French Observe 50th Anniversary of Drancy Concentration Camp

The French authorities on Sunday observed the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Drancy concentration camp in a Paris suburb, where tens of thousands of Jews were herded to await deportation to Nazi death camps.

The victims were all arrested by French police.

The camp consisted of a U-shaped block of unfinished buildings guarded by French gendarmerie loyal to the Vichy regime. It was supervised by Alois Brunner, one of the last major Nazi war criminals still at large and believed to be living in Syria.

The site of the Drancy camp has changed little in a half-century. The buildings became a municipal housing project after the war.

But in the center of the block, a monument was erected recently to inform the public of what happened there.

Just behind the monument, the local municipality placed a cattle car, similar to the ones which hauled Jews to Auschwitz.

Inside, documents were placed on display to explain the meaning of “deportation” and “final solution” in the context of the car.

Simone Veil, a former Cabinet member and former president of the Parliament of Europe, attended the anniversary ceremony. Veil is one of the few Drancy detainees who survived Auschwitz.

“It is important to say again and again that what has been done to the Jews cannot be compared to anything else that has happened in the world,” Veil told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“There are already people in France denying the reality of the gas chambers, others who say more subtly that of course the concentration camps were horrible, but perhaps the survivors are slightly overdoing it.

“This makes me sick,” Veil said. “We knew when we came back from Auschwitz that those who had not been there would find it hard to believe us, and we didn’t tell everything.

“I am concerned about what will happen after we, the witnesses of the Holocaust, will disappear,” she said.