This Haggadah was duplicated and distributed among inmates in the Gurs camp before Passover 1941. The original Haggadah was handwritten, presumably from memory, by Gurs prisoner Aryeh Ludwig Zuckerman, over many months and under harsh conditions. According to Rabbi Leo Ansbacher, a spiritual leader in the camp who was involved in putting out the Haggadah, when Passover was approaching and the writing not yet finished, it was decided to type the songs and poems using a typewriter with Latin letters.
Rabbi Shmuel René Kappel, welfare rabbi of the detention camps in southwest France, brought the Haggadah to Toulouse for duplication.
This copy of the Haggadah was received by Julien Samuel in appreciation for his assistance to the prisoners of Gurs. Samuel, a French Jew from Alsace, was active in the OSE and helped the prisoners obtain additional food.
In the following excerpt, written close to the time of the events themselves, Dr. Pinhas Sigmund Rothschild recalls the preparations for Passover 1941.
"At the time, celebrating the Passover holiday in the Gurs camp, we felt as if a refreshing breeze from the Promised Land had descended upon us via the desert: "By the strength of His hand, God took us out from the house of slavery."
Before Gurs, we had led a carefree existence in the Diaspora, and had not attempted to truly understand or remember the miracle of the Exodus from Egypt – from slavery to freedom. Now, it was as if that which befell our nation in those distant days touched us and became part of our everyday existence. Then as now: the reality and the expectations. We vacillated between the hope for freedom and the hardships still waiting for us, as we began to prepare for the holiday week in the camp."
(The Gurs Haggadah: Passover in Perdition", published by Devora Publishing and Yad Vashem, © 2003 English Language Edition by Devora Publishing, p. 9)
