In Memory of...

As we were walking to the car after church service today, we stepped over this memorial marker and didn't realize what it was until we stopped to take a closer look. Becks had read somewhere about these memorial markers that have been put in throughout Germany.

During WWII when the German Nazis were in control, they had rounded up Jews in Freiburg and the area and deported them off to Gurs, a prison camp in the Pyrennes Mountains in southern France, about 50 miles from the Spanish border. About 6,500 Jews from this area of Germany arrived in Gurs on Oct 25, 1940. This was part of the overall plan - called the Madagascar Plan -
which was to deport all European Jews to the island, Madagascar, off the coast of Africa. That winter, due to horrible living conditions, many of the prisoners died in the Gurs detention camp.

By 1942, the Nazis had transferred most of the prisoners from Gurs to extermination camps in Eastern Europe, mainly to Auschwitz, Poland. Most were never to return again. In summer of 1944, the Allied forces finally liberated Gurs. During its short use as a prison camp from 1940 to 1943, over 20,000 Jewish prisoners passed through Gurs. Private citizens have paid to have these memorial markers set in the sidewalk in front of the houses where these Jewish deportees used to live (more info here - German only, sorry). It is a solemn memorial to the reality and atrocities of the Holocaust. It is a reminder to us all to continue to stand up for truth and righteousness, no matter what the cost might be. Jesus stood for us, let us stand up for Him and the truth of the Word.

'Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.' Eph 6.13

The translation of the markers -
'Here lived Simon Bloch / Melanie
Bloch (w/ birth years) who were deported in 1940 to Gurs. In 1941 they were found alive and hiding in Dun-sur-Meuse.' Apparently 2 of the very few survivors!









View of the Gurs detention camp
from the camp water tower.
(Photo credit: USHMM, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives)