Ancienne gare de déportation de Bobigny

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.