|
|
 |
| |
[know…] ledge of their personal
data was limited to what was written on the interim lists.
As with the
birth dates, many missing birthplaces were established by examining
departmental archives. The research in Perpignan, near the Spanish border, in
the Pyrénées-Orientales departmental archives, serves as an
example: I rediscovered the birthplaces of 140 children who were transferred
from the region's Rivesaltes camp to Drancy for deportation. This kind of
research, of course, is not compartmentalized: The correct spellings for the
names of eight children were found; three who were listed as children in fact
were more than 18 years old; exact birth dates were found for 15 children; and,
finally, the first names of three children known only by their family names
were rediscovered.
Other documents also provided missing birthplaces,
including some that had remained unpublished or beyond the reach of
researchers. The registers of the camps of the Loiret region were found in the
Loiret departmental archives and were particularly important. So, too, were the
archives of the Jewish Affairs Service of the Gironde Prefecture, in Bordeaux.
I was given copies in 1981 when I launched the case against Maurice Papon, who
had been that prefecture's secretary general and its official responsible for
Jewish affairs. The Drancy registers of daily entries and exits of Jews between
October 1, 1942, and June 30, 1943, and the census of Jews in the Occupied Zone
outside Paris were also used. (See list of documentary sources, below.)
The Children's Home
Addresses
Home addresses were not regularly recorded on the
original deportation lists and usually were not recorded at all on lists for
the convoys filled with children – numbers 20 to 26. But this was the
information I was determined to find for each child. I found many on the
Veterans Ministry's data processing lists, but some were wrong and there were
still gaps. These lists were based on the Drancy card index, which I finally
obtained by court order in 1994 and which I had hoped would be useful in
providing missing information. But for the most important period, up to July
1943, they yielded little more information than the deportation lists. In
particular, they did not provide missing addresses for the thousands of Jewish
children arrested and interned in the Loiret camps before deportation (the
older ones from Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande, the younger ones from
Drancy). We finally established at least 3,000 addresses after miraculously
obtaining microfilm copies of the Loiret camp registers.
Although the
registers were very difficult to read, Trudy Baer, a member of the FFDJF whose
own father was executed (her mother and sister survived deportation), was able
to create a master file from them. She then identified the addresses of most of
these children by comparing the names on the deportation lists to the names in
the Loiret camp files, and I verified the names against the camp registers.
Each name still lacking an address was compared with the names of children for
whom we had not been able to determine the deportation convoy. Matches also
came from identifying spelling errors in names, particularly in the first
letter – Tokiok instead of Pokiok, for example, and Glingold instead of
Elingold. An examination of archival files on foreign Jews in certain
departments of the former Vichy Zone yielded some more
|
|
| |
| |
| |
FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld
 |
Back |
Page 112 |
Forward |
 |
|
