The deportation of Jews from the internment camp at Drancy, near Paris, was resumed last week, with 3,000 of them being sent to Germany for forced labor, it is reported in the London press today.
The report states that camp officials received an order from the Nazi occupation authorities to send several thousand Jewish internees to the Reich. Since there were only 2,500 prisoners in the camp at the moment, the Paris police rounded up an additional 2,000 Jews in the streets, picking up persons at random.
The prisoners were confined in the camp yard under the glare of searchlights, awaiting deportation. Every 15 minutes a new list of those who were to be deported was posted. Huddled together for warmth, the Jews prayed and sang the Marseillaise as they waited to be loaded into freight trains.
As the trains pulled out of the station, the thousands of deportees who had been jammed into cattle cars, continued to sing the Marseillaise. French police, who had been forced to carry out the arrests, are reported to have wept as the trains departed.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
