Collection of Letters Sent to Palestine from French Internment Camps During WWII - Saint Cyprien Concentration Camp ...

Collection of Letters Sent to Palestine from French Internment Camps During WWII - Saint Cyprien Concentration Camp and Gurs Internment Camp, 1940-1941
Five letters sent to Palestine from the Saint Cyprien and Gurs concentration camps in France, 1940-1941. German.
Five handwritten letters sent to Tobias Waldmann in Palestine, from Adolf Gottschalk during the latter's imprisonment in the Saint Cyprien and Gurs concentration camps in France. * Three letters from the Saint Cyprien camp, sent during July-September 1940 (one is written on a postcard). * Two letters from the Gurs camp, sent in November 1940 and in May 1941.
Enclosed are several envelopes in which the letters were sent.
Adolf Gottschalk's name appears in the records of the "Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names" at Yad VaShem (the records state that he was sent from France to Auschwitz in 1942).
[4] leaves, approximately 27 cm. (written on both sides. Two letters written in pencil and two in pen) + a postcard (written in pencil). Overall good condition. Folding marks, creases and minor defects.
The Saint Cyprien concentration camp was established in southeast France in 1939. Originally an internment camp for about 90,000 refugees who arrived from Spain during the Spanish Civil War. After the German invasion of Holland, Belgium and France in 1940, thousands of refugees were imprisoned there (since they were considered as spies on behalf of the Third Reich). Among those imprisoned were opponents to the Nazi regime in France and about 7500 German Jews, victims of Nazi persecution. Most of the detainees fell ill with dysentery due to the poor hygiene and crowded living conditions in the camp. At the end of 1940, the camp was closed and its inmates were transferred to the Gurs internment camp.
The Gurs camp in southwest France was also established in 1939 by the French Third Republic attempting to control the flow of refugees to France at the end of the Spanish Civil War. At the beginning of WWII, German citizens and others of the Axis alliance were imprisoned in the Gurs camp as well as French citizens suspected of being politically dangerous. With the establishment of the Vichy Regime, the camp became an internment camp for Jews who were not French citizens as well as others who were considered dangerous to the regime. Many of those Jews died due to the brutal conditions and others were sent eastward to extermination camps.
Enclosed: Approximately 60 paper items from the estate of the recipient, Tobias Waldmann which include the following:
* German letters (most handwritten) from the first decades of the 20th century (pre- WWII). * Photographs, letters, official documents, certificates and other items from Israel (which document the life and work of Waldmann in Israel, most from the 1950s-70s).