region meeting of the AFSC held on 17 August 1940, the participants anticipated the difficulty of the ensuing winter months, and they strategized about how to help both the internees and the local residents. The meeting minutes help develop a fuller context for understanding the internees and refugees in light of the local residents’ struggles: As the local population will probably [be] miserable this winter we should help them, as they have helped so considerable numbers of refugees. We must keep all unperishable food for the winter and give out for the moment

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as many potatoes and greens as we can instead. In winter the best policy would be to help existing organizations in giving them food, milk, medical supplies, etc . . . together with the Swiss Committee.79 An AFSC report for the first quarter of 1941 notes: During the months of February and March [1941], the individual requests for help in food have also steadily increased, in fact, since the reduction of the bread tickets, people come pouring into this Office towards the second half of the month, when their bread tickets are used up, imploring us to help them out with some nourishing food, as they have nothing to fall back upon. This is particularly the case for women whose husbands are prisoners or out of work, and who have a large number of children to feed. It is heartbreaking to have to refuse time and again, it being impossible to meet all the demands of these hungry people, (mothers of small children or expectant mothers) who receive rations of fresh vegetables, etc. at regular intervals.80 A more detailed sense of the overall conditions related to food acquisition and distribution emerges in the 7 October 1941, report: As time goes on, conditions in the camps, though they may be apparently improved, especially during the summer season, are actually becoming harder and harder for the occupants, because health is giving way, general food conditions are far worse than they were last year and clothes are definitely wearing out. It is with great anguish that everyone, including the directors, are facing the winter. Until now at least the fresh vegetable market was open to them, now even that is practically closed. For instance, in the Toulouse region, which concerns the two hospital camps Récébédou and Noé, an order of priority has been established. Food on the market goes first to the local hospitals, then to the Toulouse population and in the third place to the camps. As supplies are already insufficient for the population, practically nothing remains for the camps when their turn comes. We have been told time and again, not only by the internees but also by the camp doctors and directors that it is only thanks to the extra food received from us that many people have been able to survive to the hardships of camp life.81 (emphasis mine) The same AFSC report describes in great detail the kinds and amounts of food that the American Friends Service Committee made available to the sick and elderly at camps, including Noé and Récébédou: The funds granted us for this purpose have permitted us to establish a regular feeding scheme for 1,200 of the most needy people (chosen under

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medical control) of the camp of GURS as well as for occupants of the two hospital camps Récébédou and Noé (1,800 in each) where they receive a daily supplementary meal based on 40 grams of dry vegetables (chick-peas, beans, rice etc.) and 5 grams of oil per day per person. The quantity of oil has now been reduced to 3 grams on account of the difficulties of finding this rare product. Some fresh vegetables such as onions, carrots etc. in small quantities are added to the soup. This has allowed us to give every internee daily one ladle full of a very consistent soup. We have ground our chickpeas and beans making flour out of them which is more digestible for the old and sick, takes less time and therefore less fuel to cook and is more economic because it gives more volume.82 In addition to people in camps and the local community’s needs, the 7 October  1941, AFSC report notes the distress faced by “the isolated men who were susceptible to being sent back to camps and the foreign workers”—both groups of people who needed sustenance.83 The same report mentions the AFSC being forced to end food assistance to all except those in precarious situations. Yet despite the general ethos of tremendous need in the region due to scarce food supplies, including for local people, it appears refugees and internees fared even worse. Excerpts from the AFSC’s reports inform specifically about the availability and amounts of daily rations and supplemental food provided to internees. To put a finer point on the problems related to food deprivation and its deleterious outcomes for tubercular and other at-risk patients, it is essential to consider daily diet that the AFSC and other agencies supplemented.84 A Vichy official provided the internees’ menu as a part of his report about his visit to Camp Noé on Thursday, 4 February 1941. Interestingly, the visit occurred in the same month as one of the AFSC reports referred to in this section. The camp visitor from the Inspector General’s office wrote: The nutrition for foreigners and of personnel is good. Specialized personnel work with intelligence and devotion. Notably, the head chef discharges his duty perfectly. Therefore, the meals are prepared with care and one is not able to have less waste. [On] Thursday, 4 February [1941], the day of my visit the menus were composed of the following manner: Breakfast: Coffee Lunch: Farmer’s soup—a purée Dinner: A farmer’s soup, noodles with jus, and cream of Gruyère. The National Assistance offered a supplement of _______ peas and pâté. Each participant received ¼ liter of wine.85

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The same report noted: “Some nutritional supplement of dry beans and paté [sic] are given three times per week furnished by aid of the National Assistance, the Union of French Jews, and the Quakers.”86 Based on this menu, internees received an average of 373 calories daily.87 The largest number of calories (approximately 200) came from ¼ liter of wine. Thus, the additional food, such as beans and pâté, was nearly as substantive and in some instances, provided more calories than the daily rations. Without the supplement, detainees would have received only about 170 calories per day from food. That represents nearly 1,830 and 2,330 calories less than required for women and men, respectively. The additional 40 grams of dry vegetables or one-third of a cup of lentils (46 calories), chickpeas (146 calories), or another bean (139 calories), and between five grams (.176 ounces) of oil per person per day initially and later, three grams of oil (.106 ounces) or fat as a part of the supplementary diet, made an important difference for internees. The amount of oil was especially critical, since the Inspector General’s report mentions specifically the lack of oil or fat available.88 At the time, the average recommended minimum daily caloric intake for adult females was 2,000 calories and 2,500 calories for the average male, and the minimum daily fat intake was 44.4 grams of fat for adult females or 55.5 grams of fat for adult males. Staggeringly, then, these very important oil supplements provided sick internees with merely 5.4 percent to 11.3 percent of the average recommended minimum amount of fat for adults. Since fats are necessary to help humans produce healthy skin and hair; absorb vitamins A, D, E, and K; make energy; insulate the body; and form essential fatty acids, there is little wonder why a Vichy report said that fat was among their most urgent needs. Since fat is necessary to absorb fat-soluble vitamins, the deficiency of fat in detainees’ daily diets minimized the effectiveness of some of the supplemental vitamins that were provided. Given these conditions, it is therefore unsurprising that Karl Schwesig depicts men wrapped in blankets and tattered coats scavenging for food in trash bins (Figures 4.4 and 4.5). Even with the food supplements, people at the hospital camps such as Noé, by all calculations, received only a small fraction of the food they needed to be healthy and to recover from daunting infectious diseases like tuberculosis. As difficult as it was to acquire food by the last quarter of 1941, it appears that conditions had worsened dramatically by 1942, the year in which Karl Schwesig drew the two works in Figures 4.3 and 4.4. These deficiencies diminished the hospital camp’s ability to work efficiently and underscore just how far from the mark Noé was as a place able to aid in the recovery and healing of ill internees.

Populations and Health Spanish Republicans and Other “Dissidents” at Noé A French postwar report describes Camp Noé as having consisted initially and exclusively of Spaniards who were joined by others at the Camp as of May 1941.89

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FIGURE 4.4  Spanier

und Juden als Abfallessen (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

But this account conflicts with a bevy of documents90 from Noé that show other groups, including foreign Jewish people, most of whom were refugees, and Germans like Karl Schwesig joined Camp Noé in the last week of February 1941. French, Russian, Belgian, and Polish detainees were interned at the camp, but in much smaller numbers.91 The Schwesig drawing titled Spanish and Jew Trash-eating is interesting for two reasons. First, the two men in Figure 4.3 represent the two major constituents detained at Camp Noé. The Schwesig drawing in Figure 4.6 focuses attention on a subpopulation of Noé’s Spanish community, namely, Spanish Civil War combatants who as a result of the war had become amputees. While some amputations were caused directly by injuries received in battle, a medical official at Noé described needing 500–600 bandages per week to treat chronic fistulas and festering skin ailments that developed as a result of war injuries that in turn caused amputations and the use of artificial limbs. Under the prostheses, festering skin ailments developed regularly, according to the report. This problem, he implied, was worsened by the use of dirty cloths rather than the usage of proper clean bandages—a problem that eventually, and as he put it, “annoyingly,” led to the hospitalization of the patients.92 While we see among the Spanish population a distinction between the able and disabled, Jewish people’s national identity was all but obliterated, except that non-French Jews were categorized as

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FIGURE 4.5  Le chien

maigre (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

foreign Jews. But this distinction was the only one that mattered for Jewish people, since foreign Jews were the main candidates for transport to the East. Karl Schwesig’s drawings show some of the many amputees among the Spanish exiles at Camp Noé. Vichy officials sent these disabled people, who ranged in age from 48 to 55 years, to Camp Noé because they deemed them unable or unfit for work.93 Yet, as Karl Schwesig’s artworks and other documents show, these disabled men at Camp Noé nevertheless toiled in state-controlled agriculture or

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market gardening and in other capacities. To be unfit to work meant merely that these men were incapable of labor as miners or foresters in the Groupement de travailleurs étrangers (G.T.E). In the early months of 1941, there were more than 200 agricultural workers at Noé, a large number of whom were Spanish Civil War fighters who had been injured, had limbs amputated, and were fitted with prostheses.94 Prostheses were sometimes provided through the American Friends Services Committee, which had been active in Spain during the Spanish Civil War (February 1936-April 1939) and the migration of Spanish people into France. Individual intake records from Camp Noé show that several Spanish internees who were at Camp Noé during Schwesig’s stay at the camp were self-described skilled agricultural workers who were also amputees. Manuel Areces Garcia had a physical amputation similar to the Spanish Republican wielding the hoe pictured in the center of Schwesig’s drawing in Figure 4.6. Areces Garcia, an agricultural worker from Barcelona, arrived at Camp Noé on 16 July 1942.95 According to Camp Noé’s files, the unmarried farm worker turned soldier had half of his right knee removed and his right leg amputated.96 While at Noé, the 27-year-old man lived in Barrack 68. On 11 September 1941, he had requested to be repatriated to Spain. Once back in Spain, he planned to seek asylum in Mexico. Just over a year after that request had been made, he was denied repatriation. At Camp Noé, in addition to the Spanish Republicans, there were also members of the International Brigade, resistance fighters, Communists, and others considered to be dissidents who were lodged in the Ilôt Spécial depicted

FIGURE 4.6  Spanien,

Noé (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

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in Figure  4.7. Enrique Cucarella Serra, a 59-year-old man, was described as a “notorious Communist”97 who assisted in ordering meetings for the Communist Party.98 Cucarella Serra was, as of February 1942, lodged in the Ilôt séjour survéille pictured in Figure 4.7.99 Like Curcarella Serra, Willi Trester, who was an avid anti-national socialist, was detained in France for political reasons. Trester had been imprisoned in a concentration camp in Germany in 1934. Afterwards, he fled Germany and fought as a part of the International Brigade during the

FIGURE 4.7  Ilôt

spécial séjour surveille (Noé) 1942 (sous l’autorité du gouvernement des [sic] Maréchal) (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

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Spanish Civil War.100 Eventually, this status earned Trester and Karl Schwesig, with five other people, a transfer from Camp Noé to the repressive Camp Nexon on 18 March 1943.101 Even though several of the Spanish Republicans with agricultural expertise did farm work while at Camp Noé, not all of the men with farm experience worked in the field. Pedro Serrano Troya,102 a 25-year-old agricultural worker who had been recruited into the Spanish Civil War in 1937, had his left leg amputated up to his knee similar to the man with his back facing the viewer in Figure 4.7. Serrano Troya was transported to Camp Noé on 26 February 1941, at about the same time that Karl Schwesig was admitted to the camp.103 He entered Camp Noé from the predominantly Spanish camp at Argelès-sur-Mer. He was housed in Barrack 98–2104 and worked as a kitchen hand at Camp Noé.105 Records indicate that he and the other predominantly Spanish detainees were charged with turning their living space into a place of lewdness or debauchery. A request for punishment was also made against Serrano Troya for insubordination toward his female supervisor.106 These vignettes corroborate that Schwesig witnessed the kinds of people who are the subject of his artworks, folks with similar physical characteristics and in certain social conditions during his camp tenure, thus reiterating the historical value of his visual narratives. If readers rely on only the 1951 report that summarizes the camp’s history, people who actually arrived at Noé in its first months are unfortunately obscured from the camp’s official record.107 Significantly, based on early State of Health reports, many of the camp’s first occupants died soon after arriving at the camp.108 Even though death certificates for many of the people who died in the early months of Camp Noé appear to be missing from the remaining record, fragmentary reports that resemble the later established biweekly State of Health Reports exist for March and April 1941. At that time, there were approximately 1,300 foreign Jews and Spaniards of the 1,561 people interned109 at Noé, according to an early camp health report.110 Elsewhere, these people are described by Vichy officials as consisting of predominantly Jewish, elderly or Spanish, middle-aged people, most of whom had tuberculosis.111 As I will discuss later, of the few remaining scattered official reports about the state of health, the language, which appears somewhat duplicitous, actually reveals that the definitions of sick, sickness, and epidemic are socially constructed rather than biologically determined, so as to exclude even people who were incurably ill. It is to this matter of how sickness was socially constructed that we turn after I explain patients’ and aid workers’ perceptions about Camp Noé and La Guîche, a sanatorium where many of the tubercular internees were sent. Here, I also compare the views of the patients and aid workers with the accounts of the French camps in The New York Times. First, I examine three other constituencies—the children, the Jewish and the demi-aryan women at Camp Noé. The chapter ends by explaining the roundup of foreign Jewish persons in August 1942. In light of these deportations to death camps in the East, Msgr. Jules-Gérard Saliège and

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Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas made compelling protestations about the treatment of Jewish men, women, and children in the Préfecture Haute-Garonne.

Children’s Health at Camp Noé To read the postwar description of Camp Noé one would think the camp was made exclusively of elderly, ill, or disabled people. However, during Karl Schwesig’s tenure at Camp Noé, there were 70 to 100 children at the camp. While children were housed normally with their female parent or guardian, we see in the Karl Schwesig drawing a small girl who appears to be holding a doll standing among men (see Figure 4.8). The girl is in the forefront of the drawing between a Spanish Republican and a young man whose back is facing the viewer. The two are standing with three other men, including an amputee in the background to the left and a pipe-smoking Spanish Republican who appears to be in conversation with a younger looking man to the girl’s immediate right. In the drawing, the eyes of the two Spanish Republicans and the little girl are trained on the younger man. In this book, I have highlighted children much less than other constituencies, but Schwesig’s painting of the Kirchen Katze (“church-cat”; see Figure 4.9) and the drawing with the small girl at Noé emerged as particularly salient to the story of Camp Noé after I read the AFSC’s 1940 fourth-quarter

FIGURE 4.8 Untitled

(Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

“They Are All Special Cases . . .”

FIGURE 4.9  Kirchen

163

Katze [sic] (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

report and Dr. Wright’s March  1941 depiction of life for children in French camps. The paucity of food even for children outside of the camps in Toulouse was dire. The AFSC report highlighted the neediness of children by recounting the story of a little girl who fainted at school from a lack of healthy food. The child described eating a cream tart that was rancid and made her ill.112 Indeed, by 28 August 1942, even authorities in the Secretary of the Interior’s office were raising the alarm in a letter written to the Secretary of Agriculture and Supplies. Concerning Camp Noé officials declared: “[T]he food situation of this camp requires an immediate intervention, you would be obliged as a consequence, to require the departmental organizations of supply, any measure that may ameliorate this situation.”113 About a month earlier, Dr. Jean Brocard, the chief medical authority at Camp Noé, wrote: Since a month and a half, the state of health of foreigners has diminished appreciably. The considerable weight loss (10 kg. to 25 kg. [22.05 lbs. to 55.12 lbs.]) that they show since their internment has rapidly worsened 3 kg. to 5 kg. [6.61lbs. to 11.02 lbs.] since one and a half months; most are physiologically underweight (some refugees present between 35 kg. and 38 kg. [77 lbs. and 84 lbs.]) The signs of malnourishment appear serious.114

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Dr. Brocard’s letter points to the grave problems associated with severe malnutrition that sometimes resulted in cachexia or wasting muscle mass among adults. The story about the fainting girl may be linked to Dr. Wright’s 1941 account of camp conditions and emblematic of another profound set of physiological problems linked to food deprivation. In describing the camps’ need to be rid of rat infestations, Wright cautioned authorities to carefully place poison so as not to induce hungry children to eat it.115 The dual challenge posed by hungry or starving children and rat infestations made Schwesig’s church-cat a very welcomed friend. Concerns about children’s safety with Dr. Jean Brocard’s description of severe malnutrition and weight loss, considering the numbers of people diagnosed with and suspected of having pulmonary tuberculosis and cachexia, catapults food deprivation at Camp Noé into a different realm.116

The “Badensee” Jüdinnen and Christian Women at Noé The mere title of Karl Schwesig’s Kirchen Katze painting hearkens the inspector general’s report, which mentions a chapel in Pavilion 52 and a synagogue in Building 62.117 Thus, the painting of the Kirchen Katze introduces not only Noé’s children, but two other distinctive groups at the camp during Karl Schwesig’s internment there. Upon an initial examination of the drawings in Figures 4.10 and 4.11, the images appear to refer to one group, Camp Noé’s Jewish women. Yet, clearly Schwesig’s titles distinguish two groups of women. The Jewesses from Badensee pictured in Figure 4.10 were among the dozens who are referred to as the “Jews from Baden.”118 Elsewhere, the people who were deported to France are referred to as the women, Jews,119 or people from Bodensee. In fact, there is no place called Badensee in Germany. While many Jewish persons were deported from Baden-Württemberg, Bodensee is a particular location on Lake Constance that borders Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. The references in the titles of Schwesig’s artworks seem to conflate “Baden” from the state of BadenWürttemberg and “see” from the locale Bodensee. From these two he used the word Badensee in the title of some artworks to reference particular women. Such a use of words in titles is not unusual for Schwesig’s artworks. A similar example is discussed in Chapter 2. According to internee files from Camp Noé, Jewish families had been expelled from their homes in Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Rottemburg, Krautheim, Grötzinger, Gunzenhausen, Kuppenheim, Nonnenweier, Grünstadt—all cities located in Baden-Württemberg, including from the region near Lake Constance called Bodensee, as the titles of Karl Schwesig’s drawings suggest. Like Karl Schwesig, some of these women had been initially interned either Camp Saint Cyprien or at Camp Gurs or both,120 and from Camp Gurs they were transferred to Camp Noé due to their age, incurable or chronic illness, disability, or some combination of the three.

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FIGURE 4.10  Badensee

[sic] Jüdinnen at Noé (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Western Galilee, Israel)

The women who are described as Mischlinge, demi-aryan, or mixed-race women constitute the group identified in Figure 4.11. These women who had converted to Christianity, but were of Jewish ancestry, had been expelled with the Jewish population from Baden-Württemberg. While the intake records more clearly identify a large number of Jewish women from Baden-Württemberg, the identity of the so-called mixed-race women is more obscure. In other words, whereas women (and men) who identified as Jews were found in records consistently, no

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FIGURE 4.11  Badensee [sic] Jüdinnen, protestantische Kirche, Noé (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot,

Western Galilee, Israel)

religion is listed on some women’s intake forms for Camp Noé, but it is clear they also had been expelled from Baden-Württemberg and as a part of the Jewish communities. Of the hundreds of records examined, one woman’s file notes her religion as Protestant. Significantly, Jewish men, Spanish Civil War exiles, Spanish Republicans, and men of other nationalities at Camp Noé usually acknowledged a religious tradition or less frequently, the lack of one. Some intake files were not noted with a religion even though people had been expelled from Germany for either having Jewish ancestry or for being Jewish. This nonreligious designation is

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important because not all people who German or Vichy laws deemed either Jewish or mixed-raced understood themselves as they were perceived and classified legally. Since religion was rarely omitted from these files, which were otherwise normally fully complete down to detailed physical descriptions of internees, it is reasonable to conclude that women who omitted this information and were expelled from Germany may have been categorized by officials as mixed-race, a social identity which these women did not embrace. Women who were expelled from Germany, celebrated Jewish holidays, and yet, described themselves as being without religion, may have considered themselves ethnic Jews—people who were nonreligious but were born into Jewish families and valued Jewish culture. It is unclear by what Schwesig meant by “Badensee Jewesses in the Protestant Church.” It is plausible that the women in Figure 4.11, whom Schwesig described as “Badensee Jewesses in the Protestant Church,” identified as Christians, but would have been considered by Vichy and German authorities as mixed-race or simply Jewish women sitting in the church at Noé. Schwesig’s drawings of the women from Bodensee find concordance with the historical record. Among the records for Camp Noé’s Jewish women and those who were perceived as part Jewish, there were numerous records of women who had lived within a radius of 311 to 24 kilometers (195 to 15 miles) from Lake Constance or the region called Bodensee, hence, the titles Schwesig assigned to these drawings. Karl Schwesig’s drawings of these two groups of women are noteworthy for several additional reasons. First, like the drawings of the Spanish Republicans and the little girl, these artworks humanize the internees at Camp Noé beyond being subjects of illness or disability, or people who held particular political or religious convictions. Their status as human beings is eminently important for grasping the social conditions people experienced and for understanding the individual struggles that were familiar to all detainees at some level, but nevertheless unique to the persons undergoing them. In Chapter  3, we described how Jewish and Christian internees celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas at Camp Gurs. Primary source evidence, including the script from the Pesach liturgy and secondary sources, describe both Pesach121 and Easter at that camp as well. Schwesig’s artworks from Camp Noé inform us about religious life there, and Simon Dreyfuss’s letter underscores this fact. Dreyfuss, a German Jewish businessman who with his wife Meta had been expelled from the Karlsruhe in 1940, arrived first at Gurs and was later sent to Camp Noé, where he became the representative for the Jewish community there. On 14 March 1943, Mr. Dreyfuss wrote a detailed letter requesting permission for about 64 people, the majority of whom were Jewish women, to fast on Saturday evening, 20 March 1943, in advance of Purim. The letter asked also for permission to say prayers in the synagogue, “after the appearance of the stars.”122 In contrast to Yom Kippur, Purim is a minor fast day. However, one can well imagine the grave urgency of fasting amidst the difficult food shortages documented in this chapter.

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The choice to fast is even more poignant in view of why Purim is celebrated as a Jewish holiday in the first place. The festival is intended to be a joyous celebratory commemoration of Queen Esther’s intervention with the Persian King that prevented the annihilation of Jews at Haman’s hands (Esther 1–8). Given the fairly recent roundups in France and the forced departure of foreign Jews from Camp Noé to the East starting in the late mid- to late summer of 1942, these Jewish detainees’ fasting and prayers for the safety of Jewish people during Purim are even more meaningful.123 Camp Director Mathieu wrote back to Mr. Dreyfuss granting permission.124 Babette Metzger, a grey-haired, blue-eyed woman, was among the Jewish women on Simon Dreyfuss’s list of those seeking permission to celebrate Purim. Metzger, who was about 1.34 meters or 4 feet 4 inches tall, reminds us of the two rather diminutive women pictured in Figure 4.10.

Newspaper Reports, Patients, and Aid Workers’ Views of Camp Noé Camp Noé was one of the “improved” French camps that Vichy officials promoted, unlike places such as Camp Gurs. In this section of the chapter, I examine whether the changes that ill internees had hoped for when they were transferred to Camp Noé ever materialized. A search of The New York Times online archive reveals that about 25 newspaper reports about Jewish exiles, Christian exiles of Jewish ancestry, and the unfolding refugee crisis in France were published between 30 June1940, and 20 December 1942.125 Twelve stories depict some aspect of internees’ health dilemmas, disease, and general needs, including food and clothing or related conditions experienced by these refugees. The other 12 articles focus on the perils faced by Jewish people who were attempting to emigrate and more broadly, the mounting difficulty that Jews experienced as antisemitic pressures in France affecting the status of Jewish people increased exponentially. Of the 12 news stories about health, disease, physical conditions, and needs, nine occur between 5 December 1940, and 30 March 1941. This period is particularly important because between 27 October and 31 December 1940, Camp Gurs saw a sharp rise in sickness among internees. At this time, you will recall death rates of mostly Jewish internees at Camp Gurs skyrocketed from an atypical high of 15 deaths, all of which occurred in the last week of October, to 199 deaths in November 1940 and 261 deaths in December 1940. Considering these death figures at Gurs, the newspaper articles promising improved facilities for migrants highlight more fissures between what officials said to the news media and why they may have made these statements. Focusing on these differences may appear unimportant or could even be perceived as casting undue scrutiny on the Vichy government, which was itself under immense distress. Yet, the differences between what was said in the newspaper accounts by

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officials and what occurred at places like Camp Noé matter in how we read the newspaper accounts from the period and how the period will be remembered historically. For detainees who were prospective patients and their family members, what they expected from Camp Noé as a place for potential health improvement or restoration and what they encountered was likely different. For example, in one report, Vichy authorities describe camp improvements as a part of their “sacred” obligation to detainees.126 This “sacred” obligation notwithstanding, a unanimous chorus of concerns emerged from journalists, aid workers, and internees in the 12 New York Times articles. Notably, journalists who in March 1941 had visited five camps in France, including the newly established camp at Noé, and aid workers, who visited just two months afterwards, all without exception acknowledged what one visiting journalist characterized as the “immensity of the international problem.”127 Aid workers, internees, and journalists as well as outside authorities like the Rockefeller Institute all decried the “squalid” physical and health conditions that internees experienced.128 Lansing Warren noted that the tour of the French camps that he and 18 other international journalists took was under the auspices of Vichy officials, Director Fourcade of the Ministry of the Interior and Charles Benoist Dazy from Vichy’s Information Bureau. The visit could, therefore, hardly ensure a fully accurate portrayal of conditions. Thus, Warren acknowledged: “It would be absurd to profess that the casual inspection that it was possible to make on this trip, at a camp that had been prepared for it some weeks in advance, could permit an accurate conception either of the material situation or the mental condition of the inmates.”129 Nearly one month earlier, on 24 February 1941, an authoritative Vichy official gave conflicting perspectives about improvements in the French camps. He maintained that the project to improve French camp conditions that resulted in the use of places such as Camp Noé as a hospital camp was done to create refugee camps that were “worthy of [France].”130 Yet, in the same newspaper report, a Vichy official disputed the reports by others about the poor conditions in camps. The official complained, saying: “There have been many terrifying stories in the foreign press about conditions in French camps. They all are absolute lies. While, as I said, living conditions were no bed of roses, not one inmate of the camps can truthfully say he was not treated with humanity and all possible care for his health”131 (emphasis mine). These news reports exemplify contrasting views that raise important and valid questions about the reasons for why Camp Noé (and other French camps) emerged, and more important, if or how they reflected improvements for internees. Data show that camp officials extracted information about internees’ impressions of Camp Noé from letters that internees wrote. They then appropriated these statements or excerpts of the statements to affirm the satisfactory status of Camp Noé that they described in biweekly reports about morale at the camp. Generally, these excerpts focus on the accommodations at Camp Noé in

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comparison to the treatment internees received at their previous camps, whether Camp Le Vernet, Camp Gurs, or elsewhere. Later, I share six of these excerpts. From a sociological perspective, there are several questions about how these data were collected by camp officials and therefore, how they should be analyzed given the possibility of selection bias. This bias could jeopardize an accurate understanding of patients’ overall experiences at and their views about Camp Noé. Camp records show that French governmental sources read and censored internees’ mail as a matter of policy. In the chapter about Gurs you may remember, officials similarly extracted information from detainees’ letters and used that information in official reports to describe what detainees thought and attempted to disclose to outsiders. It is unclear whether internees at either camp knew that their mail was censored. If internees knew their mail was being read, we must consider whether they may have felt pressured to write in certain ways. This is an important consideration with respect to Camp Noé, since elderly, hospitalized internees represent particularly vulnerable populations. The same authorities who read their outgoing letters also had the power to deny, limit, or increase food; provide or withhold clothing; provide or withdraw medical aid; and had the power to deny highly sought immigration assistance, which was of unique significance to foreign and stateless Jewish internees and political dissidents. From what remains, it is impossible to know how the patients’ letters were selected and what portions of them were omitted. Thus, it is impossible to tell whether the sample available is representative of the views of all internees at Camp Noé; or if, for that matter, the responses that were used in the biweekly reports were cherry-picked and therefore biased in favor of the institution. Most of the excerpts appear with little or no context provided. I present them as they appear in the reports. I  selected six comments from several dozen.132 They usually follow an introduction that characterizes the overall sentiment of the camp. On some occasions, even the extracted passages are censored. These vignettes appear in the official reports on camp morale, which are addenda to the bimonthly State of Health Reports produced by camp officials. The patient excerpts are from Camp Noé’s July 1941 report. A Spanish exile, Abbaran Boldomero, who resided in Barrack 81, wrote to Ghini Victor on 23 June 1941: “Here one sets up several shops, among other things, a joiner’s shop, a soap factory, rope shop, a basket-weaving shop; it is in the last one that I work.”133 Pierucci Alluni also wrote to Victor on the same day. He reported: “At Noé, the barracks are better developed than at [Le]Vernet, the food is more abundant and better prepared. We eat in a refectory on pretty tables, on plates as in a restaurant. From today’s date, the doctor has ordered for me a special regimen.”134 A later report, prepared in July or August of 1941, omitted the names of the letter writers and the intended recipients.135 An internee noted: . . . I have been transferred a few days ago to the Camp’s infirmary. My fever is 40° C [104° F] today. They transferred me here, as I could not be

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looked after well at the barrack. All comes from my treatment at [Le] Vernet. But today I find myself much better and you do not need to be worried about me. They care for me very well and at the moment, they give to me 1.5 liters of milk. . . .136 Another detainee remarked: “. . . Since you left to embark for America, our life has indeed changed. I have at the present moment very good food (not too much, but enough, well prepared.) In all cases, we could not complain. . . .”137 These last excerpts are comments from internees. One had been sent to a hospice and another to a sanitarium. Since remarks from people who had been sent to these institutions were included as a part of Camp Noé’s monthly reports, it furthers the perception that Toulouse area hospices and sanitaria were at least, for some purposes, viewed as a part of Camp Noé’s jurisdiction. Camp officials, almost without exception, describe camp morale as “satisfactory,” but aid reports offered a dramatic counterbalance to these and other comments about the camp. American Friends Service Committee employee Harriett Marple described Camp Noé by writing, “[T]he general conditions as far as ravitallement goes are bad, and there are many complaints.”138 Marple’s 5 May  1941, evaluation of conditions cast aspersions on the notion that morale at the camp was satisfactory. The fact that the disposition of some internee comments reflects a degree of change in comparison to experiences at other camps fails to acknowledge the number of remaining problems and concerns that Helga Holbek was informed about on 4 May 1941.139 Indeed, internal Vichy memoranda describe the array of complaints that had been lodged against the camp140 and Mr. Laurelli, who was then director of Camp Noé.141 According to one letter, four American agencies had made unfavorable reports to Camp Noé officials that then had made their way into American newspapers and other publication outlets.142 Doctors, nurses, guards, and camp inhabitants reported negative interactions with the camp director.143 In the end, even Vichy officials acknowledged Laurelli as an inappropriate person to lead a camp hospital of foreigners.144 Mrs. Jeanne Corrigan, a delegate from the American Red Cross and president of Bienvenue aux Soldats Prisonniers,145 visited Camp Noé on 9 May 1941. She registered concerns about malfeasance on the part of camp officials. Specifically, she suspected that they were neither properly distributing food, soap, and clothing intended for internees, nor were they delivering packages that had been sent to internees by family members and friends.146 Furthermore, she was dismayed by the “perfectly unpleasant”147 disposition of the director at Camp Noé during her visit.148 In one of the same memos, Paul Mathieu, who had been the director of Camp Septfond, was identified as a new, positive corrective to the leadership problems at Noé.149 The 7 October 1941, AFSC report, a set of AFSC field notes from a one-day visit at Camp Noé dated 14 April 1942, and a 27 May 1942, confidential letter on conditions at La Guîche provide a different perspective than the one offered

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in the Vichy officials’ State of Health reports. These three documents convey some idea of the consistently difficult if shifting circumstances whether evoked by the same or different environmental factors at the camp. Whereas the 7 October report focuses particularly on food, the report from the last quarter of 1941 details more acutely the problem related to the availability of clothing. Conditions in the camps constantly vary. Managements change, people are transferred from one camp to another. Improvements or changes are made. Yet one thing remains, and that is, the ever-growing problem of food, of fuel and clothes, (not to mention the terrible moral depression,) which even with slight improvements here and there is never sufficient to reestablish the health of those who have lost it. . . . I have seen [a] number of people in the camp who cannot get up because they have no clothes to wear. Their food has to be brought to them. One of the men I visited in a barrack had a paper jacket without sleeves on his naked body, and blankets. That was his whole outfit night or day at often a temperature far below the freezing point. The clothe[s] problem arises from the fact that even with money it is impossible to buy them.150 (emphasis mine) The field notes from an aid worker’s visit to Camp Noé in the spring of 1942 concur that this clothing crisis made it impossible for some detainees to go outside for months at a time or even to get up out of bed. “With the return of spring and warmer weather, new hope seems to rise even in the hearts of all these poor miserable suffering human beings; and those who in winter could not leave their beds, for lack of anything warm to wear, creep out to catch the first warm rays of sunshine.”151 Among other points, these excerpts provide a broader set of views about conditions at Camp Noé than merely reading the State of Health reports on morale. Also, they underscore the important distinction between “improvements” in camp conditions and “changes.” While distinctions between the two may seem facile, a survey of the data from the period reveals that the two notions were sometimes conflated. Conditions at the La Guîche sanatorium as described by a visiting AFSC aid worker who visited the facility to assess patient needs show that difficult problems existed there as well. La Guîche, which was located in the Préfecture Saone-etLoire, was one of several medical facilities for tubercular internees from Camp Noè who qualified as sick. The sanatorium, which was located about “500 meters [or roughly a third of a mile] from a village was opposite a vast panorama of the plain.”152 When the aid worker arrived at La Guîche she was escorted to the acting director’s office, where the acting director described the chaotic atmosphere at the sanatorium. He outlined numerous recent changes in the administrative and medical staff.153 The facility accommodated 96 patients who were housed according to their national or ethnic identity. The acting director alluded to the

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continued struggle to provide internees with adequate food. In one case, even though the Quakers had shipped supplementary foodstuffs in order for detaineepatients to receive afternoon tea, the patients, apparently, had never received the food because either the sanatorium either had not received the package sent or the food was not distributed to the intended recipients.154 Even in a facility set aside for tubercular patients and run by a young physician described as “apparently willing, sincere, and understanding”155 the problems he and his patients confronted were extraordinary.

Defining Sickness: When Disease Is Not Illness and Epidemics Do Not Exist It may be taken for granted often, by lay people especially, that the number of diseased or chronically ill people within a society or subculture such as a concentration camp is synonymous with the number of people who are counted as sick. However, the two are not one and the same. The number of sick folks may include a range of people—from those who are diseased or chronically ill to those with disorders or physiological differences, whether by dint of birth or accident, and who require prostheses. However we define health and sickness, sickness is a socially constructed perception related to bodily functionality, whereas disease is linked to the biological health of organs and body systems. In any case, it would appear that if people experience the breakdown of a system or an organ, then they are sick. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that at Camp Noé, the number of diseased internees far exceeded the number of people who were identified and categorized as sick in the formal State of Health reports. In Vichy’s construction of sickness, the degree of physical degradation seemed to have been an important marker for determining who was counted as sick in the reports. In short, taking the reports at face value rather than within the context of other archival materials would lead report readers to think the number of ill people were from one to two hundred, rather than the hundreds who were experiencing varying stages of disease. These differences reveal that either Vichy or officials at Camp Noé ostensibly had a context-specific definition for the words sick and epidemic. Based on this socially constructed understanding of sickness, officials segregated the diseased by severity of symptoms and labeled those who were most diseased as sick. This notion is supported by a portion of the AFSC’s 14 April 1942, field notes in which an aid worker wrote about internees at Camp Noé: “. . . There are those who are sick and wish to be placed in hospitals or nursing homes, those that need special medicines which they cannot afford to pay for”156 (emphasis mine). This kind of parsing suggests that an internees’ degree of sickness had to do with the officials’ designation. It begs the question of whether the capacity of the camp matched internees’ expectations. The evidence implies that the combination of perceptions about improvements based on the promises by French authorities and reported in reputable newspapers, and internees’

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desperation in camps such as 1940–41 Gurs, led to hopes for help beyond the resources that would ever be available in the quantities needed. In the next section of the chapter, I delineate what sickness or illness apparently meant at Camp Noé based on data extracted from the State of Health and similar reports.157 Eliot Freidson describes the prevalence of socially constructed definitions of sickness. He explains first that disease and illness are distinctly different. While disease is biological, Freidson writes, “illness as a social state is created” and “. . . limited by perhaps whatever few biological facts are universally recognized, and ordered by organizations and occupations devoted to uncovering and managing illness”158 (emphasis mine). This is key for understanding the State of Health reports. It is also invaluable for getting at the perceptions of and actions toward health, illness, and healing that the camp officials seem to have taken, wittingly or not. For Vichy officials at Noé, managing illness among refugee and migrant populations during wartime resulted in a definition of illness that obscured the number of people who were actually suffering from diseases. Consequently, grasping what official records mean by the term sick, identifying who precisely the word designated, and therefore, when, how, and why sick and epidemic were applied to Noé’s detainees, is not self-evident. To further explore the social construction of illness at Noé, I examined reports from 1941 and 1942, the period that covers the majority of Schwesig’s tenure at Camp Noé, to learn about the kinds of illnesses that people suffered and to determine whether the death rate was less than at Gurs during the winter before Camp Noé emerged. A  much more detailed study of these documents is necessary, but my investigation here is intended to provide cursory insight into how well the camp functioned as a place for healing. When examining the biweekly State of Health Reports from Camp Noé within the context of other documents such as letters about new arrivals of tubercular, chronically ill, contagious, disabled, and elderly people, it becomes apparent that the numbers of people with tuberculosis far exceeds the numbers listed in these reports. The logical conclusion, then, is that not every physically or mentally biologically ill person was counted as ill, but at Noé sickness was instead an alternate, socially constructed phenomenon that severely delimited who was included as ill for the purposes of receiving certain medical treatment and who was counted diseased enough to be included in the biweekly reports. Why argue that illness and epidemic were socially constructed? How does such an argument benefit our understanding of events or the data that remain? It explains the drastic differentiation between the numbers of biologically diseased people who entered the camp and those who were counted as sick. It highlights how many diseased persons were left without the kind of medical help that they needed for recovery. It may be that limited resources such as the relatively few available beds at La Guîche in comparison to the large numbers of people with tuberculosis at Noé (and Récébédou) account for why some people were designated ill while others were not. In any case, such a system would have benefitted Vichy authorities more than the people who were physically ill, and that number was significant. From June 1941 to June 1942, 122 persons died at Camp Noé. An astonishing

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59 percent of the deaths were of German Jewish men.159 In fact, the level of illness at Noé was endemic or persistently high if not epidemic. Either way, wellness escaped many of Noé’s residents.

Deportation of Foreign Jews From Camp Noé In mid-July the first deportations from the occupied zone occurred. While some clergy wrote privately to Vichy officials, in contrast to most others who offered little or no protest, Cardinal Jules-Géraud Saliège wrote an impassioned plea on 23 August 1942, arguing that the deportation of Jewish persons should be halted based on Jews’ inviolable human rights. The text that he asked to be read at churches within his diocese in Toulouse follows: Please read and read this Sunday at all the Masses! Letter of S.E. Msg. the Archbishop of Toulouse On the Human Person My very dear brothers, There is a Christian ethic, there is a Christian morality, there is a human ethic that imposes some duties and recognizes some rights. These duties and these rights are inherent in the nature of humankind. They come from God. We can violate them. It is not in the power of any mortal to cancel these rights. That children, women, men, fathers and mothers would be treated as a vile herd, that members of the same family would be separated from one another and sent to an unknown destination, it was reserved to our time to see this sad spectacle. Why doesn’t the right of asylum exist anymore in our churches? Why are we a defeated people? Lord, have pity on us! Our Lady pray for France! In our Diocese some scenes of horror have been in place in the camps of Noé and of Récébédou. The Jews are men, the Jews are women. The foreigners are men, the foreigners are women. Not everything is allowed against them—against these men, these women, against these fathers and mothers. They are a part of humankind. They are our brothers like so many others. A Christian cannot forget [this]. France, beloved homeland, France who brings in the conscience of all your children the tradition of respect of the human being, France chivalrous and generous, I have no doubt, you are not responsible for these horrors.

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Receive, my dear brothers, the assurance of my affectionate devotion. Jules-Géraud SALIEGE Archbishop of Toulouse To read next Sunday without commentary.160 Cardinal Saliège’s letter caused disruption among officials in nearby prefectures. As early as 31 August the Ministry of the Interior issued a telegram that shows its Office of National Security, the Department of General Information, was tracking the dissemination of the Archbishop’s letter and its use in local churches. The telegram read: I have the honor of letting you know that [on] yesterday, Sunday 30 August 1942 surveillance had been done in the churches of the city where the pastoral letter had not been read on Sunday 23 August. These churches were Notre Dame of Dalbade, Phaeron Street, Saint-Silve, Saint-John Baptist of 7 Deniers, Saint-Nicolas, Sacred Heart (Patte d’Oie), [and] Chapel of Castel, Belfort Street. The follow up of this surveillance, it appears that the pastoral letter had been read in the first five churches, without commentaries and that in the Chapel of Castel-the priest did not make any allusion to the letter that had made an uproar (the Archbishop did not tell the truth).161 Monseigneur Pierre-Marie Théas, the Bishop of Montauban, joined Cardinal Saliège in public protest. On 26 August 1942, Bishop Théas wrote an equally powerful letter that he, too, asked priests to read in lieu of Mass as the deportations of foreign Jewish persons were conducted in what had been the free zone of France. Letter of Monseigneur of Montauban on The Respect of the Human Person My dear good brothers, Some painful and sometimes horrible scenes are taking place in France, without the French being responsible. In Paris by the dozens of thousands, Jews are being treated with most barbaric savagery. And now in our region, we are witness to a heartbreaking spectacle: families are broken-up, men and women are treated as a vile herd and sent to a destination unknown, with the prospect of most serious dangers. I make the indignant protest of Christian conscience heard and I proclaim that all humans, Aryans or non-Aryans are brothers because [we were] created by a same God; that all humans, whatever their religion or their race have the right to respect of individuals and the State.

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Or the present antisemitic measures are contempt of human dignity, a violation of the most sacred rights of the person and the family. May God comfort and fortify those who are pointed out for persecution, that he give to the world the true and lasting peace found on fairness and charity. Pierre-Marie Bishop of Montauban To read without commentary at all the Masses in all of the Churches and chapels of the diocese on Sunday, 20 August 1942.162 During this period, both letters also appeared as parts of a two-sided tract that was publicly disseminated and posted. On or about September 2, 1942, officials from the Préfecture of Toulouse wrote to the Préfet of Gers located 78.8 kilometers (49 miles) west of Toulouse: Based on some information that reached me, the pastoral letter of the Archbishop of Toulouse regarding the operations of regrouping of the Jewish people would have been distributed in the region, in the form of typewritten handouts. I should be obliged if you would give all [of the] instructions [that] you need to your services of Police so that the distribution of this document would not be tolerated in any way on the public roads, or in public places, the text not having received the advice of the Censors.163 The meaning of “grouping together” within the context of the Vichy’s treatment of foreign Jewish persons in the late summer of 1942 is clarified in a 3 September 1942, letter about the Archbishop’s tract. There Vichy’s actions are depicted as “measures taken against the Jews.”164 In the autumn of 1942, the ramifications of these measures against the Jews were not understood fully. In response to the 2 September document, an official wrote: “As a consequence of the decision of the prefectural authorities forbidding the reading in the pulpit and the circulation of these ‘letters,’ there is cause to consider them anti-governmental tracts.”165 This comment implies that some officials considered the tracts by the Archbishop of Toulouse and the Bishop of Montauban as a betrayal of France, if not treasonous. Later in the same document, the writer notes what to do should the occasion emerge to seize the tracts in large quantities, including making a list of addresses of potential recipients.166 Based on human rights, Cardinal Saliège and Bishop Théas argued against the deportation of Jewish people to the East. They claimed that such rights transcended the power of humans to cancel and they maintained these rights overshadowed race or religion. Even though both men technically shifted the blame for the ultimate decision-making from France, their letters were nevertheless clear about the Church’s position on human rights and that these internees’ rights had been denied. French authorities took umbrage to the letters. While claiming

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refuge in that notion France had escaped the judgment of important French religious leaders, officials reacted strongly to the letters. About a month after the Archbishop’s letter had been circulated, officials in the prosecutor’s office claimed: The Archbishop’s cautious words used not to incite difficulties for the French government have allowed for Jewish and pro-Jewish propaganda and foreigners on the radio to distort the Archbishop’s thoughts in opposition to France and its government. Msgr. Saliège was moved by the indecent usage that some foreigners and lost French made of his letter [as] against a government which has all of his confidence.167 A careful reading of Archbishop Saliège’s deposition with the public prosecutor suggests that the matter was much more complex than exonerating France. During Cardinal Saliège’s 18 September 1942, deposition, he articulated the goal of his letter and why it was necessary. He said: I begin by declaring that the occasion of some departing from the camps of Récébédou and Noé to affirm the Catholic doctrine of the human person, doctrine that the events obscured, in the spirit of many faithful. I took care to free all of France from responsibility so as not to create any difficulties, knowing well that it was neither perhaps Maréchal nor the government. The indecent use that the parties made of my letter is against my intentions and escaped my expectations. Once again, I wanted to affirm some principles.168 Describing the conditions of departure, Cardinal Saliège noted: The persons leaving were required to walk the route from the camp to the train station door. It was a painful processional composed for most of the elderly, the sick sometimes disabled, lugging with difficulty their baggage in hand and stumbling across the fields. The old women were forced to stop frequently with tears in their eyes.169 He remarked further: “Among the departing people were found the elderly, the gravely ill: some women older than 70 years old, the sick who absolutely had to be transported from the camp to the station. A young woman, having a heart condition was in cardiac arrest at the moment of departing for the train.”170 Political refugees, he stated, experienced “a crisis of despair,” some “ask[ing] to be shot on the spot rather than to be given over.”171 Cardinal Saliège appeared to know that it was necessary to divert blame from the Vichy government and he acknowledged surprise that the letter was used by the resistance.172 Nevertheless, his statement to prosecutors can hardly be read as exonerating France, as the

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prosecutor’s office implied.173 Instead, the treatment of foreign Jewish persons and political dissidents was the focal point of Cardinal Saliège’s statement. If, however, Vichy was unaccountable for the decision to deport foreign Jewish persons and political dissidents, then the response of the government to the Saliège letter and its public posting as a tract appear oddly but uniformly forceful. Robert O. Paxton corrects any misperception that Vichy was free of responsibility. He notes that Vichy failed where even fascist Italy had prevailed. Paxton explains: The Italian government had objected strenuously to French anti-Semitic measures in Tunisia, seeing them as another aspect of French anti-Italian actions there. When deportations from the coastal zone increased in early 1943, the Italian occupation authorities obstructed them east of the Rhône, warning the French government that while it could do what it wanted with French Jews, foreign Jews in the Italian-occupied zone were exclusively a matter for the Italian authorities. In March the Italian authorities stepped in to prevent the French prefects of Valence, Chambéry, and Annecy from arresting foreign Jews there. In June 1943 Italian police prefect Lospinosa blocked the French arrest of 7,000 foreign Jews at Mégève. That a fascist Italian police prefect should have to point out to Antignac, Darauier de Pellepoix’s hatchet man in the Commissariat-General of Jewish Affairs, that Italy “respected the elementary principles of humanity” is some measure of judgment upon Vichy anti-Semitism.174 By focusing on rights that supersede race and religion, Bishop Théas brings us to one of the core arguments made in the next chapter and one that summarizes the treatment of foreign Jewish people in prewar Germany and war-period France. The racialization of Jewish persons rested on the perception that Jews as a social group were undesirable and inferior to Aryans. Vicki Caron’s Uneasy Asylum carefully outlines that there were both pro-refugee and anti-refugee arguments in the French Parliament and indeed, in the country. Nevertheless, the level of antisemitism that was expressed against foreign Jews, especially those who were not wealthy and those from Eastern Europe, was palpable. Despite the difficulties that foreign Jewish persons faced and the pressures added by deportation to an uncertain destination, they showed remarkable dignity. The American Friends Service Committee portrayed internees during that critical moment: In July the rumor went around about deportations of foreign Jews, and at the end of the month the fears were realized. Between Noé and Récébédou the internees were exchanged and those who came from Noé to Récébédou were put behind the barbed wire. Soon after, the first trainloads of sick, old, and desperate people left from Récébédou, Gurs, and Le Vernet for

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unknown destination. There were many examples of old people volunteering to go to save the very young ones from this experience.175 Many people in line for deportation spent their last hours thanking the aid workers for all that they had done, while others dispatched energy preparing last messages and mementos for loved ones.176 Camp Noé provided for some, a measure of help, even if not the promise that it first seemed to hold as a haven for the sick, elderly, and other undesirable persons. This is evident in the previous excerpts. While many like Kate Patzau had hoped to first recover, then emigrate to the United States or elsewhere, Camp Noé instead proved to be a pathway to the East and death for many foreign Jewish persons. Records from the International Tracing Service show that deportations from Noé to various transit camps and then to the East occurred on several dates in the autumn of 1942. What occurred at Camp Noé, Camp Gurs, Camp Saint-Cyprien, and at the Düsseldorf jail are the outcomes of systemic dehumanization by the social scientific definition of the word. To claim that this violence emerged as the result of racializing Jewish persons and treating political dissidents as nonhumans does not eradicate the kind deeds that were done by individual German and French people who afforded comfort and kindness in numerous ways. It does, however, maintain that the systemic treatment of Jewish persons and political dissidents was violent. As Zygmunt Bauman claims, this structural maltreatment resulted from societal willingness to rationalize, ignore, or express nearly total indifference to the destruction of the religious, racial, national, political, or foreign other. By indifference, I do not mean that the actions taken against these groups were carried out without any account of the actions or a total lack of interest in the persons or groups in question.177 On the contrary, I believe there was great interest on some level in these particular groups and their removal from mainstream society. That interest was structural and is evident in laws and policies of collaboration. Here, by indifference I mean a disconnection from care about the daily brutality and its outcomes. This may be best understood with Michel Wieviorka’s notion of not only a structural view of violence but a concomitant social psychological and interpersonal understanding of how violence functions, a point to which I turn in Chapter 5. The complexities of public opinion in Toulouse as throughout France from prefecture to prefecture and from month to month varied depending on the social identities of the citizenry. This is evident in the forms of dissidence that were expressed in the Haute-Garonne. There are examples of pro-Jewish protest, as I demonstrated previously in the letters of the Archbishop of Toulouse and the Bishop of Montauban’s letters, and antisemitic protests in the region. Similar examples emerge in how German citizens responded to laws and social norms related to Jewish persons, as the prewar Jakob Dahl example in Chapter 1 makes clear. In the end, the result for many elderly, chronically ill foreign

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Jewish internees and political dissidents at Camp Noé was ignominious death at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Notes 1. Harriet Marple to Mrs. James Corrigan, letter, 5 May 1941, box 32, folder 51, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Relating to Humanitarian Works in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 2. Laurel Leff, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 12–14. 3. Leff, Buried by the Times, 84. 4. Leff, Buried by the Times, 83 ff. 5. Leff, Buried by the Times, 84. 6. Leff, Buried by the Times, 80. 7. Éric Malo, “Le camp de Noé (Haute-Garonne) de 1941 à 1944,” Annales du Midi: revue archéologique, historique et philologique de la France méredionale 100, no. 183 (1988): 337. 8. Malo, “Le camp de Noé,” 338. 9. Lansing Warren, “Problems Offered by French Camps,” New York Times, 27 April 1941. 10. Le Président de la commission de controle télégraphique de Pau to Paul Fabre, letter #232, 8 November 1940, côte 996 W167, RG 43.137, Selected Records from the Departmental Records of the Haute-Loire, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 11. Le Préfet des Basses-Pyrénées to Le Commandant du camp de Gurs, letter, 16 November  1940, côte 996 W167, RG 43.137, Selected Records from the Department Archives of the Haute-Loire, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 12. I. D. Bobrowitz, “Sanatorium Treatment of Tuberculosis,” Diseases of the Chest 6, no. 9 (1940): 278. 13. Malo, “Le camp de Noé,” 337–38. Éric Malo provides 17 January 1941 as the date when the camp was created. 14. Malo, “Le camp de Noé,” 337. 15. Malo, “Le camp de Noé,” 337. 16. “No Epidemics in France,” New York Times, 10 June 1941. 17. “Traduction d’une letter du Dr. Wright,” letter, 12 February 1941, box 25, folder 10, RG 67.007M, American Friends Services Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1–4. 18. For some examples of other New York Times newspaper articles printed in the first half of 1941 see: Lansing Warren, “Camps for Aliens Squalid,” New York Times, 30 March 1941; “Refugees Suffer in French Camps,” New York Times, 21 March 1941; “Refugees Write of French Camps,” New York Times, 23 February  1941. Since Dr. Wright submitted his report about the camps to Vichy officials, it is unclear as to why Vichy officials conveyed incorrect information to the journalists. 19. “Traduction d’une letter du Dr. Wright,” letter, 12 February 1941. 20. Lansing Warren, “Camps for Aliens Revised in France,” New York Times, 17 November 1940. 21. Joseph White, Ph.D., Historian at the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conversation with the author July 2013. 22. “Visite au sanatorium surveillé de La Guîche,” report, 27 May 1942, box 32, folder 52, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to

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23.

24.

25.

2 6. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

3 6. 37.

38.

39. 40.

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Humanitarian Works in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 30 November  1941, reel 17, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives—Police Nationale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 27. Le Préfet régional to Le Ministre secrétaire d’état à l’interieur direction Générale de la police nationale 2ème bureau, letter, 1 August 1941, côte 1276 W 6, Archive départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. While the reference to guard dogs was for Camp Noé’s sister camp, Camp Récébédou, the documentation about securing guard dogs for a hospital camp disabuses us of the notion that these were places of respite for refugees. Reading the reporting by Lansing Warren in The New York Times, offers a great deal of confusion and ambiguity about conditions in these camps, as Laurel Leff has argued. The fact that both camps and similar facilities had guards and in this case, guard dogs dispels the notion that these camps were entirely unthreatening or uncoercive. “Excerpt from a newspaper,” reel 17, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives—Police Nationale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. The newspaper reports the French Minister of the Army’s 3 April 1946 denial that French Axis prisoners, at Camp Nexon, were used for their labor during World War II; Cf. also, “Rapport definitif no. 31: Camps de France,” 30 December 1951, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 2.3.5.1, folder no. 19b, doc. no. 82370971, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 607. Warren, “Refugees Suffer in French Camps.” “Vichy Denies Camp Story,” New York Times, 8 December 1940. “No Epidemics in France.” “Vichy Denies Camp Story.” Leff, Buried by the Times, 84–87. Leff, Buried by the Times, 84–87. Leff, Buried by the Times, 53, 83. Warren, “Refugees Suffer in French Camps.” Warren, “Refugees Suffer in French Camps.” Kate Patzau to Camp Gurs, letter, 17 October 1940, box 22, folder 13, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1.. Kate Patzau to Camp Gurs, letter, 17 October 1940, 1. Gerhard Glahs to C. Bleuland van Oordt, letter, 11 February 1941, box 22, folder 10, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. Harriet Marple to Mrs. James Corrigan, letter, 5 May 1941, box 32, folder 51, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. Harriet Marple to Mrs. James Corrigan, letter, 5 May 1941; “Rapport definitif no. 31: Camps de France,” 30 December 1951, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 2.3.5.1, folder no. 19b, doc. no. 82370978, 614. “Rapport definitif no. 31: Camps de France,” 30 December 1951, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 2.3.5.1, folder no. 19b, doc. no. 82370979, 615. By 1943, Camp Noé had expanded to have 82 pavilions, according to a postwar report.

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41. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 30 November 1941, 7–8. 42. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 30 November 1941, 6. 43. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 30 November 1941, 7. 44. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 30 November 1941, 7. 45. “Rapport definitif no. 31: Camps de France,” 30 December 1951, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 2.3.5.1, folder no. 19b, doc. no. 82370979, 615. 46. Paul Mathieu to Le Préfet Inspecteur des camps ministère de l’intérieur, letter, 4 December 1941, côte 1831 W41, dossier 10, Archives départementales de la HauteGaronne, Toulouse, France. 47. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 30 November 1941, 8. 48. “Rapport definitif no. 31: Camps de France,” 30 December 1951, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 2.3.5.1, folder no. 19b, doc. no. 82370979, 615; Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 30 November 1941, 8. 49. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 30 November 1941, 12. 50. Archive départementales de la Haute-Garonne, côte 1831 W41, dossier 10, Toulouse, France. 51. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 30 November 1941, 12–13. 52. “Work in Progress in Perpignan—International Commission Working in Conjunction with the Society of Friends,” report, 5 August 1939, box 6, folder 4, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2. 53. “No Epidemics in France.” 54. Le Préfet de la Haute-Garonne to Le Ministre secrétaire d’état à l’interieur, letter, 12 February 1941, côte 1831 W41, dossier 10, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France; Note de service, memorandum #7800, 26 February 1941, côte 1831 W41, dossier 10, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 55. Paul Mathieu to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps d’internement, letter, 5 September 1942, côte 1831 W41, dossier 11, Archives départementales de la HauteGaronne, Toulouse. 56. Le Préfet de la Haute-Garonne to Le Ministre secrétaire d’état à l’intérieur, letter, 21 February1941, 2. Concerning capacity of the camp, please see the last page of this letter. 57. “Visite au sanatorium surveillé de La Guîche,” report, 27 May 1942, 1. 58. Radiological summaries, report, n. d., côte 1831 W41, dossier 11, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 59. Jean M. Brocard to Le Médécin-chef sanatorium de La Guîche, letter, 17 June 1942, côte 1831 W41, dossier 11, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France; Paul Mathieu to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps d’internement du territoire ministère de l’intérieur, letter, 18 June 1942, côte 1831 W41, dossier 11, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France; Mr. Fourniois to Le Préfet délégué services du camps, letter, 30 May 1942, côte 1831 W41, dossier 11, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. The exchange of

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letters highlights the limited number of people who were eligible for admission to a La Guîche. The last letter cited is from the director of Camp Récébédou, Camp Noé’s sister camp, but is applicable to the circumstances at Camp Noé. 60. Borowitz, “Sanatorium Treatment of Tuberculosis.” 61. Borowitz, “Sanatorium Treatment of Tuberculosis”; Hugh Kinghorn, “The Diagnosis of Tuberculosis, Especially Pulmonary Tuberculosis,” Journal of the American Medical Association 115, no. 19 (1940): 1614–20. 62. “Radiological summaries,” report, n. d., 2. 63. “Radiological summaries,” report, n. d. 64. Kinghorn, “The Diagnosis of Tuberculosis.” 65. Bobrowitz, “Sanatorium Treatment of Tuberculosis,” 279. 66. Le Préfet des Pyrénées-Orientales to Le Préfet de la Haute-Garonne, letter, 11 April  1942, côtes 1831 W41, dossier 10, Archives départementales de la HauteGaronne, Toulouse, France. 67. “State of Health and other statistical bimonthly reports,” 17 February  1941 to 16 February  1942, côte 1831 W41, dossier 7, Archives départementales de la HauteGaronne, Toulouse, France. 68. The date of Schwesig’s arrival at Camp Noé vary from record set to record set, but all of the dates are within the time period of 25 February 1941 and 27 February 1941. 69. “Note de service,” memorandum #7800, 26 February 1941. 70. “Note de service,” memorandum #7800, 26 February  1941, 1; Le Préfet HauteGaronne to Directeur de camp Noé, telegram, 26 February, 1941, côte 1831 W41, dossier 10, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 71. “Note de service,” memorandum #7800, 26 February 1941, 2. 72. “Note de service,” memorandum #7800, 26 February 1941, 2. 73. Le Préfet Perpignan to Le Préfet Toulouse, telegram #399, 24 February 1941, côte 1831 W41, dossier 10, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 74. “Parasites,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, www.cdc.gov/para sites/index.html. 75. “Rapport d’inspection du docteur Aujaleu, sur le centre de séjour surveillé de Noé, Annex II.” report, 27 January  1942, reel 17, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives—Police Nationale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 76. Paul Mathieu to Le Préfet régional services des réfugiés et des camps, letter, 7 April 1942, côte 1831 W41, dossier 10, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France; “Parasites,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. 77. Le Préfet délégué to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps d’internement du territoire et des étrangers, letter, 13 April 1942, côte 1831 W41, dossier 10, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 78. Henry C. Sweaney et al., “The Body Economy of Vitamin C in Health and Disease,” Journal of the American Medical Association 116, no. 6 (1941): 469. 79. “Minutes of Staff Meeting Held in Toulouse 17 August  1940,” aide-mémoire, 19 August 1940, box 25, folder 8, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Report Relating to Humanitarian Works in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2. 80. “Report on the Activities of the Toulouse A.F.S.C. Office for February and March,” report, 8 April  1941, box  25, folder 8, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Report Relating to Humanitarian Works in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1–2. 81. “Report on the Activities of the American Friends Service Committee’s Toulouse Office for the Months of June, July, August, and September,” report, 7 October 1941, box 25, folder 8, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Report Relating to Humanitarian Works in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2.

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82. “Report on the Activities of the Toulouse A.F.S.C. Office for February and March,” report, 8 April 1941, 1–2. 83. “Report on the Activities of the American Friends Service Committee’s Toulouse Office for the Months of June, July, August, and September,” report, 7 October 1941, 1. 84. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 10 March 1943, 6–9. 85. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 10 March 1943, 8. 86. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 10 March 1943, 8–9. 87. To provide some idea of the caloric intake per person, I used the menu provided and today’s calorie counts. Therefore, the 373 calories per person per day assumes the following: A cup of coffee without milk and sugar (1 calorie), one eight-ounce serving of vegetable broth (12 calories), one one-ounce serving of Gruyère cheese (115 calories), one tablespoon of liver paté (42 ounces), and ¼ of a liter or 8.45 ounces of wine (203 calories). The calorie count used is for vegetable broth rather than soup, since many descriptions of the soup that I have read from the period note that sometimes onions or carrots were in the soup, but even then, only a piece or two managed to make it into a detainee’s ladle-size serving. What is labeled soup was apparently more like contemporary broths. 88. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 10 March 1943, 6. 89. “Rapport definitif no. 31: Camps de France,” 30 December  1951, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 2.3.5.1, folder no. 19b, doc. no. 82370980, 616. 90. Examples of these documents have been cited throughout this chapter. 91. “Rapport definitif no. 31: Camps de France,” 30 December  1951, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 2.3.5.1, folder no. 19b, doc. no. 82370980, 616. 92. “Rapport d’inspection du docteur Aujaleu, sur le centre de séjour surveillé de Noé, Annex III,” report, 27 January 1942, reel 17, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives—Police Nationale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 93. “Rapport definitif no. 31: Camps de France,” 30 December  1951, International Tracing Service Digital Collection, 2.3.5.1, folder no. 19b, doc. no. 82370980, 616. 94. Documents, côte 1831 W41, dossier 10, Archives départementales de la HauteGaronne, Toulouse, France. Cf. a variety of documents from 17 February to 31 March 1941 and 15 April 1941 for examples. 95. “Notice individuelle-Manuel Arecs Garcia,” record, n. d. (illegible), côte 1867 W14, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 96. “La renunciation-Manuel Arecs Garcia,” document, 11 September 1941, côte 1867 W14, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 97. Le Préfet de l’Ariège to Monsieur l’Admiral de la flotte, Vice-président du conseil ministre secrétaire d’état, letter, 11 June 1941, côte 1867 W 37, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 98. Le Préfet de l’Ariège to Monsieur l’Admiral de la flotte, Vice-président du conseil ministre secrétaire d’état, letter, 11 June 1941. 99. Paul Mathieu to Le Préfet régional service des réfugiés, letter, 18 February 1942, côte 1867 W37, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 100. Le Chef de camp to Inspecteur générale des services des renseignements généraux, letter, 12 July 1941, côte 1896 W52, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 101. Le Chef de camp de Noé to Le Préfet service des étrangers, letter, 18 March 1943, côte 1896 W52, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France.

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102. L’Inspecteur-chef Millon to Le Chef de camp, letter, 9 February 1942, côte 1867 W37, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. Pedro Serrano Troya’s last name is misspelled and appears as “Froya” in the 9 February 1942 letter requesting punishment for Serrano Troya’s behavior. 103. “Notice individuelle-Pedro Serrano Troya,” record, 26 February  1941, côte 1867 W37, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 104. L’Inspecteur-chef Millon to Le Chef de camp, letter, 9 February 1942; “La renunciationPedro Serrano Troya,” document, 19 September  1941, côte 1867 W37, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. It appears that Pedro Serrano Troya’s Barrack number was also noted incorrectly as Barrack 108–2 in the 9 February 1942 letter. His actual living quarter was most likely Barrack 98–2, which appears on a form that Serrano Troyo signed renouncing his right to repatriation to Spain. Moreover Barrack 108–2 was designated for tubercular patients. With the Camp’s grave concerns about contagion, it seems highly unlikely that a tubercular patient would have been assigned knowingly to work in the kitchen. 105. L’Inspecteur-chef Millon to Le Chef de camp, letter, 9 February 1942. 106. L’Inspecteur-chef Millon to Le Chef de camp, letter, 9 February 1942. 107. “Rapport definitif no. 31: Camps de France,” report, 30 December 1951. 108. “State of Health and Camp Census Data,” reports, March–April  1941, côte 1831 W41, dossier 7, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 109. Le Préfet de la Haute-Garonne to Le Ministre secrétaire d’état à l’interieur, letter, 21 February 1941, 2. There were 1,800 people interned at Noé during this time. 110. “Situation des effectifs pour la période du 17/2/41–15/3/4,” report, 22 March 1941, côte 1831 W41, dossier 7, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 111. “Situation des effectifs pour la période du 17/2/41–15/3/4,” report, 22 March 1941; Le Préfet de la Haute-Garonne to Le Ministre secrétaire d’état à l’interieur, letter, 21 February 1941. 112. “Report on the Activities of the Toulouse A.F.S.C. Branch for November, December, and January,” report, n. d., box 25, folder 8, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 2. 113. Le Chef du gouvernement ministre secrétaire d’état à l’interieur to Le Ministre secrétaire d’état à l’agriculture et au ravitaillement, letter, reel 17, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives—Police Nationale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 114. Le docteur Jean Brocard to Camp de Noé Directeur, letter, 13 August 1942, reel 17, RG 43.016, Selected Records from the French National Archives—Police Nationale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 115. “Traduction d’une letter du Dr. Wright,” letter, 12 February 1941, 3. 116. Le docteur Jean Brocard to Camp de Noé Directeur, letter, 13 August 1942. 117. Ministére de l’intérieur to Le Préfet Inspecteur générale des camps et centres d’internement, letter, 30 November 1941, 7. 118. Rosa Rosenfeld to Emil Frank, letter, 1 January 1941, folder 29172, RG 59.006, Selected Records from the United States National Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. In an excerpt from the RosenfeldFrank letter and a description of the excerpt the two locale names are used interchangeably. 119. Rosa Rosenfeld to Emil Frank, letter, 1 January 1941; Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews (Lincoln, NE: The University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 67. In an excerpt from the Rosenfeld-Frank letter provides a description of Jewish people from Lake Constance and uses it interchangeably with Jews from Baden. I take the reference in documents and Schwesig’s artworks to mean that all Jews from

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Baden were not necessarily from Lake Constance, but all Jewish persons from Lake Constance could also be referred to also as the “Jews of Baden.” 120. “Notice individuelles and Fiche individuelles,” 26 February 1941–12 March 1943, côte 1867 W37, côte 1896 W52, côte 1867 W227, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. These files provide the names and descriptions of numerous Jewish and fewer Christian females or demi-aryan women, who fit the description of Schwesig’s drawings. This, of course, may be due to who created the physical record and whether those persons perceived these women in ways other than the women may have self-identified. 121. Belah Guterman, No’omi Morgenshtern, and Aryah Ludvig Taukerman, The Gurs Haggadah: Passover in Perdition (New York/Jerusalem: Devora Publishing and Yad Vashem, 2003). 122. Simon Dreyfuss to Monsieur le Directeur du Camp de Noé, letter, 14 March 1943, côte 1867 W227, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 123. Simon Dreyfuss to Monsieur le Directeur du camp de Noé, letter, 14 March 1943. 124. Paul Mathieu to Simon Dreyfuss, letter, n. d., côte 1867 W227, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 125. Cf. Leff, Buried by the Times, esp., 77–106 and Malo, “Le camp de Noé” for a thorough understanding of how The New York Times and other news outlets reported during the period of the Holocaust and two different views about reporting on events in France. 126. “Refugees’ Plight Eased by Vichy,” New York Times, 23 February 1941. 127. Warren, “Refugees Suffer in French Camps.” 128. Warren, “Refugees Suffer in French Camps.” 129. Warren, “Refugees Suffer in French Camps.” 130. “Refugees’ Plight Eased by Vichy.” 131. “Refugees’ Plight Eased by Vichy.” 132. I selected comments from two sets of reports in the summer of 1941, after the camp had been functioning for five or six months. I selected two from obviously Spanish backgrounds and others who were likely Jewish based on the barrack numbers to which they were assigned. Fortunately, rather robust data exist from the Union générale israélite de France that identifies the Jewish population by barrack number for 1941. I selected substantive comments, that is, remarks that were longer than a few words; and remarks that describe the conditions that affected health most acutely. This will give some foundation for an adequate comparison with the letters from aid workers about conditions at Noé and the locales associated with the camp. Finally, all of the comments were typewritten, but some were more legible than others. I selected from those. 133. “Rapport moral du juillet 2, 1941, Extrait de quelques lettres,” report, 2 July 1941, côte 1831 W41, dossier 7, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 134. “Rapport moral du juillet 2, 1941, Extrait de quelques lettres,” report, 2 July 1941. 135. In the cases of people who wrote from either hospices or sanitoria, names, institutions, and locales were retained even after July 1941. 136. “Extrait de lettres,” n. d., report, côte 1831 W41, dossier 7, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 137. “Extrait de lettres,” n. d., report. 138. Harriet Marple to Mrs. James Corrigan, letter, 5 May 1941. 139. “Derniere visite de Miss  Holbek,” memorandum, 4 May  1941, côte 1272 W2, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 140. “Derniere visite de Miss Holbek,” memorandum, 4 May 1941. 141. Le Préfet régional de Toulouse to Monsieur I’Admiral de la flotte ministre secrétaire d’état à l’intérieur cabinet de secrétaire pour la police,” letter, 4 July 1941, côte 1272 W2, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France.

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142. Le Secrétaire générale pour la police to Le Préfet de la Haute-Garonne, letter, 29 June  1941, côte 1272 W7, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 143. Le Préfet régional de Toulouse to Monsieur I’Admiral de la flotte ministre secrétaire d’état à l’intérieur cabinet du secrétaire pour la police, letter, 5 July 1941, côte 1272 W7, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France, 1. 144. Le Secrétaire générale pour la police to Le Préfet de la Haute-Garonne, letter, 29 June 1941, 2. 145. Le Préfet régional de Toulouse to Monsieur I’Admiral de la flotte ministre secrétaire d’état à l’intérieur cabinet du secrétaire pour la police,” letter, 5 July 1941, 1. 146. Le Secrétaire générale pour la police to Le Préfet de la Haute-Garonne, letter, 29 June 1941, 2; Cf. for greater details about the complaint, “Croix Rouge Américains,” letter, 10 May 1941, côte 1272 W7, Archives départementales de la HauteGaronne, Toulouse, 1. 147. Le Secrétaire générale pour la police to Le Préfet de la Haute-Garonne, letter, 29 June1941, 1. 148. Le Secrétaire générale pour la police to Le Préfet de la Haute-Garonne, letter, 29 June 1941, 1. 149. Le Préfet régional de Toulouse to Monsieur I’Admiral de la flotte ministre secrétaire d’état à l’intérieur cabinet du secrétaire pour la police, letter, 5 July 1941, 2. 150. “Report on the Activities of the Toulouse A.F.S.C.’s Office for the Months of October, November, and December 1941,” report, n. d., box 25, folder 8, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1, 3. 151. “A.F.S.C. Toulouse Delegation,” document, 14 April 1942, box 25, folder 9, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 152. “Visite au sanatorium surveillé de la Guîche (S. et L.),” report, 27 May 1942, box 32, folder 52, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1. 153. “Visite au sanatorium surveillé de la Guîche (S. et L.),” report, 27 May 1942, 1. 154. “Visite au sanatorium surveillé de la Guîche (S. et L.),” report, 27 May 1942, 1–2. 155. “Visite au sanatorium surveillé de la Guîche (S. et L.),” report, 27 May 1942, 1. 156. “A.F.S.C. Toulouse Delegation,” document, 14 April 1942, 2. 157. The earliest reports are similar to the State of Health reports, but the top portions with some of the summary data were cut off. The bottom half of the report is virtually identical to the later biweekly State of Health reports. 158. Eliot Freidson, Profession of Medicine: A  Study of the Applied Sociology of Knowledge (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 223. 159. “Death certificates from Camp Noé,” June 1941–June 1942, côte 1831 W41, dossier 10, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 160. Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège to Priests, “Sur la personne humaine,” letter, 22 August  1942, côte 7978 W13, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Washington, DC. 161. Chef du service départemental des renseignments généraux le commissaire principal to le préfet délégué, memorandum #6299, 31 August 1942, côte 1960 W117, dossier 1, Archive départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 162. Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas to Priests “De Respect de la personne humaine,” letter, 26 August 1942, 7978 W 13, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France.

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163. Le Préfet de la région Toulouse to Le Préfet du Gers, letter # 2.686 C.R., 2 September 1942, côte 1 W656, RG 43.130, Selected Records from Departmental Archives of Gers, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 164. Le Préfet régional (cabinet) to Le Préfet régional, letter #3306, 3 September 1942, côte 1 W656, RG 43.130, Selected Records from Department Archives of Gers, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 165. “Description of the tract created by Mgr Saliège and the Bishop of Moutauban,” document, n.d., côte 1 W656, RG 43.130, Selected Records from Department Archives of Gers, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC. 166. “Description of the tract created by Mgr Saliège and the Bishop of Moutauban,” document, n.d. 167. “Direction du cabinet,” letter, 21 September  1942, côte 2260 W1101, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. I  rendered this passage in English as smoothly as I could. The letter seemed to grope for a way to deny accountability for the French government’s actions, as if to evade answering Cardinal Saliège’s letter. René Bousquet, Pierre Laval, and all of those who made the decisions to round up, and transport internees to the line of demarcation bear responsibility. There is ample evidence that Vichy alone made those decisions. 168. Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège to Substitut procureur Timbal Duclaux de Martin, statement, 18 September 1942, côte 2260 W1101, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 169. Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège to Substitut procureur Timbal Duclaux de Martin, statement, 18 September 1942. 170. Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège to Substitut procureur Timbal Duclaux de Martin, statement, 18 September 1942, 1. 171. Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège to Substitut procureur Timbal Duclaux de Martin, statement, 18 September 1942. 172. Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège to Substitut procureur Timbal Duclaux de Martin, statement, 18 September 1942. 173. “Direction du Cabinet,” letter, 21 September 1942. 174. Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 183. 175. “Report Toulouse Delegation, Autumn 1942,” report, 14 December 1942, box 25, folder 6, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Records Relating to Humanitarian Work in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, 1. 176. “Report Toulouse Delegation, Autumn 1942,” report, 14 December 1942, 1. 177. Michel Wieviorka, “The Sociological Analysis of Violence: New Perspectives,” The Sociological Forum 62, no. 2 (2014): 53.

5 “CRUELTY . . . THAT DEHUMANIZES ITS VICTIMS BEFORE IT DESTROYS THEM”1 The Violence of Racialization

The cumulative weight of the previous chapters reveals the difficulties which Jewish persons, Christians of Jewish ancestry, and foreign Jewish persons in Vichy France or political dissidents in prewar Germany faced from 1933– 1945. These chapters also highlight to a lesser degree the challenges that France faced, particularly the hardship that average people confronted from extraordinary circumstances caused by the floods in October  1940 to the paucity of food that Toulousians experienced,2 in part due to war and related black marketeering. One of the book’s major goals was to examine the usefulness of Schwesig’s art to tell empirical history. As a methodological matter, you may recall that I derived the themes addressed in the book by studying first the content of Schwesig’s artworks alone. On this point, it is important also that the themes raised by Schwesig’s artworks also form the core themes of scholarly books and articles written by Claude Laharie, Éric Malo, Denis Peschanski, and Anne Grynberg. That Schwesig’s artworks address many of the same issues raised by secondary literature provides another point of triangulation. It affirms further that Schwesig’s artworks unequivocally tell empirical history. Beyond the circumstances that the artworks have been linked to in the preceding chapters, is there an overarching way to characterize the sociological impact of Karl Schwesig’s artworks and the events that occurred in prewar Düsseldorf and Vichy France? In this book, I  have argued that Schwesig’s works within their historical and sociological contexts identify and point readers to a trend of denigrating institutionalized treatment and conditions—actions that were taken with respect to political dissidents and Jewish persons, especially foreign Jews. The book highlights incarceration and internment, but these are, in fact, the means by which certain social groups were dehumanized. The underlying matter,

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then, is why did people in authority, whether German or Vichy officials, feel it was acceptable to force other human beings to live in such dehumanizing circumstances? I operationalize dehumanization as the quality of social conditions including internment and the terms of internment imposed on both foreign Jewish persons, Christians of Jewish descent, and political dissidents most commonly at the structural level. Whether by law or practice, de jure or de facto mechanisms resulted in the social ostracization of these groups who were isolated for either their political ideologies or their religious identity. This was the case even due to the religious identity of their parent(s) or grandparent(s), no matter how the individuals self-identified and despite their willingness to assimilate as generations of Jewish persons before them had. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s observation that Jewish people in Germany, and for that matter, in France, had achieved professionally, economically, and politically is undeniable. But those achievements and status obtained by Jewish persons were never entirely free of suspicion that they posed a deadly threat as foreigners within.3 For that reason, in the post-World War I era, Brian Crim writes, “the construct of Judeo-bolshevism evolved into a powerful rhetorical tool for the growing völkisch movement and eventually a justification for genocide.”4 This, in conjunction with the social production of moral invisibility and concealment, to use Bauman’s words, and nationalism (or national interests) in Germany, France, and other nations were enough to cause average people to either ignore or rationalize the raw violence, dehumanization, and annihilation of millions that became so rampant during World War II and just prior to its onset. Arguably, political powers in France and Germany viewed Communism as a threat to governance and power in Europe and throughout the world. Therefore, increased scrutiny of political refugees after the rise of fascism in 1933 Germany and during the war would be somewhat understandable. However, even groups with differing political ideologies do not deserve to be subjected to human rights violations such as torture, imprisonment, and sexual assault described by Schwesig’s artworks in Chapters 1 and 2. Yet, on 19 April 1941, The Manchester Guardian reported that political refugees and former members of the International Brigade in French Camps were being treated poorly.5 In parts of France, records from the period reveal increased surveillance on local political groups who were free, and in Toulouse, even on persons who dared to question inequality with regard to citizenship, including the Archbishop of Toulouse who challenged the morality of deportations.6 Within any democracy, repression and suppression should differ from a defensive posture taken by the state. In democracies, plurality of thought and political ideology is expected, even cherished. When the state undertakes surveillance and other coercive measures that are so severe as to result in human rights violations and an attempt to silence all dissenting perspectives, then democracy is dead—so Karl Schwesig concluded in his artworks as postage stamps (Figure 3.10). Even as an active member of the KPD, Karl Schwesig, at least until late 1940, believed

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that democracies were tolerant of dissent. Hence, he wrote to the American novelist Upton Sinclair and expressed utter confidence that Americans would not have endorsed the torture of political dissidents.7 Yet, by the time that he reached Gurs, his confidence in France’s democracy had waned. In Figure 3.10 in Chapter 3 he mocks the notions of liberté, égalité, and fraternité. A similar theme surfaces in his artworks about the postwar United States. If recompense for antagonism against political rivals might be, to some degree, expected, the mistreatment of Jewish persons in France was much less defensible. The fact that Jewish people were systematically dehumanized by means of processes that were incorporated into the French social structure is in keeping with antisemitism as a social fact in Europe, and its manifestation in Vichy France, portends a surprisingly unified set of mechanisms that constituted this racialization of Jewishness. Jewish people had received the rights of citizenship in France on 27 September 1791.8 The point is not that antisemitism caused the Holocaust or the treatment of Jewish persons in France, but that the treatment of Jewish persons is linked to how they were perceived, which certainly accounts for the dehumanization they faced and likely explains why relatively few people intervened on their behalf. Jewish people were all but entirely acculturated, and religion, as Renée Poznanski reminds us, was a private matter in France.9 Why, then, the adaptation of antisemtic laws and decisions that socially denigrated and ostracized Jewish persons who had come to France seeking asylum? In contrast to Poznanski, I do not see the antisemitism expressed in France as having been vastly different than antisemitism in either Russia or Germany.10 But utilizing examples from the past four chapters, I conclude that the systematic dehumanization that Jewish persons experienced in Vichy France was tantamount to their racialization, and that these expressions of racism when combined with xenophobia were no kinder than any other similar expressions.11 In fact, they yielded the same deadly consequences for foreign Jews in Vichy France as they did for Jewish persons in Nazi Germany.

What Threat Did Jewishness Pose to Vichy? In 1884, the US Congress banned a religious ritual known as the Sioux Sun Dance. In response, a Blackfoot Indian inquired about why native religion seemed to pose a threat to white Americans. He said, I do not understand why the white men desire to put an end to our religious ceremonials. What harm can they do to our people? If they deprive us of our religion, we will have nothing left. . . . We believe the Sun God is all powerful, for every spring he makes the trees bud and the grass to grow. We see these things with our own eyes, and therefore, know that all life comes from him.12

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It is not that either native American religion in the United States or Jews and Judaism in 1930s or 1940s Europe posed a threat; (mis)perceptions of a threat emerged from views about Jewish persons and their trustworthiness. Considering the preeminence of Christianity in the western world and the role of Christianity in what Joe Feagin calls the white racial frame, native religions, Judaism, and Islam offend white virtuosity by their very existence and thus, do not fit into the ways that whites imagined Americanness or what it means to be from a particular European nation despite the decades in which Jews had successfully assimilated into French and other European cultures.13 Just before the onset of World War II, assimilation was the anticipated way that foreigners became French.14 However, French political scientist Jacques Barou writes, “French immigration policy was influenced by racist ideas and the integration process was transformed into coercive assimilation.”15 Like Denis Peschanski, Barou acknowledges a degree of social control that was exercised by France with respect to foreigners and immigration.16 Nevertheless, Renée Poznanski explains in great detail the lengths to which Jewish persons were willing to go in France in order to assimilate. Indeed, Poznanski makes the point that the Jews were highly assimilated, going so far as altering religious services17 to emphasize their Frenchness and encouraging coreligionists to adopt French styles and ways of being. Even orthodox Jewish persons and Jews from Eastern Europe who had historically assimilated more slowly than other Jewish persons self-identified as French and volunteered enthusiastically to fight on behalf of France, according to Poznanski. In reality, Jewishness posed no threat to war-period France. But as Robert Paxton suggests, some French authorities viewed foreign Jewish prisoners as an increasingly valuable bargaining chip that Vichy could use to satiate German demands and, to French thinking, pave the way for a revitalized France in the new Europe.

How Jews Were Racialized and Political Dissidents Silenced The maltreatment of Jewish persons was, as Vicki Caron suggests, much more than an ideology of hatred.18 Instead, the cumulative significance of Karl Schwesig’s artworks and the supporting data used to triangulate meanings associated with them provide important insight into how the processes of racialization function more generally, and specifically inform us about how Jewish persons were racialized in prewar Germany and Vichy France. Sociologists Steve Garner and Saher Selod argue that racialization of a religious social group has three hallmarks: 1) an ideology; 2) a historical power relationship; and 3) forms of discrimination.19 I agree with Garner and Selod’s general categorizations, but I describe them quite differently than they do. The racialization of religious social groups is built on an ideology that is implicitly xenophobic as stereotyping, stigmatization, and scapegoating mark the other

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as inferior, or in Erving Goffman’s words, discredited as almost inhuman.20 A significant part of the ideology attributes features like deceitfulness, sloth, or greed to the social group as though the trait was inscribed into the DNA of the group’s members. Even though religious social groups are not biologically connected, the attributed negative features are nevertheless treated as if they are genotypically embedded alleles and thus, phenotypically evident. Such thinking is characteristic of race science that was practiced throughout the world including in Europe and the United States, but unfortunately for Jews (and Muslims) existed well in advance of the eugenics movement. It is vital to recognize also that all of the persons in Camp Saint-Cyprien, Camp Gurs, and Camp Noé, were there for four basic reasons: either they were a Spanish exile, a German national, a political dissident, or had a perceived, if not real, link to Jewishness. This perception landed Mischlinge or so-called mixed-race persons who identified as either Catholic or Protestants in these camps. Fundamentally, to have had Jewish ancestry— even a single grandparent—was enough to make you irrevocably Jewish. In many respects, these people were deported from Germany in some cases, interned in France, and then deported to the East because they were subject to the theory of hypodescent. While the theory of hypodescent, or the one-drop rule, has been applied traditionally to peoples of African descent in the United States, the same concept was in fact used to identify, intern, and later deport people with Jewish ancestry, or demi-aryans, during World War II. The theory holds that if a person has one drop of (African or) Jewish blood, s/he is Jewish regardless of that person’s self-identification and conversion to Christianity. Second, the religious social group experiences a power discrepancy. Consequently, it is subject to systemic political, social, and economic disenfranchisement and disadvantage. Third, the disenfranchisement is often expressed through law and social conventions. Therefore, the group is systematically stigmatized for no other reason than its existence and thus, it is victimized by discrimination. Racialization is dehumanizing, violent, and therefore, destructive. The nature of the destruction ranges from individual penalty and antilocution, as Allport articulated, to extermination or genocide.21 However, rather than these being an artifact of individual prejudice, as Allport suggested, it is structural, group-level racialization, which is a form of racism. Moreover, many of the negatives attributed in racializing a religious social group result from the centuries-long relationship between Christianity and other religious social groups that has since the medieval period privileged a Christian orthodoxy over all other religious identities, including other Christianities.22 While I do not argue that there is a causative relationship between generations of socially constructed knowledge and the destruction of Jewish persons during the Holocaust, there is good reason to believe that this intergenerational knowledge and views about Jewishness informed views that some held about Jews during the Holocaust. According to social psychologists, the language used to describe a social group is significant in allowing us to understand the concrete nature of dehumanization

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and its links to racism. Dehumanization is measurable in several ways: 1) the tendency to animalize the other;23 2) the practice of stripping the other of the rights and protections normally accorded to humans;24 3) the convention of ostracizing the other from human contact;25 and 4) the act of denying the other social group the emotions associated with humanity.26 Brock Bastian and Nick Haslam’s studies27 and Gordon Hodson, Nour Kteily, and Mark Hoffarth’s meta-analysis of dehumanization demonstrate the connections that link dehumanization and racism. These include establishing a social hierarchy, animalization of the social group, and maltreatment or annihilation of the other.28 By briefly revisiting Chapters  1 through 4, it becomes clear that the treatment of Jewish persons in prewar Germany and particularly, foreign Jews in Vichy France, and political dissidents in both prewar Germany and Vichy France was indeed dehumanizing. In Chapter 1, Jakob Dahl’s testimony about the cuts of meat that Jewish butchers were permitted to buy in Düsseldorf demonstrates an example of the Us (Aryans) v. Them ( Jews). Leyens et  al. argue that favoring one’s in-group, or “placing people in the others category or discriminating against them, results in denying them one or several types of human characteristics.”29 In fact, Leyens et al. use the Nazi discourse about Jews and Gypsies that lowered these groups to animals as exemplary of infrahumanity similar to the treatment of blacks by whites in the United States.30 It is important to note here that while the article uses the word prejudice in its title, early on the authors introduce racism and with sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s claim that the kinds of essentialisms that their study highlights are typical of racism.31 Similarly, in Chapter 1, the characterizations of Karl Schwesig’s and other avant-garde art as degenerate, the homophobic attempts to denigrate Schwesig as gay, and efforts to link images of disabled people to avantgarde artworks all display the penchant in Nazi Germany toward establishing a social hierarchy that excluded political dissidents and Jewish persons. In Vichy France, social hierarchy made itself present, also. A December 1941 summary report describing the environment in the Préfecture Haute-Garonne began by noting, “The question of food preoccupies a number of Toulousians.”32 This is evident in the local newspaper La Dépêcher de Toulouse, which featured daily articles addressing provisions of foodstuff. The strain of sending agricultural goods to Germany once the armistice had been signed, and the pressures created by a vibrant black market, elevated concerns about food even more. In Chapter 4, I introduced two Schwesig drawings from Camp Noé, “The Skinny Dog” (Figure  4.5) and “Spaniard and Jew Trash-eating” (Figure  4.4), both of which directly address the problem of food at Noé. In that chapter, I also mentioned that the ill population at Camp Noé and Camp Récébédou, the two hospital camps located near Toulouse comprised predominantly of foreign Jews and Spaniards, were permitted food rations before other interned foreigners. Yet, in the overall schema, these camp recipients were ranked third for food priority after the French who were sick and local French people.33 Thus, while the considerable number of complaints and concern about food affected everyone to some

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degree, implementing a system that placed French natives before elderly and ill foreigners is evidence of a hierarchy. The social hierarchy imposed by Vichy was intended to assist ill foreigners at the hospital camps, but nevertheless prioritized able-bodied French over sick foreigners. Therefore, people at Camp Noé were so hungry that they ate from trash cans. While the Inspector General in both the November 1941 and March 1943 reports depicted food provisions at Noé as “good,” that characterization is relative. That Spanish Communists were found in a similar physical situation to the one experienced by Jewish persons, as is evident in Figure 4.4, is instructive. The animalization of Jewish persons was something that they felt and described as it was occurring. There are several clearly articulated examples of this type of dehumanization and many others that describe the level of indignity and inhumanity that was heaped upon Jewish persons and so-called demi-aryans both on the way to France and in France. One of the most notable examples was cited in Chapter 2. There excerpts of a letter written to the American Joint Distribution Committee appear. The letter describes the passage of Jewish men from Belgium to Camp Saint-Cyprien and life at the camp in November  1940. The author made numerous distinct references that likened the treatment of Jewish persons to cattle, dogs, pigs, and wild beasts. He wrote: We were put in cattle cars—60 men to a car. All holes were boarded up and the doors locked from the outside. . . . We were treated worse than cattle and one man was shot, as it was alleged he tried to flee. . . . Everyone got a pot of soup, with all sorts of things in it, and the pot was handed to the next one, being refilled without being washed. Everything in the greatest haste. Dog’s or pig’s food is better and cleaner, but faced with acute hunger, we ate even this. On the evening of the second day, the doors of the cars were suddenly thrown open, and soldiers with bayonets brought in a dirty tub filled with water. We had to drink out of rusty, discarded tin cans, or out of our sweaty hats water, which not even a dog would have tasted. But since we were dying of thirst, we drank like cattle. When all had not yet had a chance to get a drink, the guards poured the remainder out and locked the doors as though we were wild animals. On Thursday, . . . we were unloaded like cattle and had to get in line and march around a field, fenced in with barbed wire, for about an hour and a half. Later, we learned why things went in this way for in two days, the Germans were already in Mornay. We received only water the next day and one piece of bread on Saturday morning. And this is called humanity! . . . Only those who have read Dreyfus’s book, Cayenne can have any picture of we what we went through. In Germany we were Jews without rights. In foreign countries, we are regarded as Fifth Columnists. One could go crazy. . . . People die like flies. . . . I am writing to you frankly for I do not know whether I will ever get out of here alive. You can regard it as a testament to my children that I may die here as a sacrifice.34

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Cardinal Saliége’s 1942 letter “On the Human Person,” examined in Chapter 4, also discloses an understanding about the animalization of Jewish persons. This provides a second meaningful example of animalizing Jewish people. In the second paragraph of the letter that he asked priests to read in lieu of Sunday Mass on August 23, he wrote: “That children, women, men, fathers and mothers would be treated as a vile herd, that members of the same family would be separated from one another and sent to an unknown destination, it was reserved to our time to see this sad spectacle”35 (emphasis mine). Cardinal Saliège considered the treatment of foreign Jewish persons like that of “a vile herd”—animals. His general argument for inviolable human rights specifically argues against the deportation of foreign Jews from Camp Noé and Camp Récébédou. This argument rests on the fundamental notion that God grants humankind equality and equity, and even though we humans violate one another, it is not within our auspices to cancel these rights. The Bishop of Montauban’s 26 August 1942, letter likewise links animalization to degradation and racism (race and antisemitism), repeating the same French phrase “vil trompeau”36 (“vile herd”) in his letter that Cardinal Saliège had used a few days earlier. The brilliance of both arguments combined is, they turn on its head the notion of Jewish inferiority utilizing the very religion, Christianity, which had been used for centuries and in varied contexts to assert dominance.37 On 18 September  1942, Cardinal Saliège gave a statement about the August 1942 letter to Timbal Duclaux de Martin, the deputy public prosecutor. In the deposition, Cardinal Saliege describes in greater depth why he believed that the Church’s position on human rights required reaffirmation in the summer of 1942. Given the establishment of antisemitic laws by the Vichy government (and the Nuremberg Laws in Germany), Jewish persons were treated as belonging to a race, not a religion. They lived without any of the protections afforded other citizens. This, too, is a key tenet of dehumanization. Some American Jewish newspapers in the early postwar years described the treatment of Jewish persons in war-period Europe using the language of Jim Crow, just as African American newspapers had done beginning in the very earliest years of Jewish oppression in Nazi Germany, even before the Nuremberg Laws were promulgated. The idea of stripping victims of normal protections afforded to other human beings and citizens works hand in hand with the concepts of animalization and the establishment of a social hierarchy. While aid was provided by the Belgian government to assist France in providing relief to refugees who had fled Belgium with the German army’s invasion, there was, at least in principle, aid available to Jewish refugees. However, Jewish people who attempted to reenter Belgium after deportation to France were “driven back.” An October 1940 report on the situation of Jewish refugees in France notes: The number of Jewish refugees in France (it is not possible to give an exact report) can be estimated at 15,000 to 20,000, being one-fifth of the Jewish population of Belgium. Of this number, ten or twelve thousand can be

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considered as being at present without resources. All are prohibited from returning to Belgium by the occupying authorities. Instructions given by the High Commission for Belgium at Vichy (the organization in charge of the repatriation of refugees to Belgium) on order of the German authorities, specify that repatriation trains for Belgian refugees are formally prohibited to Jews and colored people. Many of the repatriation trains have been stopped at the German-French line and those found to be Jews are driven back.38 The reference to “Jews and colored people” associates the two as outgroups. Neither of the two groups were welcomed to return to Belgium. By rendering both groups personae non gratae they were subjected to severe stripping away of human protections. These include, but were not limited to, the ability to work, the means to eat, the opportunity to pursue health care treatment, and the chance to immigrate or simply to live as they had prior to the war. Despite such degradation, in Chapter 3, Karl Schwesig’s powerful drawing from Camp Gurs, “A Composer and a Philologist” in Figure 3.4 calls attention to a stubborn sense of worth and rebellious pride. In the same chapter, it is noteworthy that another salient image exists. The man wrapped in a blanket was forced by weather—constant rain and mud—to relinquish the latrine for a space just behind the barrack in which to urinate. This is emblematic of indignities suffered by many Jewish and demi-aryans at Camp Gurs. The Bishop of Montauban, Pierre-Marie Théas, wrote a sobering and an even more direct appraisal in sociological terms than the poignant theological plea offered by Cardinal Saliège about the situation faced by foreign Jews who were being deported in the late summer of 1942 “to destinations unknown with the prospect of very grave dangers.”39 The letter mentions an example of animalization, and also, all of the criteria that link animalization, indignity, and dehumanization to violence, antisemitism, and in short, the racialization of a religious social group. The research question that I began with asked if artworks from the Holocaust are historical evidence that can teach us about the sociology and history of the period. I  suggested that beyond labeling or identifying what seemed apparent in the drawings, paintings, and prints, we could, by the processes of triangulation, learn more about the concrete historical social structures, social interactions, and social groups that existed. By this process, seemingly tangential aspects of Schwesig’s artworks, such as the weather—both the torrential rains during the third week of October 1940 and the intense heat that caused men to stroll nude on the beaches of Camp Saint-Cyprien—gained relevance.

The Salience of Racialization and Dehumanization in the 21st Century Sociological works that concern history hold out as a part of their promise a commitment to drawing together the past with the present. Today, in Europe, Africa,

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Australia, Asia, South America, and North America some form of either ad hoc or intentional governmental internment facilities exist to house people who have for various political, social, and economic reasons fled their homelands seeking asylum. In many respects, the squalor that these human beings have been forced to live in is reminiscent of the conditions described in this book. The predictable rise of infectious disease, psychological trauma, and even death in some circumstances is linked to poor living conditions that are a haven for disease, malnutrition, drug addiction, sexual violence, and human trafficking occuring among migrants in some of the world’s wealthiest nations. Moreover, these nations have allowed or forced migrants into these living circumstances under the guise of lawfulness, with seemingly little concern about the historical precedent that they are repeating. Similarly to the prewar period and World War II Europe, numerous human beings are subjected to animalization, loss of human protections by means of these conditions, and treatment in these camps or sites, revealing that there is clearly a social hierarchy established in which the migrants are deemed less than human. It is fair and even obligatory for the American government and other worldleading nations to address legality. But it is also equally incumbent on the world’s most powerful nations, many of which continue to profit handsomely from imperialism and colonialism, to enact and follow human rights and refugee or political asylum treaties and policies. My concern here is how these governments at the structural level and their citizens at an interpersonal level determine to treat migrants and refugees while they are in, for example, the United States, England, France, Germany, Belgium, and elsewhere in the world. Turkish American anthropologist Ahmet Yukleyen notes that 85 percent of migrants attempt to immigrate to the nations that had colonized their homelands.40 Artfully, the French novelist and filmmaker Georges Perec’s W or The Memory of Childhood ends his book about survival as a Jewish boy in Vichy France by reminding his reader that where Jewish communities once were established, now Africans live.41 The connection that Perec made seems to be more than a passing one, as if he saw in contemporary African immigrants something of his past, perhaps, the similarities in treatment that two migrant groups, both minority religious social groups, suffered. The wealth built by and in western or global North nations at the expense of people in the global South where a great number of migrants have come from in the past 15 years, only points to another reason for the West to reconsider the treatment of these groups. In other words, this is not simply about human rights, but also how colonizers and imperialists have had a hand in creating the global South and what they owe Africans, Asians, and other groups. W. E. B. DuBois in the early 20th century offered a clear and cogent analysis of these abuses by the West.42 We may argue about whether a nation’s laws should result in the deportation of people who have entered illegally. However, during their internment we are

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obligated to enforce a code of human decency and dignity. Cardinal Saliège and Bishop Théas’s August 1942 important discussions about inviolable human rights make this obligation apparent. The 10 December 1948, Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms the responsibility that United Nations member states have to uphold human rights. The present study that examined three camps from 1940–1942 France and prewar Düsseldorf highlights ways that contemporary migrant and refugee populations may experience similar kinds of racialization, racism, or pressures related to certain religious, political, or racial social identities. An examination of migrants’ experiences conducted by the European Union in 12 different countries demonstrates some of the emergent problems connected to the wave of migration to Europe in the early part of the 21st century.43 Today’s persistent concerns about racism, xenophobia, and religion reflected in that study, and ongoing humanitarian deficits in internment facilities where humans are caged like “wild herds,” urge us to reconsider the violence that dehumanization caused in the locations examined in this book. The present is a prescient reminder of how foreign Jews and political prisoners, among others, were abandoned during World War II, not simply at the point of deportation but also when Vichy requested help from the United States to open its borders to foreign Jewish persons in November  1940. Yet, the US refused the plea.44 None of us is capable of walking through history to change the social inequalities and deprivations suffered by Jewish persons and persons of Jewish ancestry, political prisoners, or others. But with careful attention to the present, we are able certainly to avert present and future failures. This is the lesson from Karl Schwesig’s artworks and the humanitarian thrust of his personal writings.

Karl Schwesig in Postwar Düsseldorf Karl Schwesig survived the war but with irreparable damage done to his body, and his career as a visual artist was left in tatters. Nevertheless, his artwork remains a most important testimony to life in prewar Düsseldorf and Vichy France. It has functioned for me as well-informed guideposts and is the foundation to my educational journey into the world that created and allowed the systematic dehumanization of several social groups, but especially, foreign Jewish persons and political dissidents. Karl Schwesig died on 19 June 1955, precisely 55 years to the day after he was born. He left to mourn his wife, Hannelore Müeller Schwesig, their daughter Antije, and a host of family and friends. His personal papers reveal that he remained politically active until his death. He was concerned that the persecuted receive some form of recompense, however small, and he desperately wanted to see the persecutors called to justice. In a letter to his friend Aaron Best, he wrote about ongoing public displays of antisemitism in Frankfurt despite the war’s end. He was concerned about lynching violence as seen in an annotated newspaper

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article about a Mississippi lynching and the treatment of African Americans in the Jim Crow US. His artworks challenge our notions about what constitutes evidence, how they may be sociologically and historically analyzed, and what they offer future generations in the way of education.

Notes 1. Zygmunt Bauman, “The Social Manipulation of Morality: Moralizing Actors, Adiaphorizing Action,” Representations 33 (1991): 137. The citation comes from Janine, who Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman cites. 2. Information in Chapter 4 provides a basis for this argument. Cf. also, “Ravitaillement la ville de Toulouse,” côte 1912 W50, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France and the regional daily newspaper, La Dépêche du Midi. 3. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 33–41. 4. “Brian Crim, ‘Our Most Serious Enemy’: The Specter of Judeo-Bolshevism in the German Military Community, 1914-1923,” Central European History 44 (2011), 624. 5. “Fate of Political Refugees: Forced Labor in Sahara,” Manchester Guardian, 19 April 1941. 6. Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège to Priests, “Sur la personne humaine,” letter, 22 August 1942, côte 7978 W13, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Washington, DC. 7. Willa M. Johnson and Kirk A. Johnson, “Karl Schwesig’s Schlegelkeller: Anatomy of a Rejected Warning about Prewar Violence at LIFE Magazine,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 30, no. 1 (2017): 7. 8. Renée Poznanski, Être un juif en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris: Hachette, 1994), 24. 9. Poznanski, Être juif en France, 25; Jacques Barou, “Integration of Immigrants in France: A Historical Perspective,” Identities 21, no. 6 (2014): 644, 651. 10. Poznanski, Être juif en France, 26. 11. Poznanski, Être juif en France, 26. 12. Mae Ngai, “Race, Nation and Citizenship in Late Nineteenth-Century America, 1878–1900,” in Race and Ethnicity in America: A Concise History, ed. Ronald H. Bayor (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 109. 13. Poznanski, Être juif en France, 25. 14. Barou, “Integration of Immigrants in France,” 646. 15. Barou, “Integration of Immigrants in France,” 646. 16. Denis Peschanski, La France des camps: L’internements camps, 1938–1946 (Paris: Gallimard, 2002), 28–32, 152–74; Barou, “Integration of Immigrants in France,” 647. 17. Poznanski, Être juif en France, 27. 18. Vicki Caron, “The Antisemitic Revival in France in the 1930s: The Socioeconomic Dimension Reconsidered,” The Journal of Modern History 70 (1998): 28. 19. Steve Garner and Saher Selod, “The Racialization of Muslims,” Critical Sociology 4, no. 1 (2015): 11. 20. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York/London/Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 1963), 4–7. 21. Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice: The 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Basic Books, 1957), 14–15. 22. Willa Johnson, “When Our Legs Utter Songs: Toward an Antiracist Ethic Based on Amos 1–6,” in Judaism, Race, and Ethics, ed. Jonathan Crane (College Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), 42–46.

202

“Cruelty . . . That Dehumanizes . . .”

23. Gordon Hodson, Nour Kteily, and Mark Hoffarth, “Of Filthy Pigs and Subhuman Mongrels: Dehumanization, Disgust, and Intergroup Prejudice,” TPM 21, no. 3 (2014): 269. 24. Hodson, Kteily, and Hoffarth, “Of Filthy Pigs and Subhuman Mongrels,” 269. 25. Brock Bastian and Nick Haslam, “Excluded from Humanity: The Dehumanizing Effects of Social Ostracism,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46 (2010): 107–13. 26. Nour Kteily, Emily Bruneau, Adam Waytz, and Sarah Cotterill, “The Ascent of Man: Theoretical and Empirical Evidence for Blatant Dehumaniztion,” Journal for Personality and Social Psychology 109, no. 5 (2015): 1–31. 27. Brock Bastian and Nick Haslam, “Experiencing Dehumanization: Cognitive and Emotional Effects of Everyday Dehumanization,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 33 (2011): 295–301; and Bastian and Haslam, “Excluded from Humanity.” 28. Hodson, Kteily, and Hoffarth, “Of Filthy Pigs and Subhuman Mongrels,” 268–71. 29. Jacques-Phillipe Leyens, Paola Paladino, Raymond Rodriguez-Torres, Jeroen Vaes, Stéphanie Demoulin, Armando Rodriguez-Perez, and Ruth Gaunt, “The Emotional Side of Prejudice: The Attribution of Secondary Emotions to Ingroups and Outgroups,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 4, no. 2 (2000): 187. 30. Leyens et al., “The Emotion Side of Prejudice,” 187. 31. Leyens et al., “The Emotion Side of Prejudice,” 187. 32. “Control postale de Toulouse,” report, December  1941, côte 1320 W1, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse, France. 33. “Report on the Activities of the Toulouse A.F.S.C. Office for February and March,” report, 8 April  1941, box  25, folder 8, RG 67.007M, American Friends Service Committee Report Relating to Humanitarian Works in France, 1933–1950, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington, DC, 1–2. 34. “Letter from Saint-Cyprien (English translation),” letter, 16 September  1940, file, AR3344_00034_00951. (American Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, NY), 1-2. 35. Bishop Théas to Priests, letter, “Le respect de la person humaine,” 26 August 1942, côte 7978 W13, Archives départementales de la Haute Garonne, Toulouse, France. 36. Bishop Théas to Priests, letter, “Le respect de la person humaine,” 26 August 1942. 37. Cf. Johnson, “When Our Legs Utter Songs,” 40–46; and Joe R. Feagin, The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge Press, 2013), 23–57. 38. “Memorandum on the Situation of Jewish Refugees from Belgium in France,” memorandum, 7 October 1940, file NY_AR-3344-00034-00957, American Joint Distribution Committee Archives, New York, NY. 39. Bishop Théas to Priests, letter, “Le respect de la person humaine,” 26 August 1942. 40. Ahmet Yükleyen, “Localizing Islam in Europe: Religious Activism among Turkish Islamic Organizations in the Netherlands,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 29, no. 3 (2009): 294. 41. Georges Perec, W or the Memory of Childhood, trans. David Bellos (Boston: Verba Mundi Books, 2003). 42. W. E. B. DuBois, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (New York: Dover, 1999). 43. European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, “Migrants’ Experiences of Racism and Xenophobia in 12 EU Member States: A Pilot Study,” (May 2006): 127. 44. Willa M. Johnson, “The Treatment of Foreign Jews at Camp Noé and Archbishop Saliège’s Letter of Rebuke and Resistance, 1941–1942,” in review.

INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures. activism, art as 4, 31, 144 Adler, Jankel 19, 27 African Americans 3, 197, 201 Afro-Germans 18 – 19 agency, at Camp Saint-Cyprien 54 – 5 aid organizations 62, 73, 79, 81 – 2, 101 – 2, 111 Allied forces 1 Allport, Gordon W. 3, 21, 194 Alluni, Pierucci 170 Alsatian Jews 43 American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) 45, 56, 62, 65, 73, 76, 82, 99, 101, 105, 111, 112, 116, 118, 120, 122, 125 – 27, 128, 142, 145, 153 – 55, 163, 171 – 72, 179 – 80 American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) 32, 45, 53, 59, 63 – 5, 99, 126 American Red Cross 62, 111, 171 amputees 105 – 8, 106 anarchists 51 annihilation 3, 4, 7, 21, 76 – 9, 80 – 1, 168, 191, 194, 195 Ansbacher, Leo 68, 70, 115, 125, 126 – 28 antibolshevism 6 antifascists 6 – 7, 17, 48, 105 anti-Judaism or anti-Jewishness 71 antisemitism 2, 9, 42 – 4, 71 – 2, 179, 192, 197, 198, 200 – 1 anxieties related to sex and prejudice 21

Archambault, Gaston 144 Archer, Dane 108 Areces Garcia, Manuel 159 Arendt, Hannah 15 – 16 Armenians 9, 80 – 1 art exhibits 4, 16, 17 Articles for camp behavior 54 – 5 Aryanization of Jewish businesses and property 144 – 45 Aryans 9, 51; demi-Aryans 161, 165, 194, 196, 198; half-Aryans 72 – 3; nonAryans 72, 176 assimilation 191, 193 asylum 42, 48, 53, 102, 159, 175, 179, 192, 199 Atrís-Gener, Mr. 49 authentic Germanness 16 authoritarian racism 72 authoritarian right-wing politics 5, 16 avant-garde art 1, 4, 10 – 11, 16, 18 – 22, 26, 195 Azorin, Jean-Michel 9 Bachrach, Jacque 125 Baden 42 – 4, 101 – 2, 116 – 17, 164 – 67 Baden-Baden 164 Baden-Palatinate 42 – 4, 101, 116, 117 Badensee Judinnen 141, 164 – 68 Baden-Württemberg 164 – 68 Baer, Richard 61

204 Index

Barcarés, Camp 48, 66 Barosin, Jacob 116 Barou, Jacques 193 barrack of death 116 – 25 barracks: at Camp Gurs 100 – 107, 111, 116, 118, 122, 124, 125, 126; at Camp Noé 148 – 49, 151, 170; at Camp SaintCyprien 47, 50, 51 – 2, 60 – 1, 62, 64 – 5, 66, 68; tumbledown 62, 68 Barth, Peter 17 Barz, Mathias 27 Bastian, Brock 21, 195 bathing/showering: at Camp Gurs 100, 119, 120; at Camp Noé 148; at Camp Saint-Cyprien 55 – 7, 56, 57, 58 Baumeister, Annette 19 beach camp see Camp Saint-Cyprien beach-time freedom 56 – 7, 57, 58 bedding 59, 65 Behrens, George 69, 73 – 4 Beirat für Rassenhygiene und Bevölkerungswesen 7 Beit Lohamei Haghetaot 31, 32 Belgian Red Cross 62 Belgian refugees 198 Belgium 30 – 3, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 53 – 4, 70, 72, 73, 101 – 2, 105, 116, 196, 197 – 99 belongingness 21 Best, Aaron 200 – 201 Bieber, Doris 111 Bienvenue aux Soldats Prisonniers 171 bigotry 29 biological assumptions about race and racism 2 biological worth of foreigners 9 birth control movements 8 – 9 Bismarckstraße 15, 23 Black, Helen 31 Bobrowitz, I. D. 140 – 41 Bodek, Karl 115, 116 Bodensee 164 – 68 Boehm, Gerda 125 Boldomero, Abbaran 170 Bolsheviks 6 – 7 Bolshevism 17 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo 2 Book of the Dead 117 – 18, 122, 125, 144 Bosnia-Herzegovina genocide 80 Brennenholz Baracke 100, 104, 104 Brocard, Jean 149, 163 – 64 Brüderlich Hilfe 106 Buchenwald Concentration Camp 26, 27

Camp Argelès-sur-Mer 47, 48, 50, 54, 61, 66 – 7, 82, 105, 143, 161 Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau 27, 181 Camp Barcarés 48, 66 Camp Canet Plage 47, 66 – 7 Camp Gurs 98 – 129; amputees at 105 – 8, 106; art celebrations at 112 – 16; barrack of death at 116 – 25; barracks at 100 – 107, 111, 116, 118, 122, 124, 125, 126; bathing/showering at 100, 119, 120; Book of the Dead 117 – 18, 122, 125, 144; chapels at 108; children at 101, 111, 115, 117, 120, 125, 141; clothing at 102, 108, 110 – 11, 119, 120, 126; disease at 100, 102 – 3, 119, 122, 124 – 25; food at 101 – 3, 108, 111, 117, 118, 119, 120, 123 – 26; gardens at 105 – 7, 107; hygiene at 119 – 20, 123 – 25; Ilots at 44, 61, 100, 102, 115, 116, 124 – 28; infirmaries at 100; Jewish refugees at 117; latrines at 118, 120, 124, 124, 198; liberty at 115; religion at 99, 108, 113 – 16, 128; religious holidays at 99, 108, 110, 113 – 14, 115, 116, 167; sanitation at 122, 123; soap at 119, 120, 122; social conditions at 100, 111; Spanish Civil War exiles at 100, 104 – 5; Spanish refugees at 101, 104 – 5; Spanish Republicans at 101, 104 – 8; water quality at 119, 120, 122 – 23, 124; weather conditions at 100, 102, 103 – 4, 109, 110 – 11, 118 – 19, 124, 198; women at 101, 103, 109 – 11 Camp Les Milles 43, 44, 125 Camp Le Vernet 44, 51, 66, 105, 124, 142, 153, 170 – 71, 179 – 80 Camp Mazemale 47 Camp Nexon 105, 143, 161 Camp Noé 139 – 81; Badensee Jüdinnen at 164 – 68; barracks at 148 – 49, 151, 170; bathing/showering at 148; chapel at 148, 164, 176 – 77; children at 148 – 49, 154, 161 – 64, 162, 175, 196 – 87; Christian women at 164 – 68; clothing at 148, 168, 170, 171, 172; death at 139, 141 – 44, 161 – 62, 168, 174 – 75, 180; deportation of foreign Jews from 175 – 81; disease at 139, 141 – 42, 150 – 53, 156, 168, 173 – 75; food at 153 – 56; hygiene at 151; infirmaries at 148 – 49, 149, 151 – 52, 170 – 71; introduction to 141 – 47; provisions at 147 – 49; religion at

Index  205

166 – 67, 176 – 79, 192 – 93, 197; sanitation at 142, 144; sickness and, defining 173 – 75; soap at 170, 171; social conditions at 161, 167; Spanish Republicans and other dissidents at 156 – 62; structure of 147 – 49; Tuberculosis patients at 149 – 53; Vichy’s 147; views of, from newspaper reports, patients, and aid workers 168 – 73; water quality at 196; women at 141, 148, 149, 153, 156, 161 – 62, 164 – 68, 165, 166, 175, 176, 178 Camp Prats-de Molló 49 Camp Récébédou 79, 100, 125 – 26, 128, 140 – 43, 147, 154 – 55, 174 – 80, 195, 197 Camp Rivesaltes 66, 100, 120, 125 Camp Saint-Cyprien 42 – 82; agency at 54 – 5; barracks at 47, 50, 51 – 2, 60 – 1, 62, 64 – 5, 66, 68; bathing/showering at 55 – 7, 56, 57, 58; children at 49, 53 – 4, 65; closing of 79 – 82; clothing at 46, 59, 62, 64, 65, 68, 72; death at 58 – 62; diarrhea at 58 – 62; disease at 42 – 3, 45 – 6, 56, 58 – 62, 79; food at 69 – 74; foodstuffs and cans at 74 – 6, 75; hygiene at 55 – 8, 60 – 2; infirmaries at 59, 60, 61 – 2, 63; institutional lapses at 54 – 5; institutional roles of 79 – 82; Jewish and political refugees after evacuation at 53 – 4; latrines at 59 – 61, 60; liberties at 55 – 8; male rape at 76 – 9; origins of 46 – 8; privacy at 55 – 8; religion at 46, 69 – 74, 80; rules for camp behavior (Articles) at 54 – 5; sanitation at 45, 58, 59, 60, 79; segregation at 47, 51; soap at 45, 58 – 9, 62, 74; social conditions at 46; Spanish refugees at 45, 46 – 51, 68; Spanish Republicans at 48 – 53; structure at 54 – 5; water quality at 45, 47, 53, 59, 60, 64, 70; weather conditions at 45, 46, 53, 63, 64 – 5, 67 – 8, 198; weathering 63 – 8; women at 49, 50, 53, 65, 77, 78, 79 camps des circonstances 46 – 7 Camp Septfond 171 Campt, Tina 18 – 19 Camp Tence 120 Canet Plage, Camp 47, 66 – 7 cannibalism 17 canteens 109, 148 Caron, Vicki 43, 179, 193 Carrasco, Juan 50

Carrel, Alexis 9 Carvajal, Isquierdo 116 Cate-Arris, Francie 49 censored materials 117 – 18, 128, 170 Center of Repression 51 Central Hospital of the Camp of St. Cyprien 61 Chaimers, A. Burns 73, 127 Chapel of Castel 176 chapels: at Camp Gurs 108; at Camp Noé 148, 164, 176 – 77 children: at Camp Gurs 101, 111, 115, 117, 120, 125, 141; at Camp Noé 148 – 49, 154, 161 – 64, 162, 175, 196 – 87; at Camp Saint-Cyprien 49, 53 – 4, 65 cholera 122 – 23, 144 Christianity 2, 72, 165, 193, 194, 197 Christians of Jewish ancestry 42, 53, 190 Christmas 99, 108, 110, 113 – 14, 115, 116, 167 Christmas program from Camp Gurs 113 – 14, 113 – 15 City of Pau 124 – 25 civil rights 71 – 2, 145 clothing: at Camp Gurs 102, 108, 110 – 11, 119, 120, 126; at Camp Noé 148, 168, 170, 171, 172; at Camp Saint-Cyprien 46, 59, 62, 64, 65, 68, 72 coats 109, 156 cognitive and emotional labor 120 Cohen, Walter 27 Coleman, Marion 123, 124 Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés 62 Comité international de la Croix-rouge 59 Communism 1; at Camp Noé 144; in France 5 – 6, 11; Schwesig’s views on 4, 17, 18, 19 – 20, 22; Spanish Republicans and 105; working-class attraction to 6, 11 Communist Revolution 5 Compagniers de travailleurs (C.T.) 63 Compagnies de Travailleurs Étrangers (C.T.E.) 104 Composer and a Philologist, A 111 – 15, 198 Connelly, John 72 conservatives 5, 6, 7 contre-indiqué 150 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 24 Corrigan, Jeanne 171 Costanzo, Mark 108

206 Index

Cours Dillon 149, 151 Crim, Brian 17, 191 Cucarella Serra, Enrique 160 cultural diffusion 10 cystitis 124 Dahl, Jakob 30, 180, 195 Daily Telegraph 111 Das Junge Rheinland (DJR) 10 – 11, 17 – 19, 22 Dazy, Charles Benoist 169 death: at Camp Gurs 116 – 25; at Camp Noé 139, 141 – 44, 161 – 62, 168, 174 – 75, 180; at Camp Saint-Cyprien 58 – 62; certificates 118, 144, 161 degenerate art 19 – 22 Degenerate Art Exhibition 16, 19 – 20, 22 dehumanization 190 – 201; in 21st century 198 – 200; measuring 195; outcomes of 180; racism connected to 44, 195; sexual violence and 21 de Martin, Timbal Duclaux 197 demi-aryans 161, 165, 194, 196, 198 democracy 5, 6, 10, 11, 191 – 92 dental problems 62 diarrhea 44, 58 – 62, 117, 122 – 24 Die Durchfall Krankheit 60 dignity at Gurs 108 – 12 Dikötter, Frank 7 – 8 dining halls 148 disabled people 1, 4, 7 – 8, 22, 49, 50, 104 – 5, 120, 125, 141, 152, 157 – 59, 162, 164, 165, 174, 178, 195 discredited social identities 22 discrimination 2, 3, 24, 193, 194 disease 9; in 21st Century 199; bronchial pneumonia 122; at Camp Gurs 100, 102 – 3, 119, 122, 124 – 25; at Camp Noé 139, 141 – 42, 150 – 53, 156, 168, 173 – 75; at Camp Saint-Cyprien 42 – 3, 45 – 6, 56, 58 – 62, 79; cholera 122 – 23, 144; contaminated water and 60, 124; diarrhea 44, 58 – 62, 117, 122 – 24; dysentery 52, 60, 119, 122 – 24; food availability and 9, 153, 155 – 56; intestinal illnesses 60, 62, 153; malaria 59, 153; medications 45, 46, 52, 62, 65, 100, 126, 173; parasites and 56, 59, 62, 124, 153; pneumonia 119, 122, 151; prophylactic vaccinations 62; tuberculosis 59, 119 – 20, 122, 125, 141, 144, 147 – 53, 156, 161, 164, 174; typhoid fever 60 – 2, 123; typhus 27, 59,

61, 124, 153; vermin and 52, 56, 59, 62, 66, 118, 119, 124, 142 diversity 16 – 17, 69 Dix, Otto 19 Dreyfuss, Meta 167 Dreyfuss, Simon 167 – 68 drug addiction 199 DuBois, W. E. B. 199 Düsseldorf 4 – 5, 11; ethos of 15 – 33; jail 78, 180; postwar, Schwesig in 200 – 201 Düsseldorf Art Academy 21, 27 Düsseldorf-Dernedorf 15 Düsseldorf Gestapo Prison 27 Düsseldorf Mahn- und Gedenkstätt 18 Düsseldorf monument 27 dysentery 52, 60, 119, 122 – 24 Easter 99, 108, 167 economics 1, 2, 4 – 5, 11, 18, 44, 71, 80, 81, 108 – 9, 155, 194, 199 eine neue Kunst 17 Ein Komponist und ein Philologue 108, 110 Ein Protest deutscher Künstler: Mit Einleitung von Carl Vinnen (Vinnen) 16 Elmes, Mary 50, 65 – 6 Elne 47, 66, 67 – 8 Émigrant du Mer 74, 75 encountering 100 – 103 entartete Kunst 19 – 20, 22 epidemic, definition of 161, 173, 174 equality and equity 2, 4, 191, 197 Ernst, Max 19 Essed, Philomena 71 Esther, Queen 168 Ettlinger, Emmy 116 eugenics 1, 4, 7 – 11, 194; treatment of mentally ill persons in France during World War II 19 – 10 Eulenberg, Herbert 19 exploitation 4, 18 extrajudicial violence 1 extremists 5, 51 Ey, Johanna 18, 19, 20 eyeglasses 62 fascism 1, 5 – 7, 22, 179, 191; antifascists 6 – 7, 17, 48, 105 fasting 70, 167 – 68 Feagin, Joe R. 2, 3, 193 Feldarbeit 106 Fifth columnists 33, 196 Firewood Barrack 100, 104, 104 Fischer, William 64

Index  207

fleas 59 Fleermann, Bastian 18 Fleischmann, David Arthur 127 Fleisher, Mark S. 76 – 7 flooding 47, 62, 65, 66 – 8 Folterkeller 17 – 18, 21, 23, 26 – 7, 28, 31 Fondation Carrel 9 food: AFSC food assistance 65, 125 – 26, 153 – 55; as arbiter of health, at Camp Noé 153 – 56; availability of 9; at Camp Gurs 101 – 3, 108, 111, 117, 118, 119, 120, 123 – 26; at Camp Noé 145, 146, 147 – 48, 151, 152, 155 – 56, 163 – 64, 168, 170 – 73, 195 – 96; at Camp SaintCyprien 46, 49, 50, 52, 56, 62, 65, 68, 69 – 76; for children outside of camps in Toulouse 163 – 64; disease spread and 9; fasting 70, 167 – 68; foodstuffs and cans, at Saint-Cyprien 74 – 6, 75; at La Guîche sanatorium 172 – 73; malnutrition 164, 199; religious identity and, at Saint-Cyprien 69 – 74; social hierarchy and 195 – 96; starvation 42, 69, 74, 117, 118, 164; supplemental nutritional rations 126, 153, 155 – 56; transport of Jewish exiles and 33 France: Communism in 5 – 6; eugenics program in 8 – 10; Great Depression in 7; laws promulgated against Jews 42 – 3, 44, 74 Frank, Melvin 17 free zone of France 142, 176 Freidson, Eliot 174 French Catalonia 42, 46, 67 French Ministry of the Interior 45 French politics 6 – 7 French Revolution’s motto 56, 128 friendliness to Jews 29 Friends Delegation at Perpignan 51 Frischen, Dr. 26 – 7 Fritsch, Heinz 127 Frotsche, Friedrich 127 gardens, at Camp Gurs 105 – 7, 107 Gelsenkirchen 4, 19 genocide 3, 4, 7, 21, 76 – 9, 80 – 1, 168, 191, 194, 195 German aircraft assault 53 Germanness 16 German Romanticism 1, 11, 15 – 16, 112 Germany: avant-garde in 10; cultural crisis in 10; Das Junge Rheinland in 10 – 11, 17 – 19, 22; eugenics program in 7 – 8, 10;

liberal democracy in, resistance to 7 – 8, 10; life reform movement in 8; modernism in 7 Gestapo 18, 22, 27 Gilges, Hilarius (Lari) 18 – 19 Gilman, Sander 22 Glahs, Gerhard 145 – 46, 150 gloves 109, 110 Goffman, Erving 22, 26, 194 Goldberg, David Theo 71 Goldin-Meadow, Susan 108 Goldschmid-Brodsky, M. 54 Göring, Hermann 145 governance 5, 64, 68, 98, 128, 191 governmental institutions 11, 45, 79, 124, 170, 199 Great Depression 5, 7, 8 Great War see World War I green diarrhea 61 “Groupe Beaux Arts” 51 Groupement de travailleurs étrangers (G.T.E.) 46, 63, 159 Grynberg, Anne 190 Hackenberg, Heinz Paul 25, 28 half-Aryans 72 – 3 half-Jewish persons 18 – 19, 26, 27, 29, 53, 70 – 3, 165, 167, 194 Hanukkah 99, 108, 115, 167 Hartogs, Rene 144 Haslam, Nick 21, 195 Hau, Michael 8 Hauptbahnhof 15 Heimann, Max 56 – 7 Henle, James 31 heredity, Lamarckian view of 8 Heschel, Susannah 72 Heuser, Werner 27 HIAS-ICA 81 High Commission for Refugees 81 Hilfslehrer 15 historical documents 26, 33, 45, 61, 70, 76, 100, 103, 108, 111 Hitler, Adolf 5, 10, 22, 28, 29, 33, 56, 145 Hodson, Gordon 195 Hoffarth, Mark 195 Hofstettler, Osias 116 Holocaust 3, 11, 77, 78, 80 – 1, 100, 192, 194, 198 homosexuality 20 – 2, 78, 195 Horlebeck, Emílíe 119 hospice care 79, 128, 171

208 Index

hospital camps 79, 100, 126, 128, 154 – 56, 169, 195 – 96; see also Camp Gurs; Camp Noé; Camp Récébédou Hotel Dieu 151 human trafficking 199 Huysmans, Camille 30 – 1 hygiene: at Camp Gurs 119 – 20, 123 – 25; at Camp Noé 151; at Camp SaintCyprien 55 – 8, 60 – 2 hyperinflation 5 illness, definition of 174 Ilots: at Camp Gurs 44, 61, 100, 102, 115, 116, 124 – 28; at Camp Noé 148 – 49, 160 Ilôt spécial 51, 159 – 60, 160 Ilôt spécial séjour surveille 160 incurables 151 industrialization 5 inequality and inequity 2, 4, 191, 197 infestations 52, 56, 124, 142; parasitic 56, 124, 142, 153; rat (vermin) 52, 124, 142, 164 infirmaries: at Camp Gurs 100; at Camp Noé 148 – 49, 149, 151 – 52, 170 – 71; at Camp Saint-Cypr 59, 60, 61 – 2, 63 infrahumanity 195 institutional racism 29 – 30 intergenerational knowledge 3, 194 internalized racism 29 International Arbeitersport-Olympiade postcard 31, 32 International Tracing Service (ITS) records 32 intersectionality 18 intestinal illnesses 60, 62, 153 intestinal worms 153 intimacy 62, 77 invasion of foreignness 10 Islam 2, 193 Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies 143 Jacobsohn, Maximilian 73 “Jewish Bones, God’s Dismal” 69, 69 – 70 Jewishness: anti-Jewishness and 71; Bolshevism and 17; dehumanization and 192; intergenerational knowledge and views about 194; Mischlinge community and 70 – 2; as a race 2 – 3; Schwesig’s acceptance of 22; social identity and 18; social identity limited by perceptions about race and 18; stereotypical

characteristics of 2; threat posed by, to Vichy 192 – 93 Jewish persons; see also racialization of Jewish persons: laws promulgated against 42 – 3, 44, 74; in prewar Düsseldorf region 28 – 30; transport of exiles to South of France 32 – 3 Jewish refugees: after evacuation 53 – 4; in Camp Gurs 117; at Camp Noé 147, 197 – 98; in Camp Saint-Cyprien 42, 49, 51, 53, 62, 80, 81; transported to South of France 32 – 3 Jewkindness 29 Jews from Baden 164 Jim Crow 197, 201 Johanna Mutter Ey circle 18, 19, 20 Joseph, Bruno 127 Journal de Genéve 140 Journal of the American Medical Association 153 Judaism 2, 3, 71 – 2, 193 Jude im Lazarett 151, 152 Juden Beins Gottes dismal 69, 69 – 70 Judenfreundlichkeit 29 Judeo-Bolshevism 11, 191 Kahn, Willy 127 Kapel, Shmuel René 125, 126 Karlchen see Schwesig, Karl Kaufmann, Arthur 19, 27 Kaufmann, Elisabeth 19, 20, 27 Kerschner, Howard 65, 101, 102 – 3, 112, 127 – 28 Kirchen Katze 162, 163 Klingen, Peter 28 – 9 Kochmann, Alice and Hilda 53 Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) 5, 18 – 19, 22, 26, 28, 33, 144, 191 Kovno Ghetto 1 Kralik, Hanns 19, 26, 27 Krienert, Jessie L. 76 – 7 Kristallnacht 26 Kteily, Nour 195 La Cimade 121 La Dépêcher de Toulouse 195 La Guîche sanatorium 125, 143, 150 – 51, 161, 171 – 74 Laharie, Claude 190 Lassman, Peter 10 Latour-bas-Elne 67 latrines: at Camp Gurs 118, 120, 124, 124, 198; at Camp Saint-Cypr 59 – 61, 60

Index  209

Laval, Pierre 44, 144 laws promulgated against Jews 42 – 3, 44, 74 Lazard, Lou-Albert 116 Lebensreformbewegung 8 Le chien maigre 158 Leff, Laurel 139 – 40, 144 left-wing politics 5 – 7, 17 Les Milles, Camp 43, 44, 125 Les Zusammenbrechende 77, 77 – 9 Le Vernet, Camp 44, 51, 66, 105, 124, 142, 153, 170 – 71, 179 – 80 Levin, Julius (Julio) 19, 26, 27 Lévy, Paul 118 Le Wigrant, France 33, 70 Lewinnek, Arié Lieb 61, 64 Leyens, Jacques-Phillipe 195 liberalism 5 liberty: at Camp Gurs 115; at Camp Noé 143; Camp Saint-Cyprien 46, 58, 62 lice 124, 153 LIFE magazine 31 life reform movement 8 Loesers, Kurt 126 Loew, Kurt 115, 116 Long, Rose-Carol Washton 16 Lospinosa 179 Lower Rhein region 4, 22 Luce, Clare Boothe 31 Luce, Henry 31 Ludwigs, Peter 19, 27 macro-level problems 81 malaria 59, 153 malnutrition 164, 199 Malo, Éric 106, 140, 142, 190 Mann, Heinrich 17, 19 Marchandeau Law 44 Marchin 53 Marneffe 53 Marple, Harriett 11, 146, 171 Marrus, Michael L. 42 – 4, 71 – 2 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 111 Masson, Marc 9 Mathieu, Paul 144, 147, 150, 153, 168 May, Heinz 19 Mayer, Heinrich 61, 68, 125 – 26 Mazower, Mark 5 medications 45, 46, 52, 62, 65, 100, 126, 173 men cutting firewood 103 – 8 mentally ill persons 9, 148 Merxplas 53

Metzger, Babette 168 Meyer, Max 29, 30 Milgram, Stanley 3 Ministry of Public Health 9, 61 Mirabilis Medical, Inc. 27 Mischehe 18 – 19, 73 Mischlinge 18 – 19, 26, 27, 29, 53, 70 – 3, 165, 167, 194 mites 153 Mit Flaschen Waschen 120, 121 mixed marriage 18 – 19, 73 mixed-race person 26, 53, 70 – 3, 165, 167, 194 modernism 2, 5, 7, 10 Monjau, Franz 19, 26, 27 Mosse, George 3 Munich Putsch 5 Museum for Modern Western Art 17 Muslims, racialization of 2, 194 Mutter Ey circle 18, 19, 20 narratives, internal or external 68 nationalists 6 Nationalist Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party (NSDAP) boycott 29, 30 National Revolution, Pétain’s 9 National Socialism 11, 15 – 17, 26, 30 National Socialists 16, 17 natural environment 46, 65, 68; see also weather conditions Nazi Germany 1, 3, 7, 18, 192, 195, 197 Nazi Party 1, 3, 4, 11, 17, 18, 21 – 2, 29 Nazism 4, 10 – 11, 19 New York Times, The 45, 49, 116 – 17, 120, 122, 139 – 40, 142 – 45, 150, 161, 168, 169 Nexon, Camp 105, 143, 161 Noé (drawing) 106, 146 Nolan, Mary 4 – 5 non-aryans 72, 176 North Africans 9 November Revolution 17 Nuremberg Laws 3, 197 Occupied Zone 43, 175, 179 Ollenhauer, Erich 79 – 80 Omi, Michael 3 one-drop rule 147 “On the Human Person” (Saliège) 175 – 76, 197 Opfey, Walter 19 outgroups, stigmatization of 21 – 2, 198

210 Index

Palais d’Egmont 17 Palatinate 42 – 4, 101, 116 – 17, 120 Pankok, Otto 19, 27 parasites 56, 59, 62, 124, 153 Passover 99 Patzau, Kate 145, 180 Paxton, Robert O. 1, 6 – 7, 42 – 4, 56, 71 – 2, 179, 193 perceived racial identities 2 Perec, George 199 perfidious Jews, in Church liturgy 2, 71 Perpignan 42, 51, 62, 105, 145, 149 – 50, 152 Peschanski, Denis 44 – 5, 47 – 8, 190, 193 Pétain, Philippe 9, 44, 144 Pétain’s National Revolution 9 Philip, Percy 144 physical attack 3 Pichler, Rudolph 108 pneumonia 119, 122, 151 Polish peoples 8, 9, 19, 26, 157 Polish Red Cross 62 political power 5, 191 political refugees 53 – 4, 178 – 79, 191 Poll, Wayne L. 27 Poore, Carol 8 postage stamps 128, 129, 191 postcard, for 1937 International Arbeitersport-Olympiade 31, 32 post-traumatic stress disorder 4, 78 poverty 52, 108 – 12 Poznanski, Denis 193 Poznanski, Renée 193 Prats-de Molló, Camp 49 Préfecture Basse-Pyrénées 100 – 101, 122 – 24, 146 Préfecture Haute-Garonne 145 – 46, 146, 147, 148, 162, 180, 195 Préfecture of Toulouse 177 Préfecture Pyrénées-Orientales 49, 61, 81 Préfecture Saone-et-Loire 172 Préfet of Gers 177 prejudice 3, 21, 44, 71, 194, 195 propaganda 17, 178 prophylactic vaccinations 62 Protestants 70, 72 – 4, 99, 128, 166 – 67, 194 Purim 167 – 68 Pyrenäenbericht (Schwesig) 45 Pyrenees Mountains 45, 118 Quakers 56, 74, 105, 156, 173 quality of life 102, 147

race: Jewishness as 2 – 3; social identity limited by perceptions about 18 race hygiene 7 race science 1, 4, 194 race-thinking 15 – 16 “Race-Thinking Before Racism” (Arendt) 15 – 16 racialization of Jewish persons 1, 2 – 3, 18, 30, 44, 72, 120, 179, 190 – 201; dehumanization, in 21st century 198 – 200; Jewishness, threat to Vichy posed by 192 – 93; National Socialism and 11, 15 – 17, 26, 30; process of 193 – 98; salience of racialization, in 21st century 198 – 200; Schwesig in postwar Düsseldorf 200 – 201; silencing 193 – 98; violence of 190 – 201 racial-mixing 18 – 19 racism: defined 2, 71; discrimination linked to skin color 2 – 3; institutional 29 – 30; internalized 29; othering in 3; structural nature of 3, 44 Ratingen 28 – 9 rats 52, 56, 59, 62, 66, 118, 119, 124, 142 Récébédou, Camp 79, 128; deportation from 147, 175 – 80, 197; establishment of 140 – 43; food at 154 – 55, 195; transfers to, requests for 125 – 26 Red Cross 24, 61, 62, 102, 109, 111, 116, 125, 128, 139, 171 refugees: in 21st Century 199 – 200; aid organizations providing for 62, 73, 79, 81 – 2, 101 – 2, 111; Belgian 198; French 80 – 2; German and Austrian, from Nazi oppression 80; Jewish (see Jewish refugees); political 53 – 4, 178 – 79, 191; request for US assistance with 80 – 1; Spanish (see Spanish refugees); Vichy’s expenditures on refugee relief 74 Reich, Richard 61 religion 194; at Camp Gurs 99, 108, 113 – 16, 128; at Camp Noé 166 – 67, 176 – 79, 192 – 93, 197; at Camp SaintCyprien 46, 69, 72, 74, 80 religious celebrations 112 – 16 religious social groups, racialization of 2 – 3, 193 – 94, 199; physiological characteristics attributed to 2 repatriation 159 repatriation trains 198 “Respect of the Human Person” (Théas) 176 – 77

Index  211

response to life at 128 Revi, Alfred 71 Rheinische Sezession 19 right-wing extremists 5 – 7 Rilek-Andrieux, Lili 116 Rockefeller Institute 142, 169 Rogers, Mary 127 Rosenberg, Ernst 127 Rothenberg, Julia 11 Ruhr Valley 4, 22 Ruttern, Maria 30 Ruys, A. Charlotte 124 Rwanda genocide 80 Saarpfalz (Saar-Palatinate) 43 Sahlman, F. 116 – 17 Saint-Gaudens 149 Saint-Louis Hospital 149, 152 Saliège, Jules-Gérard 161 – 62, 175 – 79, 197, 198, 200 sanatoriums 79, 140 – 41, 151 sandstorms 59 – 60, 65 Sang, Johannes 19, 26, 28 sanitation: at Camp Gurs 122, 123; at Camp Noé 142, 144; at Camp SaintCyprien 45, 58, 59, 60, 79 saturation 52 scapegoating 77, 193 – 94 Schiff, Victor 80 Schlegel, Wilhelm Friedrich 11 Schlegel Brewery 15 – 30 Schlegelkeller (Schwesig) 17, 20 – 1, 22 – 6, 27, 28, 31 Schmitz, Hermann 29 Schwager, Alfred 127 Schwesig, Antije 200 Schwesig, Hannelore Müeller 200 Schwesig, Karl 20; arrest of, in Düsseldorf-Dernedorf 15; art exhibits 4, 16, 17; artist colleagues 26 – 8; artworks as historical documents 26; Das Junge Rheinland affiliation and 10 – 11, 17 – 19, 22; death of 4, 200; difficulties with the Nazi Party, beginning of 18 – 22; in exile 30 – 1, 32; functions of his art 17 – 18; high treason charge 17; homosexuality and 20 – 2, 78, 195; hopes of immigrating to United States 82; hygiene-related drawings 55, 55 – 7, 57; inguinal hernia 26 – 7; as KPD member 5, 18 – 19, 22, 26, 28, 33, 144, 191; personal troubles of 3 – 11; as Polish avant-garde artist 8, 19, 26; portraits of

luminaries 30 – 1; in postwar Düsseldorf 200 – 201; Schlegelkeller 17, 20 – 1, 22 – 6, 27, 28, 31; social locations of 3, 4, 8, 11, 33 Second Vatican Council 2 Septfond, Camp 171 Serrano Troya, Pedro 161 sexual violence 78, 191, 199; anxieties related to sex and prejudice and 21; bestial mutilations of male genitals 26 – 7; “foreplay” 24 – 5; male rape at Camp Saint-Cyprien 76 – 9; posttraumatic stress disorder and 78; in Schlegelkeller 24 – 5 Sharp, William 6 shoes 46, 59, 102, 109, 119 showering see bathing/showering sick, definition of 161, 173, 174 sickness, definition of 161, 174 Silberstein, Walter 127 silencing, process of 193 – 98 Sinclair, Upton 31 Sioux Sun Dance 192 “Skinny Dog, The” 195 Snow, T. H. 79 – 80 soap: at Camp Gurs 119, 120, 122; at Camp Noé 170, 171; at Camp SaintCyprien 45, 58 – 9, 62, 74 social conditions 191; at Camp Gurs 100, 111; at Camp Noé 161, 167; at Camp Saint-Cyprien 46 Social Darwinism 8 social engineering 7 social identity 18, 21, 26, 167 socialists 6, 16, 17 social network at 125 – 28 social problems 4, 7 – 8 social scientists 2 socioeconomic status 53, 109 Sociology Meets the Arts (Rothenberg) 11 sociology of knowledge 3 socks 110, 119 “Spaniard and Jew Trash-eating” 157, 157, 195 Spanien, Noé 159 Spanish Blood Purity Laws 2, 72 Spanish Civil War exiles: at Camp Gurs 100, 104 – 5; at Camp Noé 141, 157, 159, 160 – 61, 166; at Camp SaintCyprien 42, 45 – 7 Spanish refugees: at Camp Gurs 101, 104 – 5; at Camp Saint-Cyprien 45, 46 – 51, 68

212 Index

Spanish Republicans: amputees 105 – 8; at Camp Gurs 101, 104 – 8; at Camp Noé 105 – 6, 107, 141, 156 – 62, 166, 167; at Saint-Cyprien 48 – 53 Spann, Othmar 16 S.S. Saint-Louis 53 starvation 42, 69, 74, 117, 118, 164 status at Gurs 108 – 12 Statut des juifs 42 – 3, 44, 74 Stavisky scandal 6 – 7 stereotyping 2, 17, 29, 193 – 94 sterilization 8, 9 stigmatization 21 – 2, 26, 29, 77, 78, 119 – 20, 193 – 94 Stolpersteine 15 Stovall, Tyler 6 structure, at Camp Saint-Cyprien 54 – 5 Sulzberger, Arthur 44, 139 – 40 swastika 19, 20, 25, 28, 29 Swift, Otis Peabody 31 taxation 6 technology 7 Tence, Camp 120 Terezin Ghetto 1 Tetsch, Wilhelm 28 – 9 Théas, Pierre-Marie 176 – 77, 179, 180, 198 theory of hypodescent 147 Theresien Hospital 26 Thode, Henry 16 toilet paper 46, 59, 60 torture: bestial mutilations of male genitals 26 – 7; defined 24; “foreplay” 24 – 5; male rape at Camp Saint-Cyprien 76 – 9; in Schlegel Brewery 15 – 30; selection of targets for 15 – 16; woodblock prints detailing 11, 22, 25 – 6, 31, 45 torture cellars 15, 17 – 18, 21, 23, 23 – 4, 26 – 7, 28, 31 Toulouse 126 – 27, 145, 147, 151, 153, 154, 163, 171, 175 – 77, 180, 191, 195; see also Camp Noé trade unionists 6 Trester, Willi 160 – 61 triangulation 45, 52, 190, 198 Trillhaase, Adalbert 19, 20 tuberculosis 59, 119 – 20, 122, 125, 141, 144, 147 – 53, 156, 161, 164, 174 tumbledown barracks 62, 68 typhoid fever 60 – 2, 123 typhus 27, 59, 61, 124, 153

ultra-nationalism 1 underwear 59, 119 Uneasy Asylum (Caron) 179 United Nations High Commission on Refugees 101 – 2 United States Department of State 45 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 143 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 200 Unoccupied Zone 43, 142 Uzarski, Adolf 19, 27 vaccinations 60, 62 vaccinations, prophylactic 62 Vanguard Press 31 van Oordt, T. Bleuland 125 – 27 vermin 52, 56, 59, 62, 66, 118, 119, 124, 142 Vichy: antisemitism 42 – 4, 179; Camp Noé 147; censored materials 128; denial existence of cholera epidemic 144; expenditures on refugee relief 74; Information Bureau 169; Interior Minister 144; intrusion into the detainees’ lives 56; Jewishness and, threat posed by 192 – 93; “measures taken against the Jews” 177; perspective about epidemics in France 150; Pétain’s National Revolution 9, 44, 144; request for United States to accept refugees 80; Schwesig’s critique of 56; sickness defined by 173; testing infrastructure 122 Victor, Ghini 170 Vinnen, Carl 16 virtual social identity 26 völkisch movement 11, 16, 17, 191 Volksparole (newspaper) 17, 21 Vor dem Eingang zum Folterkeller 23 Warren, Lansing 140, 143, 144, 145, 169 water quality: at Camp Gurs 119, 120, 122 – 23, 124; at Camp Noé 196; at Camp Saint-Cyprien 45, 47, 53, 59, 60, 64, 70 water used in torture 29, 56 weather conditions: at Camp Gurs 100, 102, 103 – 4, 109, 110 – 11, 118 – 19, 124, 198; at Camp Saint-Cyprien 45, 46, 53, 63, 64 – 5, 67 – 8, 198; cold temperatures 64, 100, 102, 103 – 4, 110 – 11, 118 – 19,

Index  213

124; excessive heat 64 – 5, 198; flooding 47, 62, 65, 66 – 8; sandstorms 59 – 60, 65 Weimar biology, medicine and social policy 7 Weimar Republic 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 – 11 Weiss, Paul 73 Werdenberg, Mina 105 White, Joseph 143 Wilhelmine era 4, 8, 10 Winant, Howard 3 withdrawal 3 Wollheim, Gert Heinrich 19, 20, 27, 99 women: at Camp Gurs 101, 103, 109 – 11; at Camp Noé 141, 148, 149, 153, 156, 161 – 62, 164 – 68, 165, 166, 175, 176, 178; at Camp Saint-Cyprien 49, 50, 53, 65, 77, 78, 79; forcibly impregnating 78; rape of 78; at Schlegel Brewery torture cellar 28, 33; Schwesig’s romantic encounters with 21

woodblock prints 11, 22, 25 – 6, 31, 45 working class 4 – 6, 11 World Health Organization (WHO) 122 World War I 1, 4, 7, 10, 16, 17, 191 World War II 1 – 3, 9, 22, 33, 42 – 3, 61, 71, 78, 191, 193, 194, 199, 200 W or The Memory of Childhood (Perec) 199 Wright, Dr. 142 – 43, 163, 164 xenophobia 43, 44, 192, 193, 200 Yancey, George 2 – 3 Yom Kippur 70, 108, 167 Zeitgenossen 19 Zionist Organisation/The Jewish Agency for Palestine 102 Zweiter Abend 25