Ancienne gare de déportation de Bobigny

At the hands of the Nazis, the Muette housing project and the Bobigny train station became tools in the implementation of the final solution in France.

From the beginning of the Occupation, German military authorities requisitioned la Muette. The first internees were prisoners of war. Soon afterward the camp was used for civilian citizens of belligerent countries residing in France.

In August 1941, under the control of the Jewish Affairs service of the Gestapo, the site was designated for the internment of Jews. The camp, classified as a "Jundenlager" (assembly camp for Jews), was administered and managed by the Paris police prefecture and guarded by French gendarmes who behaved with unusual brutality.

Drancy and the final solution

Convoys were still rare before 1942. After the decision to implement the final solution was made at the January 1942 Wansee Conference, the camp was changed to an "Abwanderunglager" (transit camp). Most of the Jews rounded up on French territory were brought to Drancy. Deportations were organized and the number of convoys increased. The prisoners were shipped out from the Drancy-Le Bourget station at a distance of 2.7 Km from the Drancy camp.

The occupying forces established a pace of one convoy of 1.000 people per week. Between March 1942 and July 1943, 42 convoys left Bourget, transporting a total of 42,050 deportees.

In June 1943, the Drancy camp became a "Konzentrationlager" (concentration camp). Under the direction of Aloïs Brunner the internment regime became harsher and a decision was made to include naturalized French Jews in the deportation operation. At this time (July 1943) Bobigny replaced Bourget as departure platform of the convoys.

Of the total of over 75.000 Jews deported from France, 83% were interned at Drancy before embarking for the camps; one third of the Jews held at Drancy boarded the trains at the Bobigny station.

Bobigny train station: a link in the chain of destruction of the Jews of France

Even when the convoys of deported Jews were loaded at Bourget, the station was still used for normal traffic and the deportees were pushed into cattle cars in full view of ordinary passengers. But Aloïs Brunner decided, in the interest of discretion, to transfer the deportation operation to the abandoned Bobigny station, which was located in a sparsely urbanized zone.

Bobigny station became a link in the chain of the extermination of the Jews of France. From the summer of 1943 to the summer of 1944, 22 407 men, women and children of all ages embarked in a total of 21 convoys that left the Bobigny station for Auschwitz where the great majority were lead straight from the arrival ramp to the gas chambers.