Author Archives: Anjelyque Easley

Day 5: Visit to the Memorial de la Shoah in Drancy – Thursday 10 March 2016

Anjelyque Easley

About thirty minutes northeast of Paris lies the city of Drancy. Here, 63,000 mostly Jewish people, including about 10.000 children, were held in an internment camp to later be deported to extermination camps in sixty-four rail transports between March 27 1942 and August 17, 1944. Although other internment camps existed in France during World War II, Drancy became the principal one for several reasons: from the perspective of the Nazi and Vichy authorities,  it was conveniently located next to Paris; many French gendarmes lived in its direct vicinity; and two nearby train stations connected to the eastern train network facilitated deportation.
Therefore, whether one was arrested in Bordeaux, Paris or Marseille, Drancy was in most cases the ‘antechamber’ to Auschwitz. It is therefore the primary site of the Shoah in France. Further, the camp serves as a reminder and symbol of the collaboration between Nazi Germany and the Vichy authorities, which both enabled the round-ups and other forms of persecution and provided most of the material help in the form of train cars, buses, gendarmes etc.

On August 17, 1944.  Alois Brunner and his staff abandoned the camp and managed to take with them 51 internees to Buchenwald. The remaining 1386 internees were left to themselves and the Swedish Consul, Raoul Nordling, took care of all the liberation procedures (release certificates, a little money is also distributed) along with the Red Cross. By Aug. 20 1944 the camp was totally empty. Control of the camp was divided up into three parts: a Nazi commander controlling the French administration (Préfecture de police de la Seine and gendarmes), and a Jewish commander. From July 1944, Alois Brunner limited the gendarmes’ role by posting them outside the camp only. This meant that the inside of the camp would be exclusively controlled by the SS. However, food and basic material needs kept on being provided by the Prefecture.

In the 1930s a U-shaped building — an early example of modernist public housing — lost funding and was never fully completed; the building and its lot was virtually abandoned. In June 1940, the U-shaped arrangement of buildings was spotted by the German Army. Located in the Occupied Zone near Paris, it was a logistically convenient site for a concentration camp, and the U shape facilitated surveillance. In July 1940 the first people to be interned in the camp were French and British war prisoners. In May 1941 the first of several round-ups began leading to August 20th 1941, when 4232 foreign Jewish men were taken to Drancy. During that time, there were hotels on the street facing the camp. Families of internees would sometimes pay a high fee in order to go up to the 3rd floor, which offered a good view on the camp courtyard and its eastern part. The amount of time spent at the window was limited, as many wives and internees’ families came every day. Things changed after the Vel d’Hiv roundup, which took place on July 16 and 17 1942, as women and children were targeted as well, and brought to Drancy. As this was happening, many bystanders watched as Drancy internees were pushed into cattle cars, This happened at the Le Bourget train station, near the camp in Drancy.

After the war ended, the city decided to finish construction of the site and in 1948 residents began to move in. The monument, explaining what happened in Drancy,was inaugurated in 1976. The cattle car was moved to the entrance to the former internment camp to symbolize that the place was a transit camp. To give a scale, the cattle car at most is supposed to hold eight horses or forty men (military during war). However, during the transit from Drancy to Auschwitz there were at least eighty to a hundred people packed in it, the largest convoy being in July 1944, comprised of many children. The sculpture seen today was created by Shelomo Selinger (b. 1928) , a Jewish deportee, in 1942. In May 1945 he was left for dead in a pile surrounded by corpses. A Russian doctor found him and helped nurse him back to life. But during this time, he got amnesia and lost some of his memory. So in a way, for him to create his sculptures helps bring the dead back so that they should not be forgotten. The design of the central sculpture is influenced by the various ages of people who were interned there, from male to female, young and old, depicting ten people, the number of a minyan. It is sculpted using granite, and symbolizes an eternal  flame. There are words from the Torah written in red in Hebrew, French and Yiddish. The monument’s purpose is to depict what has happened in Drancy, and to admonish: “Do not forget, gather here.”

A new Shoah memorial museum opened in 2012 across the street from the former internment camp. The museum details the persecutions of the Jewish people in France and displays personal belongings such as cards, letters, etched metal canteens, and graffiti of those who were interned in Drancy before they were deported to Auschwitz. The museum also offers a chance to watch videos of survivors’ testimonies and see images of the site dating from the Second World War period.

Drancy was one of the epicenters of the Holocaust in France, and one of its principle memory sites as well. I believe that Drancy should be visited. Seeing pictures of this site does not give you the real experience of going there. To walk along the same corridors that frame the building as the former internees gives you a sense of being in their shoes. No amount of pictures taken can help you understand the experience of the people who lived there temporarily. I feel as if this memory site — which has now reverted into a low-income residential complex — offers conflicting memories to those who live there today: it was once a camp and those who live there now, somewhat eerily, now call it home.

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