France · Gurs
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Gurs internment camp (French: Camp de Gurs, pronounced [kÉÌ dÉ É¡yÊs]) was an internment camp and prisoner of war camp constructed in 1939 in Gurs, a site in southwestern France, not far from Pau. The camp was originally set up by the French government after the fall of Catalonia at the end of the Spanish Civil War to control those who fled Spain out of fear of retaliation from Francisco Franco's regime. At the start of World War II, the French government interned 4,000 German Jews as "enemy aliens", along with French socialist political leaders and those who opposed the war with Germany. After the Vichy government signed an armistice with the Nazis in 1940, it became an internment camp for mainly German Jews, as well as people considered dangerous by the government. After France's liberation, Gurs housed German prisoners of war and French collaborators.
Source: Wikipedia article lead, CC-BY-SA.
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Operational
Figures from official sources · verified 29 May 2026 · methodology
Operator
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Population held
Mixed/unknown
Opened
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Region
Gurs
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Death-row facility
No
No conditions summary available yet.
No visiting information available.
No mailing information available.
Contact the operator's website for inmate-specific procedures.
No major issues documented in our database.
Josef Morgenstern (born 6 June 1886 in Kis-Szlatina, Hungary; died after September 1942 in Auschwitz) was a Jewish art collector who was murdered by Nazis during the Holocaust.

Lisa Fittko (born Elizabeth Eckstein, Hungarian: Eckstein (Ekstein) Erzsébet; 1909 â March 12, 2005) helped many escape from Nazi-occupied France during World War II.
Marcelino Bilbao Bilbao (14 January 1920 â 25 January 2014) was a Basque anarchist, Spanish Civil War veteran and Holocaust survivor.

Matéo Maximoff (French pronunciation: [mateo maksimÉf]; 17 January 1917 â 24 November 1999) was a French writer and Evangelical pastor of Romani ethnicity.
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World Prisons. (2026). Gurs internment camp. Retrieved July 22, 2026, from https://worldprisons.com/prisons/gurs-internment-camp
"Gurs internment camp." World Prisons. Accessed July 22, 2026. https://worldprisons.com/prisons/gurs-internment-camp.
@misc{worldprisons-gurs-internment-camp,
author = {{World Prisons}},
title = {Gurs internment camp},
year = {2026},
url = {https://worldprisons.com/prisons/gurs-internment-camp},
urldate = {2026-07-22}
}