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"Yes," the prefect replied, "but important
people were sent there for forced residence."
And when we pointed out
the horror of 100 children being sent to their extermination from the Free
Zone:
"What do you expect?" he replied. "France has been defeated and
we no longer have an army."
All we were able to wrest from him was 10
children labeled "retarded" and that was really a present he was giving us,
either out of generosity or because we wore him down....
Then it was
terrible, because we had to choose. We had to choose the ten (who in fact
became 20) we were returning to life, consigning the others to their deaths....
And it was a terrible injustice, because despite ourselves our choice
gravitated toward the children we knew, those we had released in the preceding
months….and those whose parents had entrusted them to us most desperately.
The thought of this deep injustice haunted us for months; it weighs on us
today. It was not humanly possible to do something more unjust: 20 children
were saved but 82 were deported from Rivesaltes....
October
9, 1942. French police hunts for children and others begin in rural areas
of the Occupied Zone at the request of German security police. In the area
covered by the Chalons-sur-Marne SiPo-SD unit – the Marne and Aube
departments – for example, the who are sought are those whose parents were
arrested in the area and deported late in July, when Berlin had not yet given
permission to deport children.
On October 6, Count Modest von Korff,
the SiPo-SD commander in Chalons-sur- Marne, had received a telex from Helmut
Knochen in Paris specifying the nationalities of Jews who were to be arrested
"without consideration of age." Almost immediately, at 5 P.M. the same day, von
Korff wrote the regional prefect to order him to forward a list of Jews of
these nationalities residing in the Marne, Haute-Marne, and Aube departments.
The list is used by French police to organize and carry out the raids at von
Korff's request.
October 14-16,1942. Von Korff informs the
Gestapo's Jewish Affairs Department in Paris on October 14 that 52 Jews have
been arrested. He requests immediate transfer of the 52 to Drancy and it is
approved by the Gestapo. The next day, October 15, von Korff orders the
regional prefect to transfer the 52 Jews to Drancy. He ends his letter to the
prefect as follows: "Please let me know and send me a report on the carrying
out of this transport."
On October 16, von Korff informs the Gestapo's
Paris office of the Jews' transfer to Drancy that day. It is a pitiful
transport: 19 children – two aged 15, two aged 14, one 13-year-old, five
aged 12, one 11-year-old, two aged 10, one 9-year-old, one 8-year-old, one
7-year-old, one 6-year-old, one 5-year-old, and one child aged one. Ten of the
19 are without their parents, who had been deported in July. There also are
nine older prisoners, among them five women aged 63 to 78. Fifty one of the 52
Jews will be deported and murdered at Auschwitz.
Seven of the children
on the list prepared children by the SiPo-SD in Chalons-sur-Marne are French
and under the Germans' own rules should not have been sent to Drancy. The telex
sent by Knochen contained nothing to indicate that Jews of French nationality
should be arrested.
November 4, 1942.
Convoy 40 leaves Drancy carrying 1,000 Jews
to Auschwitz. Among them are 143 children, including
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FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld
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