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The Gurs Haggadah: Passover in Perdition

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In 1941, the Jewish prisoners held for deporation and eventual execution by the Nazis in the southwestern French Gurs Detention Camp decided to hold a Seder on Pasover (the Jewish "Holiday of Freedom") in order to assert their own inner sense of freedom from the terror of horrific oppression. Collaboratively compiled and edited by Bella Gutterman (Director of Publications for Yad Vashem - the oldest Holocaust Museum in the world), with the material assistance of Naomi Morgenstern, The Gurs Haggadah: Passover In Perdition recounts this remarkable event which served to reawaken the national pride which the Nazis and their Vichy allies had sought to obliterate. Enhanced with a profusion of historical photographs, and featuring a facsimile of the actual Haggaddah recreated from memory and used in the camp, The Gurs Haggadah is a welcome and seminally important contribution to the growing library of Holocaust Studies.

The history of the camp, a section comprising the Haggadah recreation and the overview of the post-camp experience of some survivors is a valuable contribution to the Annals of Jewish History. This is a clear reason why Yad Vashem has contributed to the publication of this work.
It is important for anybody interested in this aspect of modern Jewish History, perhaps those interested in this aspect of Modern French history.

This Haggadah brought to life the camp in which my grandfather died. Gurs is a camp that I was never really able to learn much about before I read this book.