It was not long before shocking reports landed on the desks of newspapers all over the western world including on the desk of Eleanor Roosevelt. The Quakers send a delegation to Gurs and reported back that the older people only wanted to die. They would lie on their straw mattresses and refuse to eat, just waiting for the end. Nutrition experts estimate that the daily food was at most 850 calories. These shocking reports reminded everyone of the reported conditions after Kristallnacht in Dachau, Buchenwald and other German concentration camps. And this was unoccupied France.
The U.S. State Department was suspicious of tactics that would encourage further forced deportation. They felt that if they would take some action to rescue the Jews in Gurs, further additional deportations would follow shortly. Undersecretary Sumner Welles wrote a note to FDR to resist these “blackmailing totalitarian tactics of the Germans.” It was stated erroneously that the maximum number of persons allowed under the quota was being admitted to the U.S. Actually, the quotas for both Germany and France were less than 70% filled. FDR gave his agreement with his State Department by writing “OK, FDR” on top of the document.
In the meantime, the population of the camp had grown to 14,000, due to the transfer of inmates from another camp that had been closed due to a typhoid epidemic.
The “Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,” known as HIAS (the same HIAS that in 1941 assisted us in Barcelona on our trip out of Germany by Lufthansa), and other relief organizations were tasked by the U.S. Consulate in Marseilles to establish which Jews in Gurs had a chance of obtaining visas in the near future in order to move them nearer to Marseilles, which at this point was the only port of exit. Most of those selected were from the Baden area since they mostly had already been active in providing documentation before they were deported. On the other hand, there also were many who had no friends or relatives in the U.S. to provide affidavits, or lacked the funds to buy ship tickets.
Daily life soon became centered on the burial processions, some days as many as 20 burials. Most death certificates for older people recorded the cause of death as “senility,” even if many died of the rat-borne typhoid epidemic or malnutrition.
The camp commander ran an extensive black market operated by the guards to provide bread, eggs and sausages to supplement the meager 850 calories. Everything was available at an exorbitant price to those who had any money left.
Those that had documents that had been approved previously but had expired in the meantime were moved to a camp in Marseilles for reporting to the U.S. consul there. They lived in an abandoned tile factory called “Camp des Milles.” The consul there was inundated with letters and cables from refugees, particularly those from the original Baden area who had done most of their required documentation. The consul complained to Washington that he did not have enough typists and typewriters, which reduced the number of visas that he could issue. Undersecretary Welles, who was known to be most sympathetic to the plight of the refugees in France, authorized the hiring of more typists and stenographers and the purchase of additional typewriters. This enabled the consulate to double the output from 400 to 800 visas per month.
Many of the refugees, once they had their visas, were permitted by the French authorities to go on ships to Martinique that left once or twice a week. This also had the approval of the German authorities who at this time still had a policy of expulsion rather than annihilation, until October 1941 when Himmler stopped all emigration from the Reich. This is also what I have always stated in my writings and talks in reply to questions about how we were able to leave Germany still in January 1941.
One of the ships leaving Marseilles in May 1941 was the M/S Wyoming with several thousand refugees loaded on board in converted cargo holds. The ship hugged the African coast instead of going across the Atlantic, and eventually put into the port of Casablanca, in the French protectorate of Morocco for refueling. After five days of waiting in port, suddenly the fruit sellers disappeared and were replaced by Moroccan soldiers with fixed bayonets. The refugees were taken off the ship one by one only to be told the ship, on orders from Vichy, would not leave Casablanca and they would have the choice of going back to France or be interned in a camp in the interior of Morocco. Nobody elected to go back to France. The owners of the ship, after just having lost a ship to the British, were not willing to risk another loss.
While the Wyoming was still at sea, a spy panic started in Washington after several German spies had been caught in Martinique off one of the ships from Marseilles. J. Edgar Hoover was happy to oblige a request from the State Department to add an FBI background checks on all visa applications. This change, which further delayed and reduced the issuance of visas, was approved by FDR. Starting April 21, 1941, all applications would be reviewed by an “interdepartmental committee” made up of representatives of the FBI, military intelligence, naval intelligence, the State Department and the immigration and naturalization service. Enforcing the new regulations would be Breckinridge Long, a known advocate against increasing the number of refugees admitted into the U.S.
(To be continued next week)
Norbert Strauss is a Teaneck resident and Englewood Hospital volunteer. He frequently speaks to groups to relay his family’s escape from Nazi Germany in 1941.
