Tauberbischofsheim

10/22/1940

Bertha Brückheimer, Flora Simons, and a third as yet unidentified woman with suitcases in front of the Jewish community center. A municipal police officer in uniform stands guard as they board the truck.

Image: Stadtarchiv Tauberbischofsheim

Annotations

Tauberbischofsheim, 10/22/1940
Municipal Police
Trucks
Flora Simons
Bertha Brückheimer

Historical context

De­por­ta­ti­on von Tau­ber­bi­schofs­heim nach Gurs am 22.10.1940

On October 22, 1940, the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot), the municipal and security police deported at least 6,500 Jews from Baden and the region then known as Saar-Palatinate (German: Saarpfalz) to the Gurs internment camp in unoccupied southwestern France. Twenty-two people from Tauberbischofsheim persecuted as Jews were arrested by the municipal police at 6:00 a.m. and given three hours to present themselves at Sonnenplatz with a maximum of 50 kg of luggage and 100 Reichsmark in cash.

Trucks took them to the assembly camp in Heidelberg that evening. 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.

As of August 1942, the prisoners were deported to Auschwitz via Drancy near Paris. Only four people from Tauberbischofsheim survived the Shoah.

About the image se­ries

Four black and white photographs of the deportation on October 22, 1940, have survived from Tauberbischofsheim. They show Jews being picked up from the assembly point near Sonnenplatz. The building in the picture is the Jewish community center (Badischer Hof) at Hauptstraße 72. Five of the women carrying luggage and blankets and boarding the waiting truck under the watchful eye of several municipal police officers are known by name.

In the background of the picture, young people and adults can be seen watching the deportation with interest from nearby.

The photographs were taken by the Heer family, who ran Fotoarchiv Heer in Tauberbischofsheim. It is probable that the Gestapo commissioned them to take photos of the deportation.

Photographer

Au­gust oder Jo­sef Heer, Pho­to­gra­pher

August Heer, born in 1884, was the son of Joseph Heer, who opened Fotoarchiv Heer in Tauberbischofsheim. It is not known whether the photographer who took these photos of the deportation of the Tauberbischofsheim Jews was August Heer or his son Josef Heer.

Provenance

Opened by Joseph Heer (1832-1903), the photo archive was continued by his son August Heer (born 1884) and his grandson Josef Heer. In 2005, the town of Tauberbischofsheim took over the photo archive and incorporated its holdings into Stadtarchiv Tauberbischofsheim.

Following the acquisition of the photographic holdings, the fronts of the photographs were scanned by Stadtarchiv Tauberbischofsheim. Unfortunately, the original photos can no longer be found.

Call num­ber at source ar­chi­ve

Ohne Si­gna­tur

Tit­le at source ar­chi­ve

Ohne Ti­tel

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Andrea Steffan of Stadtarchiv Tauberbischofsheim for her valuable advice and assistance in describing the photographs.

Text and re­se­arch by Kers­tin Hof­mann.

Kooperationsverbund #LastSeen.
Bilder der NS-Deportationen

Dr. Alina Bothe
Projektleiterin

c/o Selma Stern Zentrum für Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg
Freie Universität Berlin
Habelschwerdter Allee 34A
14195 Berlin
lastseen@zedat.fu-berlin.de