Annotations
Bruchsal
10/22/1940
Mr. and Mrs. Sicher, Adelheid Heß and two not yet identified persons carrying luggage on the way to the train station in Bruchsal. The photo was taken in Prinz-Wilhelm-Straße; the Bürgerhof, which was located at the corner of Bismarckstraße and was destroyed in the Second World War, can be seen in the background.
Image: Stadtarchiv Bruchsal
Annotations
Historical context
Deportation von Bruchsal nach Gurs am 22.10.1940
On October 22, 1940, the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot), the Gestapo and the municipal police deported at least 6,504 Jews from Baden and the region then known as Saar-Palatinate (German: Saarpfalz) to the Gurs internment camp in unoccupied southwestern France. Seventy-five people from Bruchsal persecuted as Jews were arrested by the Gestapo and given two hours to present themselves at the train station at an early hour in the morning with a maximum of 50 kg of luggage and 100 Reichsmark in cash.
In the evening, a train took them to Karlsruhe main station. From there, they travelled on a French passenger train, which passed through Mulhouse and Chalon-sur-Saône and took them to Oloron-Sainte-Marie in the Basses-Pyrénées department of France, where they probably arrived on October 25 or 26, 1940. They were taken to Gurs by truck.
Starting in August 1942, the prisoners were deported to Auschwitz via the Drancy assembly camp near Paris. Twenty-four people from Bruchsal survived the Shoah.
About the image series
One original black and white photograph measuring 9 x 13 cm of the deportation to Gurs on October 22, 1940, has survived from Bruchsal. It is a close-up of the Sicher family and two other not yet identified people on foot, carrying luggage and blankets, on their way to Bruchsal train station. The picture was taken in Prinz-Wilhelm-Straße. In the background of the picture, you can see the Bürgerhof, which was located at the corner of Bismarckstraße and was destroyed during the Second World War.
The photographer may have been Wilhelm Rummel, the owner of a photo studio in the immediate vicinity of Bruchsal train station. It is probable that he photographed the deportation on behalf of the Gestapo.
Photographer
Wilhelm Rummel, Photographer
Wilhelm Rummel had a photo studio at Bahnhofsplatz in Bruchsal. On May 16, 1933, he witnessed the arrival of the seven prominent Social Democratic prisoners in protective custody at the Kislau concentration camp near Karlsruhe. The respected politicians had been taken there in a publicly staged show transport by order of the Baden Gauleiter Robert Wagner. The authorities commissioned Rummel to capture on camera what was going on.
Provenance
Stadtarchiv Bruchsal received the photograph informally in an envelope without any reference to its previous owner. Unfortunately, it is no longer possible to determine when the photograph was included in the holdings of the municipal archive.
Call number at source archive
Ohne Signatur
Title at source archive
Ohne Titel
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Thomas Moos of Stadtarchiv Bruchsal for assisting with the description of the image. We would also like to thank Rolf Schmitt from the Förderverein Haus der Geschichte der Juden Badens e.V. for his help and for making available the commemorative volume marking the first laying of Stolpersteine (commemorative plaques laid in front of the former homes of Jewish citizens) in Bruchsal.
Text und Recherche: Kerstin Hofmann.
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