| Drancy | |
|---|---|
| Transit camp | |
 The accommodation block at Drancy with French policeman on guard | |
  Location of Drancy within France | |
 | |
| Location | Drancy, France |
| Operated by | French police (until 1943) Nazi Germany |
| Commandant | Theodor Dannecker Alois Brunner |
| Original use | Utopian urban community |
| Operational | 20 August 1941 – 17 August 1944 |
| Inmates | French, Polish, Czechoslovak, and German Jews |
| Number of inmates | 67,400 deported; 1,542 remaining at liberation |
| Liberated by | French Resistance (indirectlyWestern Allies, mainly theUnited Kingdom andUnited States) |
| Notable inmates | Tristan Bernard,Eduard Bloch,René Blum,Max van Dam,Max Jacob,Charlotte Salomon,Simone Veil,Jean Wahl |
| Website | http://drancy.memorialdelashoah.org/en/ |
Drancy internment camp (French:Camp d'internement de Drancy) was an assembly and detention camp for confiningJews who were later deported to theextermination camps during theGerman occupation of France during World War II. Originally conceived and built as amodernist urban community under the nameLa Cité de la Muette (lit. 'The City of the Mute'), it was located inDrancy, a northeastern suburb ofParis,France.
Between 22 June 1942 and 31 July 1944, during its use as an internment camp, 67,400 French, Polish, and German Jews were deported from the camp in 64rail operations,[1] which included 6,000 children. Only 1,542 prisoners remained alive at the camp when the German authorities in Drancy fled asAllied forces advanced and the Swedish Consul-GeneralRaoul Nordling took control of the camp on 17 August 1944, before handing it over to the French Red Cross to care for thesurvivors.[2]
Drancy was under the control of the French police until 1943 when administration was taken over by theSS, which placed officerAlois Brunner in charge of the camp. In 2001, Brunner's case was brought before a French court byNazi hunterSerge Klarsfeld, which sentenced Brunnerin absentia to a life sentence for crimes against humanity.[3]
After the 1940defeat by Germany and 10 July 1940 vote of full powers to MarshalPhilippe Pétain, theRepublic was abolished andVichy France was proclaimed. The Vichy government cooperated withNazi Germany, hunting down foreign andFrench Jews and turning them over to theGestapo for transport to theThird Reich'sextermination camps.
The Drancy internment camp became identified by the northeastern suburb of Paris in which it was located. It was originally conceived by the noted architectsMarcel Lods [fr] andEugène Beaudouin [fr] as a striking,modernist urban community. The design was especially noteworthy for its integration of high-rise residential apartment towers, among the first of their kind in France. Poetically namedLa Cité de la Muette ("The Silent City") at its creation for its perceived peaceful ideals,[4] the name became twisted with bitterly ironic meaning. The entire complex was confiscated by Nazi authorities not long after the German occupation of France in 1940. It was used first as police barracks, then converted into the primary detention center in the Paris region for holdingJews and other people labeled as "undesirable" before deportation.
On 20 August 1941, French police conducted raids throughout the11th arrondissement of Paris and arrested more than 4,000 Jews, mainly foreign or stateless Jews. French authorities interned these Jews in Drancy, marking its official opening. French police enclosed the barracks and courtyard with barbed-wire fencing and provided guards for the camp. Drancy fell under the command of the Gestapo Office of Jewish Affairs in France and German SS CaptainTheodor Dannecker. Five subcamps of Drancy were located throughout Paris (three of which were the Austerlitz, Lévitan and Bassano camps).[5] Following theVel' d'Hiv Roundup on 16 and 17 July 1942, more than 4,900 of the 13,152 victims of the mass arrest were sent directly to the camp at Drancy before their deportation toAuschwitz.
Drancy was under the control of the French police until 3 July 1943 when Germany took direct control of the Drancy camp. SS officerAlois Brunner became camp commandant as part of the major stepping up at all facilities needed for mass extermination. The French police carried out additional roundups of Jews throughout the war. Some Drancy inmates died as hostage pawns. In December 1941, 40 prisoners from Drancy were executed in retaliation for a French attack on German police officers.[5]
In November 1943 around 350 inmates of theBorgo San Dalmazzo concentration camp in Italy were deported by train to Drancy and, soon after, on to Auschwitz. The inmates from Borgo, Jewish refugees from a number of European countries, had been arrested after the Italian surrender in September 1943, having mostly come to Italy from France in search for safety from Nazi prosecution.[6]
The Drancy camp was designed to hold 700 people, but at its peak held more than 7,000. There is documented evidence and testimony recounting the brutality of the French guards in Drancy and the harsh conditions imposed on the inmates. For example, upon their arrival, small children were immediately separated from their parents for deportation to the death camps.[5]
On 6 April 1944, SS First LieutenantKlaus Barbie raided a children's home inIzieu, France, where Jewish children had been hidden. Barbie arrested everyone present, all 44 children and 7 adult staff members. The next day, the Gestapo transported the arrestees to Drancy. From there, all the children and staff were deported to Auschwitz. None of the children survived.[5]
Many French Jewish intellectuals and artists were held in Drancy, includingMax Jacob (who died there),[7]Tristan Bernard, and the choreographerRené Blum. Of the 75,000 Jews whom French and German authorities deported from France, more than 67,000 were sent directly from Drancy to Auschwitz.[5] Jewish-Dutch painterMax van Dam, captured in France en route to Switzerland, was briefly incarcerated in Drancy where he was able to paint and create print work. He was among the 1008 deportees on Transport 53 which left Drancy, on 25 March 1943, with the final destination ofSobibor. Van Dam was spared upon arrival and survived for six months painting for theSS but was murdered in September 1943.[8] Jewish Austrian footballerMax Scheuer was sent to Drancy, and then on toAuschwitz concentration camp, where he was murdered in the early 1940s.[9][10]
There were also many non-French Jews captured in France and deported to Drancy to await final deportation toAuschwitz and otherdeath camps. They included the noted German artistCharlotte Salomon, who had lived in the south of France after fleeing from the Nazis in Germany. By September 1943, Charlotte Salomon had married another German Jewish refugee,Alexander Nagler. The two of them were dragged from their house and transported by rail from Nice to Drancy. By now, Charlotte Salomon was five monthspregnant. She was transported to Auschwitz on 7 October 1943 and was probably murdered by gas on the same day that she arrived there (10 October).
The prisoners dug a tunnel to escape, but it was discovered before completion.[11] A TV documentary was made about the attempt.[12]
As the Allies were approaching Paris in August 1944, the German officers fled, and the camp was liberated on 17 August when control of the camp was given over to theFrench Resistance and Swedish diplomatRaoul Nordling.[2]
The camp was used after the war for theinternment of collaborationists, then went back in 1946 to its original designation aslow-income housing.[13]In 1977, the Memorial to the Deportation at Drancy was created by sculptorShelomo Selinger to commemorate the French Jews imprisoned in the camp.
Charles de Gaulle among others, held the view that the Vichy Regime was illegal. This view was underlined by the July 1940 vote giving full powers toMarshal Pétain, who installed the "French State" and repudiated the Republic. With only theVichy 80 refusing this vote, historians have argued it was anti-Constitutional, most notably because of pressure on parliamentarians fromPierre Laval. However, on 16 July 1995, presidentJacques Chirac, in a speech, recognized the responsibility of the French State, and in particular of theFrench police which organized theVel' d'Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv) of July 1942, for seconding the "criminal folly of the occupying country".[14]
On 20 January 2005, arsonists set fire to some railroadfreight cars in the former camp; a tract signed "Bin Laden" with an invertedswastika was found.[15]
On 11 April 2009, a swastika was painted on a train car used for the deportation of Jews, a permanent exhibit. This was condemned by the French Minister for the Interior,Michèle Alliot-Marie.[16][17]
A newShoah memorial museum designed by Swiss architect Roger Diener was opened in September 2012[18] just opposite the sculpture memorial andrailway wagon by the President of France,François Hollande. It provides details of the persecution of the Jews in France and many personal mementos of inmates before their deportation toAuschwitz and their death. They include messages written on the walls, manygraffiti, aluminium drinking mugs and other personal belongings left by the prisoners, some of which are inscribed with the names of the owners.
The archive also includes the cards and letters written by the prisoners to their relatives before deportation, and they are a moving contribution to the memory of the camp, and the crime of their detention. The ground floor shows a changing exhibit of prisoners' faces and names, as amemorial to their imprisonment and murder by the Nazis, assisted by thegendarmerie of Occupied France.
Nicolas Grenier, Cité de la Muette (poem), in honor of Max Jacob, who died in the Drancy camp, 2011.
The concentration camp also featured in a part ofSebastian Faulks' 1999 novelCharlotte Gray. The character of Levade was an inmate here, as well as young brothers André and Jacob Duguay. Charlotte was staying at a small hotel nearby to try and pass on a message to Levade.
Journal d'Hélène Berr, Editions Tallandier, 2008, (English translationJournal Hélène Berr, MacLehose Press, 2008 and 2009). Berr was a young French Jewish graduate who kept a diary between April 1942 and February 1944. She was beaten to death, sufferingtyphus, five days before the camp was liberated. She worked in Paris to save Jewish children by escorting them to theFree Zone.
Andre Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just uses as reference De Drancy a Auschwitz, by Georges Wellers.
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48°55′12″N2°27′18″E / 48.92000°N 2.45500°E /48.92000; 2.45500
