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addresses, mainly for Jews sent to the
Le Vernet, Rivesaltes, and Les Milles camps. Additional addresses came from the
census of the departments of the Occupied Zone, the archives of the Lalande
camp, the Drancy entry registers for the period from October 1942 to June 1943,
and the Drancy card index. Finally, as a last resort and only in a few cases,
the police receipts for valuables taken from prisoners were examined. These
records, preserved at the CDJC, often included the full address of an internee
from whom money or jewels were seized. However, children were rarely found in
these documents, since they almost never carried money. Finally, in February
1996 I was granted three days to examine the card files of Beaune-la-Rolande
and Pithiviers and the Paris Police Prefecture's card file on arrested Jews.
Despite these efforts, a few addresses still remain unknown or
incomplete. Perhaps readers of this book can help to correct and complete them.
But the essentials for the task have been laid out by recovering and making
available the research documents from archives where they were buried or locked
away.
The Assembly
Centers
The assembly camp, sometimes a temporary transit
camp, from which a child was deported – either to Drancy or directly to
Auschwitz – is the last item included. This information is important
because it completes the address and specifies the route traveled. Children
arrested during the major Vélodrome d'Hiver (Vel d'Hiv) roundup in Paris
in July 1942 were sent to one of the two camps in the Loiret before either
being deported directly to Auschwitz or transferred to Drancy for deportation.
In these cases I have indicated either Beaune-la-Rolande or Pithiviers if the
camp is known, or "Loiret camps" if it is not. For children deported directly
to Auschwitz from one of the Loiret camps – as was the case with convoys
13 through 16 – the camp of departure is listed. A certain number of
children arrested during the Vel d'Hiv operation were interned in one of the
Loiret camps and then sent to Drancy, but did remain in Drancy long enough for
it, rather than a Loiret camp, to be listed here. For children arrested in the
Paris area on a date other than July 16-17, 1942, I have listed Drancy as the
assembly center. This was generally the case, with the major exception of
convoy 35. Since those deported on this
convoy were French Jews – not immigrants – they first were
transferred from Drancy to Pithiviers, where they could be dispatched more
discretely. The convoy included 173 children under the age of 18.
In
certain documents, particularly the Drancy registers of daily entries (both for
October 1942 to June 1943, and for July 1943 to August 1944) the place from
which each child was sent was recorded on arrival at Drancy when he or she was
registered. In these documents, localities of the Paris region are named
precisely: Maisons-Laffitte, Versailles, Valenton, Sannois, Fontainebleau
Melun, and so on. These were listed as the assembly centers when they were
given. In other cases, the registers indicated "Prefecture of Police," or
"Drancy Kommando," and these were entered as Drancy.
For internees
arrested in the provinces, assembly centers are not shown in the Drancy
registers for the crucial period July to September 1942. Some were found in
deportation
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FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld
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