On the eve of departure, prisoners designated for deportation were corralled into a reserved part of the camp. Coming down the stairs, before leaving, many scribbled graffiti on the walls or wrote a last letter to their loved ones.
« July 18, since yesterday we have been crowded and quarantined onto staircase 22, without any contact with the others. We were called, told to pick up all our stuff and go off to staircase 22. The night was spent on the landings of this staircase that we had painted a few days before. In these rooms we slept on the floor. Early in the morning, we gathered in the yard prohibited to the other inmates. Behind the gate of the camp, trucks were waiting to bring us to the Bobigny train station. »
Gabriël Bénichou Deported July 18, 1943 on convoy No. 57
« In the days before being shipped out, on the barrack walls whitewashed with lime, we engraved inscriptions. Mine said: "Revenge! We will return" May 26, 1944. »
Sarah Lichtsztejn-Montard deported May 30, 1944 on convoy No. 75
On the day of departure, early in the morning, after another roll call, the deportees got into requisitioned buses owned by the Parisian Subway system, usually guarded by French police. Our luggage was loaded onto the platforms. The buses headed in the direction of Bobigny station by the road of the small bridges (currently avenue Henri Barbusse). They entered the location by way of a ramp, since destroyed, drove in front of the passenger train station, headed back to a train lined up near the entrance of the covered market, and stopped in front of the train wagons. The German escort proceeded with the boarding. Generally, the 50 people brought in on the same bus rode in the same wagon, whose doors were then locked. Before departure from Drancy or on the train platform in Bobigny, the SS gave a speech to the deportees, telling them that they were heading to a labor camp in the East and threatening retaliation in the event of escape.
« Going down into the yard and getting loaded onto the buses all went very quickly [...]: armed with long poles, [the SS] blindly hit the heads and shoulders of those who were not moving fast enough. »
Georges Wellers, deported June 30, 1944 on convoy No. 76
«I don't know if we were given coffee or food. I can only see us lined up in rows of five in the yard [...] while waiting my turn to move to the requisitioned Parisian bus which, among others, shuttled people between the Drancy camp and the Bobigny freight station. […] The buses would fill up, leave, come back, and soon it was the turn of our row to get on. The French police counted us out to fill the bus. As soon as it arrived, they made us climb aboard, re-counting us one by one. It was one of those old flat-bed buses. On each side of the platform were French police. […] In Bobigny station, it seemed to me that the buses pulled right up close to the boarding wagons. From thereon, we were in the hands of the SS […]. We were certainly counted, once before even leaving our seats on the bus, counted again when getting off and then another time upon arrival. I must have been among the first to get into the wagon for which my group had been designated. I remember, in fact, having a place on the left side of the wagon from the door in the corner opposite the door. I found myself not far from the tiny barred window they put in the wall of cattle wagons. Despite these gridded bars, the Germans nailed boards across this small window so that no one could possibly escape by this route.” »
Julianne Picard deported March 27, 1944 on convoy No. 70
Generally the convoys left Bobigny station in the morning. They began by taking the large beltway in the direction of the railway junction of Noisy-le-Sec and then the route to the East.
The journey to Auschwitz lasted almost fifty-five hours. Locked in the wagons, the deportees were only rarely given water. Depending on the season, they either suffered from the cold or the sweltering heat.
« The last vision of a civilized world vanished at the small antiquated Bobigny station [...]. Hell began. It started with the total confinement of the wagon, whose unique skylight opened its thin rectangle grill onto the winter sky.” “We kept saying: can’t even lie on the floor, hardly any room to sit on a few strands of straw. In the middle of the wagon was a water bucket soon empty and a receptacle used as a slop pail, soon full. Grinding of switches, wheezing of locomotive steam, jets of soot, groans, and whimpers. For our only food, a crust of bread per person. Only one stop in open country [...], sentries along the tracks, raincoats down to their boots, rifles at their hips [...]. » « The stench! First degradation we experienced was having to go to the toilet in front of everyone. […] Adults held up a coat, one on each side to somehow prevent the loss of dignity if at all possible. Very quickly, the receptacle overflowed. The content spread over the straw. The air became infested, completely stifling »
Ida Grinspan deportee on February 10, 1944 on convoy No. 68
« We sat right on the bare floor, mommy, Lily and me. Next to us, in this wagon of 50 people was an old couple holding hands. […] In front of me a man sits near his young wife; she is pregnant, almost to term, and holds a baby on her lap »
Charles Palant deported October 7, 1943 on convoy No. 60
« At one point in the evening, a loud noise invades the wagon. A few guys pull out of their food sacs and their bags an assortment of various tools. […] They try to separate the boards that make up the floor of the wagon.They strike with all their might in order to create an escape route. They finally manage to pierce through the floor of the wagon and enlarge a hatch to slip away. […] The guards [...] open the huge padlock [...] and climb into our wagon. […] They make us nail the boards back down to prevent new breakouts! […] The SS gave us all the order to take off our shoes as well as our trousers »
Henry Bily deported November 20, 1943 on convoy No. 62
« The train was moving. Shouts and groans warn us something is happening at the other end of the wagon, it’s the man with the weak heart, he was dying. People bang and scream against the walls in vain, the train kept moving on. »
Claude Zlotzisky deported April 13, 1944, on convoy No. 71
The arrival and the selection at Auschwitz-Birkenau
The vast complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau, consisting of three camps stretching over several kilometers, was in 1943, at the time the convoys were arriving from Bobigny, the main extermination center for European Jews. It had four new recently installed advanced gassing facilities, with an incorporated crematorium to immediately eliminate the bodies: modern murder plants to gas up to 2,000 people at a time and burn 4,800 bodies. From May 1944, a railway spur allowed the convoys to arrive directly at Birkenau.
Upon arrival, the prisoners underwent a 'selection'. The existence of a vast concentration camp complex at Auschwitz and the SS labor requirements, explain the peculiarity of these 'selections'. The able-bodied deportees are temporarily spared and placed into forced labor. Others, the elderly, the sick, the fragile, all children, were immediately headed to the gas chambers.
« On March 10, in the morning, we arrived at our destination. Brutal blows were struck on the doors of the wagons. The order: « Get ready to get off », was given us. Then the doors opened and we saw some SS on the platform, very few, but many prisoners. […] We had to leave all of our luggage on the platform»
Guy Kohen deported March 7, 1944, on convoy No. 69
« Very young SS teams burst into the wagons screaming, armed with clubs and throw everyone out with blows and wild screams. On one of the narrow sides of the quadrangle several trucks await, next to them an ambulance, and in the middle [...] there is a group of officers, wearing high boots and straps, stylish and full of death. They make the « selection »: older women, children are pushed towards the trucks where they climb in fast under the terrible blows beating down on them. Their screams fill the air. A woman tries to cover her child with her body: blows rain down on her shoulders and head. They are crowded onto the back of trucks, like bales of merchandises, and a chain closes off the truck bed to prevent them from going back. Some try to take their luggage; these are wrenched from their hands accompanied by repeated blows. The sick, the dead or dying are carried in blankets and thrown helter-skelter down alongside trucks. Some of those “selected” are arranged in rows of five. They will go to forced labor - temporary survivors. All others - I find out later - go to the gas chamber and the crematorium, even the older men, sent off in a column, will join the other victims on foot. The SS have the doctors, pharmacists and chemists identified; their profession saves their lives – for the moment. All this happens at a very fast pace. […] There are around two hundred and fifty of us that are routed on foot in tight columns towards the camp, watched over for the first time by the green sentinels. »
Fred Sedel deported July 31, 1943 on convoy No. 58
« I was holding my father's hand when we were suddenly separated by an SS who came up [...] behind us. Very quickly, it all happened very quickly, my father was pushed to one side and I was shoved to the other. »
Sam Braun deported March 7, 1944, on convoy No. 69
Photos de l’arrivée à Auschwitz-Birkenau à l’été 1944 de Juifs hongrois (extraits de l'album d’Auschwitz)
