Camp of Drancy

From August 1941 at August 1944, the camp of internment of Drancy , often called by diminutive Drancy , was the key site of the Shoah in France. Located at the North-East of Paris, in the town of Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis), this camp was during three years the principal starting place of France towards the death camps Nazi S, for the majority of the convoys towards Auschwitz. Last nine Juif S off-set of France on ten passed by the camp of Drancy during the Second world war.

Choice of the site: vast and easy to close

The camp of internment of Drancy was installed in a district of dwelling very nine, the city of the Dumb woman, Architecte S Marcel Lods and Eugene Beaudouin. It is about a vast building out of U, a whole of futures HLM of four stages around a court of approximately 400 meters length and 40 meters broad.

The carcass work heavy castings of the buildings only are finished when, in October 1939, the city of the Dumb woman becomes a camp of internment. As from the summer 1940, the camp of Drancy is used as place of internment for prisoners of war French, then Yugoslav and Greek civilians, followed by British prisoners of war.

The shape of the building, called the “Horseshoe”, lends itself easily to its transformation into camp of internment: the masonry is surrounded by barbed wires, of the watchtowers are installed with the four corners. The ground of the vast court is papered of Mâchefer and of the barbed wires close U.

The building out of U and the turns, like certain contiguous grounds, are requisitioned by the German army the June 14th 1940. A document is delivered on January 24th 1941, giving a report on the requisition " for the needs for the troops of occupation allemandes" republican barracks of Drancy and all the movable and real goods. In the same note, " the assistant of the commander of the Frontstalag III, camp which is in these casernes" , that there no was written requisition of the barracks in question, " announces; but that all conventions were made verbally between the central service of quarterings of the Army in Paris and the Prefect of Seine". The residences of the officers of the barracks of Drancy are given at their disposal on October 15th, 1941.

Drancy will become one of the principal camps of internment of Jews in zone occupied in France, with the camps of Compiegne (Oise), of Pithiviers (Loiret) and of Beaune-the-Rolande (Loiret).

A center of deportation

From August 20th to 24th 1941, in Paris a great raid takes place. At the time of this raid, initially carried out in the 11th district, then extended to the 4th and 12th districts and a little everywhere in Paris and in suburbs, the French Police stops all the Jews - men exclusively - French and foreigners from 18 to 50 years. 4 232 people are arrested and imprisoned in Drancy, in the city of the Dumb woman become camp of internment of Jews. She from now on is identified under the name of " camp of Drancy".

The camp is initially a place of internment, under deliberately hardened conditions - the Famine involves quickly the Dysenterie, part of the French gendarmes maltreats the internees and multiplies the arbitrary sanctions and humiliations (shearings of the hair, fines…), etc

In November 1941, 800 internees sick or of less than 18 years are released.

Until March 1942, the camp is used as tank of hostages of reprisals. The prisoners are famished - a dozen internees died of hunger between August and November 1941. The December 14th 1941,47 internees of Drancy are taken along to the Mont Valérien where they are shot the following day with other hostages, Communists.

From 1942 and turning of the Nazi Germany towards the Final solution, Drancy passes from the statute of camp of internment to that of camp of transit, and constitutes the last stage before the deportation towards the death camps.

At the time of large the raid of Vel of hiv', started the July 16th 1942, the French police force stops close to 13 000 people. The couples without children and the single people are brought to Drancy.

After their arrest by the Gestapo and Klaus Barbie in April 1944, the Enfants of Izieu were sent to Drancy before being off-set and assassinated in Auschwitz.

On the whole, 1942 to 1944, an about sixty French convoys of Jewish deportees started from Drancy. From where its nickname of anteroom of death. In peak period, the camp knew the departure of two or three convoys per week.

The camp functions like principal place of gathering and deportation, until August 17th 1944. The following day, August 18th 1944,1 467 prisoners are released after the arrival of the consul of Sweden Raoul Nordling and members of the Croix-Rouge.

67 000 men, Jewish women and children were off-set starting from Drancy on 76 000 off-set Jews of France. Less 2 000 of the deportees of Drancy returned, that is to say hardly 3%.

Administration of the camp

The August 27th 1941, at the conclusion of a meeting between representatives of the authorities of occupation - Theodor Dannecker - and of the French authorities, the camp is placed under the responsibility of the Prefect of police. This last has under its orders the gendarmerie and the services of the supply of the Préfecture of the Seine. The chief of camp is a Police superintendent. Actually, the camp is “under the direct authority of the Germans who pronounce the internments and the releases, and regulate by precise instructions its interior mode”, indicates in May 1942 a note of the general inspector of Health and Assistance E. Aujaleu.

During its three years of existence, the camp of Drancy was under the successive directions of Theodor Dannecker until July 1942, Heinz Röthke until June 1943 and Aloïs Brunner as from July 1943. All three were S.

Theodor Dannecker “was a violent psychopathe (...). It is him which had ordered to starve the internees, to prohibit to them to circulate in the camp, to smoke, play to the charts, etc”, indicates Maurice Rajsfus in his book on Drancy. Heinz Röthke (or Roethke sometimes in French C-W communication) was less present in the camp, but it is under its direction, of August 1942 at June 1943, that nearly two thirds of the off-set total staff complement of the camp, approximately 40 000 Jews, are sent to Auschwitz. The third chief of the camp was Aloïs Brunner, formed by Adolf Eichmann at the central Office of the Jewish emigration with Vienna.

The camp of Drancy was kept by gendarmes French, installed in “scrapes-ciels” behind the building out of U where the prisoners are interned. Its operation is under the control of the Service of the Jewish businesses of the Gestapo.

Organization and logistics

The 42 convoys of deportation of Drancy left the March 27th 1942 with the June 23rd 1943 left the station the Le Bourget - Drancy (Northern network). The 21 convoys of deportation of Drancy left the July 18th 1943 with the August 17th 1944 left the station Bobigny (Northern network on the Large Belt). According to the calculation of Serge Klarsfeld and FFDJF (Wire and girls of the Jewish deportees of France), 40 450 deportees left the station Le Bourget-Drancy and 22 450 of the station of Bobigny.

58 of these convoys left towards Auschwitz-Birkenau, four worms Sobibor and for Kaunas and Tallinn. 47 convoys transported thousand people, 9 more than thousand (including 3 transporting 1 500 people) and 7 less than thousand, of which the last. This last convoy, the August 17th 1944 - one week before the Release of Paris -, allowed Aloïs Brunner and her S to flee, while taking along with them 51 deportees, of which Marcel Bloch, future Marcel Dassault.

Until July 1943, these convoys were escorted German soldiers and of gendarmes French. Thereafter, from the Policier S came especially from Germany.

Appendices

The camp of Drancy included/understood several appendices Parisian:

the Austerlitz camp, with 43 Quai de la Gare, the principal site of current the National library of France, open in November 1943, made work 400 Jews " united aryens" or " half-juifs" , i.e. Jewish by only one branch of the family (the mother or the father),
the Lévitan camp, in the store of this name, close to the Station of the East, was a sorting office of luggage employing 200 internees,
the Bassano camp, close to the Fields-Élysées (2 rue Bassano), transformed into a workshop of seams of clothing high-of-range and behaviors of graded S.

Maurice Rajsfus, author of the work Drancy a very ordinary concentration camp , adds

to it room UGIF
the two old people's homes of the street of Picpus and of the street Lamblardie,
the Rothschild hospital will be a provisional place of internment where one will send the patients of the camps of Drancy.

After the war

The camp is used for the purification. Sacha Guitry ( 4 years of occupations 60 days of prisons , editions the dash, 1946) and Mary Marquet ( Cell 209 , book of 1946), shown collaboration, there remain and describe in their books their living conditions.

The buildings become then cheap dwellings, ghost with their initial destination. They are today always a great whole of dwelling.

Lawsuit of gendarmes

To the Release, survivors of Drancy carry felt sorry for against the gendarmes accessory to the Nazis. An instruction for intelligence with the enemy is open against 15 gendarmes, of which 10 only are returned before the Court of justice of the Seine, accused of attack to safety external of the State. All are left in freedom before the lawsuit, and three escape. The seven others plead obedience with the received orders, in spite of many testimonys of brutality by survivors.

The March 22nd 1947, the Court of justice hands down its judgment: if all the gendarmes are recognized guilty acts likely to harm national defense, the Court considers however that they were rehabilitated by “acts of active participation, effective and supported with Resistance against the enemy”. Only two are condemned to imprisonment - two years - and to national degradation for five years, but they pardoned and are raised of national unworthiness at the end of one year.

Place of memory

1976 : after an international contest, a Memorial is built in Drancy by Shelomo Selinger, beside the Coach-Witness, in edge of the district of the Dumb woman. It is composed of three blocks on a small paved hillock, forming the Hebraic letter “Shin”, traditionally engraved on the Mezouzah with the door of the Jewish houses. The two side blocks represent the gates of death. Shelomo Selinger describes its work thus: “The centrist block is composed of ten characters, this number being necessary for the collective prayer (Minyan). (...) Two Hebraic letters “Lamed” and “Vav” are formed by the cap, the arm and the beard of the two characters, in top of the sculpture. These two letters have the numerical value 36, according to the number of “Right” to which the world remains (according to the Jewish tradition). ”
1989: creation of the association of the historical Academy of the camp of Drancy.
May 25th 2001: a decree of architectural classification of the city of the Dumb woman on the list of the monuments and the protected sites is signed by Catherine Tasca, Minister for the Culture.

Serge Klarsfeld underlined it in 2004: “Drancy is the most known place in the whole world of the memory of the Shoah in France: in the crypt of Yad Vashem (Jerusalem) where are engraved in the stone the most notorious places of concentration and extermination of the Jews, Drancy is the only place of French memory to appear”

See too

List of the concentration camps Nazis

Random links: