Postcard with a photograph of Camp Gurs

This item is a postcard sent by Franjo Žić, a volunteer in the International Brigades who was originally from the island of Krk, to his brother while he was interned in the Gurs camp in France. Following the defeat of Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, nearly 500,000 refugees, displaced persons, defeated Spanish Republican troops, and volunteers of the International Brigades crossed into France, where they were sent to internment camps and prisons beginning in February 1939. Among them were some five hundred volunteers from the territory of Yugoslavia, who had been stripped of their citizenship because they had illegally fought in Spain. The camps were established first in southern France and later throughout the country. Most of the Yugoslav volunteers were in the camps established in St. Cyprien, Argelès-sur-Mer, Gurs, and Vernet. In addition to the French prisons and camps, Yugoslavs were also present in concentration camps established by Franco in Spain. 

The situation in the French camps was very difficult in the first days of internment. Initially, there were no barracks or shelters in the camps, and the prisoners had to dig holes in the sand to protect themselves from the wind and the cold. Hygienic conditions were very poor, causing various outbreaks of disease, the most common being typhoid fever. There was almost no food, and access to health care was almost non-existent. The camps were encircled by barbed wire under the watchful eye of French colonial troops from Morocco and Senegal, as well as members of French special police units, the Garde républicaine mobile. 

The Yugoslav Communist Party (KPJ) members among the prisoners effectively organized political and educational work during their internment and were able to maintain high morale and discipline despite the difficult conditions, both physical and psychological, that characterized life in the French camps. In Yugoslavia, the KPJ organized public actions to pressure the government into granting amnesty for the imprisoned volunteers and collected materials, such as food, clothing, and books, to send to France. After the fall of France in 1940, many of the remaining Yugoslav prisoners were transferred to German labor camps, and from there returned to Yugoslavia as part of a rescue operation coordinated by Vjećeslav Cvetko “Flores”.