Annotations
Tauberbischofsheim
10/22/1940
Ruth Kraft and two as yet unidentified persons boarding the truck in front of the Jewish community center. A municipal police officer in uniform can be seen in the background as well as several young people leaning against a house wall and observing the scene.
Image: Stadtarchiv Tauberbischofsheim
Annotations
People
1
Keywords
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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.
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