Drancy internment camp
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Drancy deportation camp was an infamous temporary prison camp in the city of Drancy, north of Paris, France used to hold Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps. 65,000 Jews were deported from Drancy, of these, 63,000 were murdered including 6,000 children and only 2,000 were alive when Allied forces liberated the camp on August 17, 1944.
Following the German occupation of France during World War II, a large complex originally planned as a large public housing project but used as a police barracks was converted for use as a major detention centre primarily for Jews but also homosexuals and others labelled as "undesirables" who were seized by Nazi orders pending shipment to Auschwitz and other German extermination camps.
Like many other detention centres throughout France, Drancy was created by the Vichy government of Philippe Pétain in 1941 and was under the control of the French police until July 3, 1943 when Nazi Germany took day-to-day control as part of the major stepping up at all facilities for the mass exterminations. The camp was opened after a roundup of in Paris Jews in August, 1941, in which over 4,000 Jews were arrested. The French police carried out additional roundups of Jews throughout the war.
The camp at Drancy was in a multi-storey complex designed to hold 700 people, but at its peak in it held more than 7,000. There is documented evidence and testimony recounting the brutality of the French guards in Drancy and the brutal conditions imposed on the people including the small children who, upon their arrival, were immediately separated from their parents. It is to Drancy that SS First Lieutenant Klaus Barbie transported Jewish children that he captured in a raid of a children's home, before deporting them to Auschwitz, where they were all killed. In December, 1941, 40 prisoners from Drancy were executed in retaliation for a French attack on German police officers.
Many French Jewish intellectuals and artists were held in Drancy, including Max Jacob, Tristan Bernard, and the choreographer René Blum.
[edit] The camp today
On January 20, 2005, arsonists set fire to some railroad freight car in the former camp; a tract signed "Bin Laden" with an inverted swastika was found on the place.
In 1976, the Memorial to the Deportation at Drancy was created by sculptor Shelomo Selinger to commemorate the French Jews imprisoned in the camp.
Until recently, the official point of view of the French government was that the Vichy regime was an illegal government distinct from the French Republic. While the criminal behavior of Vichy France and the collaboration of French officials were acknowledged, and some former Vichy officials prosecuted, this point of view denied any responsibility of the French Republic. However, on July 16, 1995, president Jacques Chirac, in a speech, recognized the responsibility of the French State for seconding the "criminal folly of the occupying country". [1]
