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.

Before its final closure in 1946, the camp held former Spanish Republican fighters who participated in the Resistance against the German occupation, because their stated intention of opposing the fascist dictatorship imposed by Franco made them threatening in the eyes of the Allies.

The area, due to its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, receives a great deal of rain, which made the clay campgrounds permanently muddy.

Pieces of wire that had been stripped of their barbs were placed between the cabins and the toilets and used by the refugees like the railing of a staircase, to maintain balance on the unsteady ground.

[5] Those arriving from Spain were grouped into four categories (here translated into English): From 1939 to the autumn of 1940, the language that dominated in the camp was Spanish.

For a time, the commander permitted some imprisoned women to rent a horse and cart and let them leave to camp to buy provisions more economically.

At the start of World War II, the French government decided to use the camp also to house ordinary prisoners and citizens of enemy countries.

The first contingent of these arrived at Gurs May 21, 1940, eleven days after the German government initiated its western campaign with the invasion of the Netherlands.

[6] Seven hundred of the prisoners, interned on account of their nationality or for being sympathetic to the Nazi regime, were released between August 21—the date of the arrival of the inspection commission sent by the German government to Gurs—and October.

However, escapers who were poorly dressed, lacking money and without knowledge of local dialects were quickly located and returned to the camp.

Reclaimed prisoners were subsequently held for a time as punishment in an îlot called de los represaliados (of those suffering reprisals).

On 18 July 1942, the SS captain, Theodor Dannecker, inspected the camp and then ordered that they prepare themselves to be transported to Eastern Europe.

These men were not trying to enter into an armed conflict on the French-Spanish border and were not interested in confronting Franco, but the French feared they might and so held these Spaniards in Gurs for a short time.

Groups of volunteers have begun to remove the overgrown weeds to display the origins in which some 64,000 people were forced to live during the various epochs of the camp.

The event was well-publicized by the French, German, and Spanish press; as a result, the next year there was a reunion at Gurs on 20-21 June.

Some of the main participants in this ceremony have been Jewish organizations, representatives of citizens of Baden, former exiles, their relatives, and people of diverse nationalities who, by their presence, hope to point out the duty of every generation to remember the criminal acts of the dictatorial regimes that assaulted Europe during the 20th century.

After the liberation in 1944, the French Association of Jewish communities of the Basses-Pyrénées took charge of Gurs' upkeep and erected a monument to the camp's victims.

Hearing of this disrepair, the mayor of Karlsruhe in 1957 took the initiative to have his city assume responsibility for the conservation of the camp, supported by the Jewish associations of Baden.

The German cities of Karlsruhe, Freiburg, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Pforzheim, Konstanz and Weinheim now pay the economic costs of the cemetery's upkeep.