Passover Haggadah from the Gurs Detention Camp – France, 1941 – A Copy with Hand-drawn Illustrations

Passover Haggadah. Edité du Rabbinat du Rabbin Leo Ansbacher [Edited by the Rabbinate and Rabbi Leo Ansbacher], the Gurs detention camp (Camp de Gurs), Nissan 5701 (1941). Hebrew and Hebrew in Latin characters. A copy with illustrations.
A Passover Haggadah written in the Gurs detention camp in France. Handwritten in square vowelized script, with the exception of one leaf typewritten in Latin characters; entirely mimeographed. This copy includes two hand-drawn illustrations (possibly drawn by a prisoner of the camp). The first, drawn on the first leaf, alongside the printed illustration of the Seder plate, depicts sheds and barbed wire. The second, drawn on the last leaf, depicts barbed wire fences on the background of the snowy peaks of the Pyrenees and the caption "Camp de Gurs, 1941".
The Haggadah, which contains most of the traditional text, was handwritten from memory, in vowelized script, over many months by the prisoner Aryeh Ludwig Zuckerman. Before Passover, when Zuckerman realized he will not succeed in writing the final Piyyutim of the Haggadah in time for passover, several of them ("Ki lau noé", "Adir hu", "Echod mi jaudea", "Chad gadjo") were typewritten in Latin transliteration. Rabbi Leo Ansbacher (1907-1998) assisted in the editing of the Haggadah and Rabbi Shmuel Rene Kapel (1907-1994), who helped the prisoners of the detention camps in southwest France, had the Haggadah duplicated in Toulouse.
The Gurs Detention Camp in Southwest France was one of the detention camps in which the Vichy Regime imprisoned foreign Jews (citizens of enemy countries, including German citizens) together with Jews from south Germany who were transferred there by the Nazis. The physical conditions in the camp were harsh: there was not enough water and food, typhus and dysentery caused the death of many and the forced inactivity affected the prisoners' mental state. In this vacuum, cultural and religious activities began to flourish, allowed by the camp authorities who believed that it might reduce the chance of rebellion by the prisoners.
An aid committee, Comité Central d'Assistance, was established in the camp and organized the cultural and religious activities, Rabbi Leo Ansbacher being one of its members. Thus, paintings and other works of art were made in the camp, Sukkoth were built, prayers were held, Matzahs were baked and a Haggadah was printed. The Seder of 1941 was celebrated by the prisoners of the camp, men and women together, and on the last day of Passover the camp authorities permitted a public prayer to be held; this event was documented in an illustration appearing in a copy of the Haggadah exhibited at the Yad Vashem Museum. In 1942, the camp authorities started transporting the imprisoned Jews to extermination camps in the East. Most of the prisoners included in these transports were murdered in Auschwitz.
[6] leaves, detached one from the other (text out of sequence; one page was mimeographed upside down), 27 cm. Fair condition. The leaves are torn in half or partly torn along the horizontal fold lines; reinforced with transparent tape. Some of the leaves have open tears, affecting the text along the tear. Creases. Small tears and open tears to edges. Stains.
Ya'ari 2290.
Literature: The Gurs Haggadah: Passover in Perdition, by Bella Gutterman and Naomi Morgenstern. New York/Jerusalem: Yad Vashem and Devorah Publishing, 2003.