VIDEOCASTS “Searching for traces of Gurs”

In short conversations, Gabriele Valeska Wilczek and Olivia Schneller present the illustrated stories that Horst Rosenthal drew in 1942 at the Camp de Gurs. From 1939 to 1945, Gurs was a French internment camp at the foot of the Pyrenees. Horst Rosenthal was born in Breslau in 1915 and was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942.

The narratives and images are brought to life in discussions with experts. Our videocasts deal with the topic of “origin,” here in connection with flight or expulsion.

EPISODE 1 – MICKEY AU CAMP DE GURS

In the first episode, Olivia Schneller and Gabriele Valeska Wilczek read and reflect upon Rosenthal’s cartoon book Mickey au Camp de Gurs (Mickey Mouse in the Gurs Internment Camp). They accompany the reader or listener on Mickey’s journey into the internment camp and along his unusual path out again.

EPISODE 2 – THE ROSENTHAL BROTHERS

In this episode, Olivia Schneller and Gabriele Valeska Wilczek speak with Dr. Bernd Hainmüller about his research into the Rosenthal brothers’ story. Bernd Hainmüller is a sociologist and educational scholar. Little is known about Horst Rosenthal’s biography. Bernd Hainmüller’s meticulous search for traces of his twin brother, Alfred, led from Great Britain to Australia and Berlin. The photographs of Alfred, who after 1946 called himself Frederick Robinson, give us an idea of what Horst must have looked like. No photograph has yet been found of him.

episode 3 – talking about MICKEY AU CAMP DE GURS

In this episode, Olivia Schneller and Gabriele Valeska Wilczek talk with Prof. Dr. Daniel Hoffmann, a literary scholar in Cologne, about Mickey au Camp de Gurs (Mickey Mouse in the Gurs Internment Camp). Is Rosenthal’s story a comic book? Have Paul Hoffmann’s stories about his own internment granted his son Daniel special insight into Horst Rosenthal’s motives? Paul Hoffmann survived the Auschwitz-Monowitz concentration camp.

episode 4 – letters – signs of life from  Gurs

Here, Christiane Walesch-Schneller discusses the unusual ways in which letters from Breisach Jewish families ended up in the Blaue Haus archives. All the letters from the eight families were written during the time of persecution, flight and deportation to the Gurs internment camp. A significant aspect of this collection is that the fate of many of the people mentioned in the letters remains unknown.

episode 5 – the grandparents in gurs or the Legacy of the seven Boxes

In this episode, Olivia Schneller and Christiane Walesch-Schneller speak with Dory Sontheimer about her late discovery of her Jewish heritage. Dory Sontheimer lives in Barcelona. Only after the death of her mother did she find seven boxes containing hundreds of letters, photographs and documents. The find, which she writes about in her book The Legacy of the Seven Boxes, changed her life. Dory Sontheimer’s mother and grandparents were from Freiburg. The grandparents and other family members were deported to Gurs in 1940 and from there, in 1942, to Auschwitz.

episode 6 – The picture stories of HORST ROSENTHAL. A conversation with PNINA ROSENBERG

Christiane Walesch-Schneller and Olivia Schneller talk to art historian Dr. Pnina Rosenberg from Haifa about her discoveries while working on Horst Rosenthal’s three existing comic books. The main focus in on the two stories La Journee d’un Hébergé (A Day in the Life of a Camp Resident) and Petit Guide à travers le Camp de Gurs (Little Guide Through the Gurs Camp). Pnina Rosenberg was the first scholar to address Horst Rosenthal’s legacy. How is everyday life in the Gurs internment camp reflected in both stories and what messages are conveyed in them? We have provided subtitles for the conversation, which was conducted in English.

episode 7 – LA JOURNEE D’UN HÉBERGÉ by HORST ROSENTHAL

In this episode, Olivia Schneller and Gabriele Valeska Wilczek read and reflect upon   Rosenthal’s story La Journee d’un Hébergé (A Day in the Life of a Camp Resident), which is structured like a medieval book of hours and has some aspects of a fairy tale. But does the story also end like a fairy tale?

episode 8 – PETIT GUIDE À TRAVERS LE CAMP DE GURS by HORST ROSENTHAL

A guide to an internment camp? In this episode, Olivia Schneller and Gabriele Valeska Wilczek read and reflect upon Horst Rosenthal’s illustrated story, Petit Guide à travers le Camp de Gurs (Little Guide Through the Gurs Camp). In their discussion, they illuminate the multifaceted complexity of Horst Rosenthal’s pictures and texts and reveal their hidden irony.

Episode 9 – What does The LILI JACOB ALBUM tell us?

The photographs in the Lili Jacob album are seen as “icons of the Holocaust.” They were taken in the summer of 1944 by two SS photographers in Auschwitz-Birkenau to show how smoothly the murder of Hungarian Jews was proceeding. Historian Dr. Christoph Kreutzmüller – co-author with Tal Bruttmann and Stefan Hördler of Die fotografische Inszenierung des Verbrechens (The Photographic Staging of Crime) – talks with Christiane Walesch-Schneller about the origins of the photo album and provides a portrait of Lili Jacob, who found it after she was liberated. In the detailed analysis of the album’s images, he points out the visible and the invisible. Kreutzmüller is an expert on researching photographic documents of the persecution. Most recently, the exhibition “Gurs 1940. The Deportation and Murder of Jews from Southwestern Germany” was developed under his direction by the House of the Wannsee Conference memorial in Berlin, on behalf of Baden-Württemberg’s Cultural Ministry.

episode 10 – FILM and photo documents of the DEPORTATION to GURS

The deportation of Jews from Baden, the Palatinate and Saarland to the Gurs internment camp on October 22, 1940, took place quite openly. Its implementation was documented both photographically and in films.

In this episode, Christiane Walesch-Schneller discusses with historian Dr. Christoph Kreutzmüller selected photographic and film documents from Ludwigshafen, Bruchsal, Kippenheim and Lörrach. Kreutzmüller is an expert on researching photographic documents of the persecution. The exhibition “Gurs 1940. The Deportation and Murder of Jews from Southwestern Germany” was developed under his direction by the House of the Wannsee Conference memorial in Berlin, on behalf of Baden-Württemberg’s Cultural Ministry.

No photographs of the events of October 22, 1940, in Breisach have survived. Letters written by Breisach inmates at Gurs convey their impressions (see Episode 4, Signs of Life from Gurs). The Breisach Jews already knew what deportation meant. They had been picked up at the beginning of August 1940, immediately after having returned from being evacuated, and locked up for several weeks in the psychiatric clinic in Rouffach in occupied Alsace. Only a few weeks after their second return home, they were taken away again, this time never to return.

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