Ancienne gare de déportation de Bobigny

An urban fabric poorly adapted to a demographic explosion

In the first decades of the 20th century, the banlieue of Paris experienced a demographic explosion largely due to the rural exodus and the arrival of new immigrants. Bobigny which in 1901 was a rural town of barely 2000 inhabitants became in 1931 a city with more than 17.000 residents.

Because the existing infrastructures were not adapted to this influx, the banlieue was hastily urbanized in a disorganized fashion. Public transportation for the new residential area was terribly inadequate.

To compensate for the dreadful living conditions in hastily built housing developments lacking in comfort and sanitation, public authorities undertook important projects of modernization of the urban fabric.

Major works

To facilitate travel for an ever-increasing population in Bobigny, a train stop on the Outer loop rail line set up in the middle of open fields in 1882 became a proper station with the construction of the “passenger building” in 1928. The freight hangar was built in the early 1930s.

In the nearby town of Drancy, work began in 1932 on the construction of a garden housing project, la Muette, that would become the World War 2 internment camp of baleful memory. In accordance with the wishes of Henri Sellier - then senator of the Seine and later a minister in the Popular Front government - the housing project, which was the first of its kind in France, was designed to offer decent housing to the greatest number. But the housing project was never finished.

Though it took several years before France was hit by the repercussions of the 1929 American crash, France was hard hit by the mid 30s.  Urban modernization projects bore the brunt of this crisis.

In 1935, construction on the Muette project was interrupted. The unfinished building remained empty.

A similar fate befell the Bobigny train station. Passenger traffic was insufficient and the line was closed. The recently constructed building was abandoned. Only the freight hangar continued to be used for the expedition and reception of varied merchandise coming and going everywhere in France. Material for local enterprises transited through the station and truck farmers located in Bobigny sent their produce to be marketed in other regions of France. Some witnesses say that herds brought from the north of France were unloaded at the Bobigny station and then continued on foot to the Villette slaughterhouse four kilometers away.

These two abandoned installations - the Muette housing project and the Bobigny station - were converted from their functions by the Nazis who made them, along with the Bourget station, the nerve center of the extermination of the Jews of France. Internees from the Drancy camp boarded trains from the "freight zone" and not the "passenger building" which at that time was used as a residence for locally housed railroad workers.

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.

When Brunner decided in July 1943 to use the Bobigny station for the deportation convoys, the trains were loaded in the freight zone. Jews interned in France were transported to the death camps with industrial methods that reduced human beings to merchandise.

From 18 July 1943 to 31 July 1944, 21 convoys left Bobigny, including 19 for Auschwitz, 1 to Kaunas and Tallin, and 1 to Buchenwald. Out of the total of 22,407 Jews deported, only 1,474 survived.

Faultless organization

Every convoy of Jewish deportees was noted in telegrams exchanged between Paris and Berlin where Karl Adolph Eichmann supervised the implementation of the final solution throughout the whole of Europe. Brunner solicited approval from his superior for each convoy and then reported back to confirm that the convoy had effectively shipped out.

The convoys were organized on the eve of their departure along the tracks running between the freight hangar and the current location of avenue Henri Barbusse. A commando of internees was sent from Drancy to place a few buckets in each cattle car and spread a thin layer of straw on the floor.

The next day the prisoners were brought in busses and trucks from the Drancy camp 2.2 Km, away and dropped off at different points from the beginning to end of the convoy. They boarded hastily, guarded by German SS troops and Feldgendarmes.

There was only one small chink in the operation: as the trains rolled through France, some deportees were able to toss out messages for their families. People who found the notes mailed them to the indicated address.

Once the cattle cars were loaded and sealed they followed the tracks of the Outer loop to the junction with the lines heading to the east of France and on to Germany, and Poland.

Long forgotten

Only a few survivors have strong memories of boarding the train at Bobigny. They were loaded into the cattle cars so fast that even if the convoy waited several hours before pulling out most of them do not have a clear memory of the station.

Compared to the shock of arriving at the "Judenramp" and the indelible traces of the suffering endured at Auschwitz, memories of the Bobigny station as a stage in the journey to the death camp were not invested with the same intensity as the experience in Auschwitz or Drancy.

However some survivors recount how they were herded into the trains at the site and the atmosphere that prevailed. People who lived on the site—primarily the children of railroad workers who were adolescents at the time--or nearby in 1943 have also told what they saw on days when convoys left the station.