Shortly after her parents were arrested by French police seven-year-old Nicole Spinner was seized from her school in France and taken to Drancy concentration camp overwhelmed and suffering from an ear infection she was cared for and protected by another woman in the camp whom she came to refer to as “Marraine” (godmother) Nicole stayed with Mariette and her husband after Drancy was liberated Nicole and her family remained close with Mariette until her passing Digital Accessibility | Accessibility Guidelines During the confinement period, you can access PSG TV Premium for free and enjoy all this season's match videos. Learn more You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience. Relive the 1-1 draw between our U17s and JA Drancy in our selection of photos (L.Valroff/PSG). Predicted lineups are available for the match a few days in advance while the actual lineup will be available about an hour ahead of the match 21 Dec 2024 17:00:00 GMT?Nantes won 4–0 over Drancy on Sat 21 Dec 2024 17:00:00 GMT.About the matchDrancy is playing home against Nantes at Stade de Paris (Stade Bauer) on Sat Bread distribution by the Nazis at the Drancy detention camp near Paris Some 70,000 Jews were incarcerated in this camp over the three years of its operation Almost all of them were deported to the extermination camps in eastern Europe a detention camp was established in the city of Drancy four-storey building which was used by the Paris area Gendarmerie before the war The food supplies at the camp were very meager   A daily ration consisted of 600-800 calories the prisoners took over the running of the camp from the French conditions improved slightly thanks to assistance from Jewish organizations and the Red Cross and the food parcels sent by family members The photograph documents the distribution of bread to Drancy inmates in December 1942 On the back of the photograph is the German inscription: "Distributing bread to the Jews" The Germans took over the running of the camp in July 1943 resulting in a deterioration of living conditions for the inmates and deportations to extermination camps in the east gathered momentum Jews in the camp maintained a cultural and religious existence They arranged concerts and literary evenings and the prisoners read books that had been smuggled into the camp and even after its official closure in January 1943 Hundreds of Jews participated in Sabbath prayers and religious ceremonies and marked Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) in the synagogue that had been set up in September 1941 the Germans issued an order forbidding Jewish ceremonies but the High Holidays were still observed in the fall of 1943 Drancy prisoners included French poet Max Jacob who perished in the camp in 1944; Pierre Masse member of Georges Clemenceau's government (Masse was deported to Auschwitz in September 1942 and murdered); Rene Blum brother of 1930s French Prime Minister Leon Blum; author Tristan Bernard; Jankiel Handelsman  and Jozef Dorebus who were deported to Auschwitz and were two of the leaders of the Sonderkommando uprising there in October 1944 70 prisoners started to dig an escape tunnel four meters underground The digging work was discovered in November 1943 and many prisoners were executed approximately 65,000 Jews were deported to extermination camps in eastern Europe More than 20,000 deportees had French citizenship Most of the deportees were sent to Auschwitz the Germans destroyed all the camp documentation the camp was liberated by the Allied Forces The last transport from Drancy had left less than three weeks earlier Amongst the deportees were 79 schoolchildren and 12 teachers from the Lucien Hirsch school in northern Paris.They had been arrested on 24 July 1944 I saw the children climbing aboard  two German trucks To me it looked like the children were going on an outing despite  the fact that their teacher was crying…  A soldier helped the children to climb up 18-year-old Yvette Levy was arrested with another 30 girls at the orthodox Jewish boarding school they attended in Paris Policemen in uniform forced the pyjama-clad girls onto a truck that took them to Drancy sang to them and tried to boost their morale They slept on straw in one room in deplorably unsanitary conditions was in a cattle car holding 48 children and 12 adults: when we tried to put the children down to sleep and it was pitch black they started to cry and no one managed to sleep for even a minute The children were hot and thirsty; there was no air at all We had to because we were in charge of the children Over 95% of the deportees from Drancy were murdered in the Holocaust The Yad Vashem website had recently undergone a major upgrade The page you are looking for has apparently been moved We are therefore redirecting you to what we hope will be a useful landing page For any questions/clarifications/problems, please contact: webmaster@yadvashem.org.il The documents in the ICRC’s Agency archives are at once both unique and universal: They protect the memory of the identities experiences and suffering of victims of conflict but they also resonate personally within each of us The file contains information on approximately 35,000 Jewish deportees of various nationalities who were arrested by the Vichy government on French territory and kept in the internment camp in Drancy The Drancy camp was made up of a large tract of low-cost housing the French government used it as a detention centre for communists German authorities turned it into an internment camp for prisoners of war as well as French the Drancy camp was the primary internment camp for Jews in France The camp was run by the Seine police prefecture and overseen by German authorities until 2 July 1943 Nearly 70,000 people were interned at Drancy between August 1941 and August 1944; from 22 June 1942 the majority were deported to the extermination camps at Auschwitz (around 61,000 people) and Sobibor (around 4,000) Waiting in front of the kitchen at mealtime when the so-called Final Solution was set into motion there were three deportations each week – on Sundays The documents in the Drancy file bear witness to how entire families were deported newborns – no one escaped the mechanism of destruction put into motion by the Nazis with the active collaboration of the Vichy government usually printed with forms that were then filled out by hand but the information on them might include the detainee’s given and family names whether the detainee was arrested in an occupied or unoccupied zone Camp personnel filled out a card for each internee when they arrived the date of deportation was added to the card The file contains cards for Jews from France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece and Turkey. The documents in the ICRC archives are only one part of the much larger Drancy file. The French National Archives maintain the complete file.[2]  the Drancy file was sent to the part of the Central Agency for Prisoners of War responsible for handling civilians’ cases the Service des Civils Internés Divers (CID) the CID began to send the cards out to the various national sections only keeping those for German and Austrian Jews who had been stripped of their nationalities The file is therefore spread out among the archives of various parts of the agency the cards in the Drancy file were mixed in with other documents and gradually forgotten Archivists rediscovered them in the course of research carried out for Serge Klarsfeld in 1996 Following the files for stateless Germans and Austrians are a particularly heart-rending series of cards: those for unidentified children deported without their parents and too young to know their own names The children were almost certainly arrested along with their families during the Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup and transferred to the Beaune-la-Rolande camp until they were transferred to Drancy in August 1942 before being deported to an extermination camp Drancy internee Odette Daltroff-Baticle wrote in 1943, “We are surprised by something tragic: the children do not know their own names …. The first and last names and addresses their mothers had written on their clothes had completely disappeared from the rain, and other children, either in a game or by accident, had traded clothes. On the lists, next to their numbers were question marks”.[4]  the French Red Cross got access to the Drancy camp and assigned the social worker Annette Monod to work with the internees She visited the families of internees and passed on clothing The German authorities disapproved of her assiduousness and shut down the Red Cross branch on 16 February 1942 only the General Union of French Jews was able to bring aid to the camp put the Nazi security services (SS) officer Alois Brunner in charge of Drancy and directed him to speed the pace of deportations The French police were pushed out of the camp the ICRC delegate Jacques de Morsier wrote a report on his visit; what it depicts is far different to what is now known to have been the reality of the period de Morsier writes: “The beginning of his tenure was fairly difficult because he wanted to eliminate habits that had made life in the camp quite impossible … Captain Brunner has removed all money from inside the camp: when an internee arrives their money and jewellery are placed in a safe in the camp’s financial service (managed by the internees themselves) against receipt with the promise they will be returned upon the internee’s release.” The detainees would never reclaim their money and deportations continued up to the liberation of Paris The final convoy of 51 deportees left Drancy on 17 August 1944 – the day the camp was liberated – for Buchenwald The Drancy file is a significant collection in the ICRC’s archives: it serves as written testimony to the tragic fate of tens of thousands of people Digitizing the Drancy file as part of the collaboration with the Arolsen Archives will give the general public easy access to these important documents Calef, N., Drancy 1941: Camp de Représailles, Drancy la Faim Fils et Filles de Déportés Juifs de France (FFDJF) Favez, J.-C., Une Mission Impossible? Le CICR, les Déportations et les Camps de Concentration Nazis Le Calendrier de la Persécution des Juifs de France: 1940–1944 Klarsfeld, S., Collection of publications by the FFDJF [13 documents Peschanski, D., La France des Camps: L’Internement, 1938–1946 Wieviorka, A., Laffitte, M., À l’Intérieur du Camp de Drancy Tags: , It has been a time of particular unease in Paris, and the signs are everywhere. Tear gas has clouded the Champs-Élysées. Swastikas have been scrawled on public portraits of the French Jewish politician Simone Veil when you step off the bus at Liberation Square you’re greeted by a U-shaped concrete building that partially encloses a wide-open grass courtyard This pale yellow apartment block has changed from an affordable housing complex to an anteroom of death and back again in less than a century In the early 1940s, Nazis and their French collaborators rounded up more than 60,000 French Jews and held them here before dispatching them to death camps in what is now Poland In the apartment complex—conceived just a decade earlier as a model for urban living— internees were hemmed in by barbed wire wore yellow stars marked “Juif” (“Jew”) and suffered from dysentery and other diseases Almost all of the people who passed through the camp But the rooms they were interned in remain now occupied by a new generation of people on the margins of French society The Germans called Drancy a “durchgangslager” or “transit camp”—“durchgang” meaning “the way through.” Nearly eight decades later the repurposed housing complex remains a place of transit and transition and others who are looking for a way to their own version of belonging they must contend with Drancy’s legacy—not just the atrocities it will always carry but also age-old conceptions of Frenchness that nudge many to the periphery The planners dubbed it Cité de la Muette (The Silent City) evoking the peace and quiet residents would find within the Nazis took over the still-unfinished housing complex and converted it to the primary French staging ground for their campaign against Jews The name Cité de la Muette remained relevant in a different way—the complex became a city of the voiceless The only building spared was the U-shaped “horseshoe” that had served as the internment camp More than 70 years after the end of the war the surviving building at least nods toward Lods and Beaudouin’s original intent as public housing for the area’s most vulnerable residents In the foreground of the block-long courtyard a single train car—the same kind used to move Jews to Auschwitz and other camps—sits on a displaced section of track as a memorial most likely invasive ring-necked parakeets huddle in the top branches of a clump of courtyard trees transplants from warmer climates somehow thriving in northern France Some were seized off Parisian streets in surprise roundups and arrived at the camp without even a change of clothes—a situation they could not remedy since detainees were often not allowed to receive packages According to historian Renée Poznanski’s Jews in France During World War II, the camp management supplied one bar of soap for every 10 inmates and a single faucet in each room trickled washing water into a wooden trough inmates were herded out of their rooms for long roll calls in the courtyard Barbed wire ringed the building and courtyard minimal space the planners and architects were aiming for There’s the massive boxcar—one of the first things you see as you arrive—and a memorial of pink granite pillars that form the Hebrew letter shin it’s hard not to imagine what once filled this space: tinny loudspeakers the long latrines where prisoners could exchange bits of information the fleets of buses that ferried prisoners to Bobigny or Le Bourget train stations The rest were to remain at the camp for a few weeks or months before it was their turn these entryways are all supposed to stay locked accessed only by residents coming in and out one of the faded pink doors was propped a little The odor of mildew hangs over the interior Shallow craters pock-mark paint layers on the walls and banisters and some of the stair risers have chunks missing The scene recalls any number of public housing projects past and present from austere council flats in London to high-rises in Chicago While most of Chicago’s original projects have met with the wrecking ball the Drancy “U” will likely remain standing for years in some form as the French Ministry of Culture recognized it as historically significant in 2001 Relatively few locals besides the residents ever visit the Drancy site but it does host a steady trickle of visitors from farther away—relatives of camp victims the people who live there are wary of outsiders “People [in] Drancy have always lived with that,” Pouvreau says “The questions make them feel guilty for being there.” “It’s better to live here than somewhere less nice,” says a red-haired woman toting a torso-sized shopping bag She says she’s lived at the complex for 50 years Prostitutes work in front of the complex now She called the police just the other day to report what is going on “It’s not a community,” she says “It’s a good place for families,” says Brahim who emigrated from Algeria 14 years ago and recently moved to the complex He’s aware of the place’s history and thinks it’s important to keep it alive “We must keep it,” he says with conviction Just across the street from the courtyard is a busy café that sells high-voltage espressos for €0.50 The regulars around the counter are willing to ponder Drancy’s legacy says that a lot of locals don’t want to live at the complex because they don’t want to be associated with its past because she knew it was a kind of prison.” After the complex was listed as a historic monument the regional government carried out some restoration projects workers found messages from deportees scratched onto some of the original plaster wall panels are now housed at a new museum next to the café Some comment on life in the camp—one reads “The toilet is forbidden after 10:00.” Others are desperate voices in the dark recording writers’ names and deportation dates: “Lonker Otton / Lonker Mindel Compared to the apartment building, the Mémorial de la Shoah de Drancy museum—subsidized by France’s foundation for Holocaust remembrance—feels pared-down and immaculate Its glass facade offers a panoramic view of the housing complex and courtyard below the guide narrates Drancy’s history and its Nazi-guided evolution into a transit camp The main gallery features dozens of period artifacts from letters prisoners wrote after their arrest to pencil sketches of camp life by interned Jewish artist Georges Horan There is also a precise scale model of the camp in bright white But the tour does not venture into the complex itself—the place where people live and where others were crammed dozens to a room as they waited to hear if they would be sent to “destinations inconnues,” or “unknown places.” discussion turns to who was responsible for what happened at Drancy during the war The guide explains that while the Nazis set up the transit camp French collaborators helped carry out its deadly mission people on the tour start to look uncomfortable “It was the occupiers,” one woman objects The uneasiness about French complicity at Drancy as well as the current conditions at the complex suggest a broader national reluctance to confront the calculus of social exclusion fraternité” have defined French identity since the revolution in 1789 but in recent years a vein of intolerance that long pulsed below the surface has begun to bleed into the streets who remain literally and figuratively on the outskirts of city life slightly alarmist thought that history is a wheel that the increasing fervor of anti-immigrant rhetoric is leading people down a familiar and dark path People around the complex might assure you nothing like the Holocaust could happen again but how possible did such a thing ever seem the Cité de la Muette testifies to that level of guilt “is like the French bad conscience.” We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the world’s hidden wonders Consider supporting our work by becoming a member for as little as $5 a month Follow us on Twitter to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders you will accompany Marion Deichmann as she recounts her daring childhood journey across the borders of Northern Europe during WW2 with her mother Alice her escape from the Nazis with the help of the French Resistance in Paris Filmed on location in Paris and Normandy in France Marion’s story has been brought to life using 360 video technology alongside 3D environments Lead Environment and 3D Artist: Olly Skillman-Wilson Senior Environment and 3D Artist: Jon Polti Junior Environment and 3D Artist: Elle Mooney and South by Southwest® are trademarks owned by SXSW the ICRC has kept archives since its creation in 1863 They constitute the memory of the activities of the ICRC same as that of victims of armed conflicts and other situations of violence considering the exceptional interest they represent and for the sake of transparency the ICRC has decided to open some of its archives for public consultation In 2017, the new Rules for Access to ICRC Archives as well as the Internal Regulations - both adopted by the Assembly - provide for the possibility of posting ICRC's series of digitized archives after a period of 90 years with a possibility to reduce this period to 70 years The Arolsen Archives (previously known as ITS International Tracing Service) has asked for the possibility of digitizing the ICRC archives relating to the French internment camp at Drancy The records were transmitted to ICRC by the French Red Cross between July and September 1943 The cards contain the identities of the detainees (Austrians Russians and Turks) who left the Drancy camp between July and November 1942 The Arolsen Archives also plan to digitize the nominal lists of the Theresienstadt camp These lists were sent by the ICRC delegate Paul Dunant after his mission to Theresienstadt in May 1945 The ICRC decided to answer positively to Arolsen initiative for the online posting of these archives This message serves as information for the families and beneficiaries concerned. In the event that the families and beneficiaries concerned oppose such an online publication, it is possible to submit a complaint either to the ICRC or to Arolsen Archives For more information regarding the Drancy file In the future, as the result of the implementation of a multiyear strategy the ICRC Archives and Library intend to substantially enhance online access to their collections with future digitization projects such as the one in collaboration with the Arolsen Archives families and beneficiaries will be informed of their right to oppose online posting through similar message posted on the ICRC website and resulting online platforms with the relevant contact details reviews and other resources dedicated to humanitarian impact Terms and conditions - ICRC ©2025 - All right reserved Documentary Letters From Drancy is named for the letters Alice Deichmann sent from an internment camp Marion Deichmann was nine years old when her mother was arrested in the Vél’ d’Hiv round-up in Paris and sent to a Nazi concentration camp “Two militia came to our little apartment and said ‘we’ve come to collect Alice Deichmann’,” Marion but nobody knew then about the ‘final solution’ – the plan to exterminate Jews in a gas chamber I remember the last thing she said to me was Alice was sent to the Drancy transit camp on the outskirts of Paris and it was only decades later – long after the second world war – that Deichmann received confirmation that her mother had been taken to Auschwitz and murdered For years, Deichmann struggled to discuss her experiences of the Holocaust, even with her own children. But now she has worked closely with the director Darren Emerson on Letters from Drancy a virtual-reality documentary that brings her story to life six weeks before Hitler’s appointment as chancellor,” she says the Jews had to leave because of the racial laws.” The pair managed to get to Brussels, where they found a truck driver to sneak them across the border into France eventually joining Alice’s mother in Paris “[In Paris] the Nazis had all kinds of procedures,” Deichmann recalls “You had to put down your name if you wanted to work but it was only to better able to take you in She added: “It was only when the French saw six-year-old children wearing the yellow star and being picked up that the tide turned and many people went into the resistance.” ‘There’s a painting of her which was painted in Germany in 1929 that hangs in my living room today,’ says Alice Deichmann’s daughter Photograph: Family photoAfter her mother’s arrest the French Resistance came to relocate Deichmann staying in different homes until a social worker connected her with the Parigny family in Normandy the family’s home and the cafe they owned were destroyed along with much of their village she could tell the difference between the American Marion Deichmann: ‘My crusade is to make sure we all remember so this won’t happen ever again.’ Photograph: East City FilmsWhen the war ended and Deichmann returned to Paris to be reunited with her grandmother and uncle the family began the work of trying to find Alice “We had a picture of my mother and asked everybody if they’d seen her long time I still hoped she’d be alive,” Deichmann says that hope gave way to an unimaginable reality: “Immediately on arrival [at Auschwitz] But I learned through lawyers who did research that my mother went to Auschwitz on 27 July 1942 Her name was not on the list of those who came out.” Though she continued with her life after the war – emigrating to the US marrying and having children before returning to France – Deichmann says she has never been able to fully say goodbye to her mother she would even dream that her mother was living a quiet life somewhere in Russia There’s a painting of her which was painted in Germany in 1929 that hangs in my living room today Letters from Drancy, which takes its name from the letters Alice sent Marion from the internment camp, has its UK premiere at the London film festival on Friday Letters from Drancy uses 360-degree video technology motion capture and a spatial soundtrack for an immersive experience Photograph: East City FilmsRevisiting sites of trauma for the film including the Paris apartment from where her mother was taken from where her mother was taken by cattle car to Auschwitz When I saw the cattle cars for the first time My crusade is to make sure we all remember You don't have permission to access the page you requested What is this page?The website you are visiting is protected.For security reasons this page cannot be displayed a 19-year-old activist in the "Amelot" rescue organization in Paris wrote these words to her family some two weeks before she was deported to Auschwitz The Bomblat family lived on the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Martin in Paris Parents Shimon and Gitel immigrated to France from Poland together with their daughter Sara in the early 1920s they had another three children – Rosette Shimon earned a living in trade and Sara worked with him in their store After the German invasion, the family fled to southern France but returned to Paris a few weeks later. In October 1941, French police arrived at the family home to arrest Shimon. He was in the store at the time. His daughter Sara was with him and wouldn't let him return home.  He found refuge in the village of Montsûr, where he was hidden by Ferdinand and Armandine Chassaing later recognized as Righteous Among the Nations the beginning of the Vel d'Hiv roundup in which some 13,000 Jews from Paris and the surrounding areas were arrested and incarcerated Armandine Chassaing came to Paris and managed to bring 12-year-old Suzanne and 9-year-old Henri to their father in Montsur Gitel and the older girls stayed in the apartment in Paris French gendarmes knocked on the door of the Bomblat's apartment presumably having been tipped off by the building's caretaker Sara signaled to her sister Rosette to push their mother out of the service door into the apartment of the neighbors Sara and Rosette were arrested and taken away Gitel and Rosette joined the rest of the family in Montsur Rosette left Montsur and returned to the Paris apartment to try to help her sister Sara Sara was able to send a few letters from Drancy before her deportation to Auschwitz on 23 September 1942 Rosette joined the "Amelot" organization which helped hide and rescue Jewish children Rosette was arrested by the French police and sent to Drancy Her name appeared on a list of "Amelot" employees; other members of the organization were arrested along with her Suzanne-Naomi and Henri-Chaim hid in the village until liberation They did everything they could to find out what had happened to the girls eventually discovering that Rosette fell ill and died in Auschwitz a short time before the camp was liberated Suzanne immigrated to Israel through the Youth Aliyah In 1955, Shimon Bomblat submitted Pages of Testimony in memory of his daughters, Sara and Rosette Suzanne-Naomi Friedman and Henri-Chaim Bomblat donated the original letters to Yad Vashem for posterity a letter that can provide you with news about me The main thing is – don't worry about me My health is good and my morale is not bad at all founder of the "Amelot" welfare association She was arrested in June and deported to Auschwitz] and Mr active in "Amelot," who was arrested on 1 June 1943] Rapoport promised me that during my incarceration I am sending you a permit [to send me] clothes parcels Don't worry if you can't get hold of everything I ask for The most important thing is a big suitcase Since my name was listed in the wages book I have tried to do something here via the social welfare department [at Drancy] but I was told that all requests need to be made from the outside Felix Kalbnof] tried to do something through the UGIF [Union Generale des Israelites de France claiming that for the last three months I no longer worked there I hope that things will not become worse than they are in Drancy I would like to know that you are well and that you accepted the news of this new calamity calmly I now live only for the day that we will be together again Know that all this will not take much longer and watch over them like you watch over yourselves Legrand [the Legrand family in Montsur gave their home to the Bomblats to live in]; that would be better for everyone's wellbeing Boris's nephew and many of Sara's friends [her sister Sara Bomblat] who worked with her Le sort des enfants juifs en France pendant la Shoah : un bref aperçu historique par Serge Klarsfeld   More photos In November 1942, Nazi Germany took control of the areas under the Vichy Regime.  In April 1943, a children's home that provided refuge for dozens of children was established in the village of Izieu, formerly Vichy territory.  The home, part of the OSE's network of hiding places Some of the children who lived there were French Several had arrived there from other children's homes in France less than four years old when he was brought to Izieu "I remember my mother  leaving me there [in Izieu] and I was very anxious that I was being left behind…  I looked for my mother the Germans occupied the area of Nice in southern France formerly under Italian control and started to hunt down Jews in the vicinity the Germans carried out a raid on a children's home near Marseilles in southern France News of the raid reached the other children's homes in southern France The directors of the OSE made the decision to evacuate the children and gradually close down the children's homes Georges Garel's rescue network ultimately took responsibility for the majority of the children some of whom were smuggled into Switzerland Despite the fact that the children's home in Izieu was in an out-of-the-way place and didn’t attract attention the decision was made to evacuate the children hidden there too Sabine Zlatin travelled to Montpellier to look for hiding places for the children in her care a medical student who took care of the sick children managed to escape and hide in a nearby farm Claude Lavan-Reifman also lived in the home Sabine Zlatin's husband who ran the children's home with her together with two of the older boys from the children's home all the children and adults caught in Izieu had been deported from Drancy including all the children and five of the adults who refused to be parted from her son Claude and was sent together with him to the gas chambers had false papers that enabled her to evade the deportation to Auschwitz but she chose to reveal her true identity while in Drancy Feldblum survived Auschwitz and immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1946 three must have been considered staff and counted with the adults rather than the children View the telegram A relatively austere low-income housing complex in the northeastern suburbs of Paris the Cité de la Muette is not a remarkable collection of buildings it’s a council estate like any other where residents go about their daily business seemingly unfazed by the history that lies both within its walls and beneath them The so-called “first skyscrapers in the Paris region” they were also the city’s first social welfare housing complex that’s not why it has a museum on site nearly 68,000 Jews were sent here before being deported to extermination camps serving as an internment and assembly camp under the control of the French police in collaboration with the SS during the German Occupation Efforts over the years have worked to recenter its past including the recent museum and several memorials but it remains one of the littlest-known historical sites in the Paris region Located 11 kilometers from central Paris in the suburb of Drancy the project was launched in 1929 and featured five 15-story buildings hosting some 1,250 dwellings The architects later added a U-shaped “horseshoe” structure to their plan It was hailed as an architectural marvel and a pioneering social living model of the period It was even featured in exhibits at the Paris Museum of Modern Art and the MOMA in New York which translates to “The Silent City,” was supposed to represent the peaceful urban community it was to become The global economic crisis hindered the project’s completion in the mid-1930s and those who had moved in complained about bad insolation and the units being too expensive Many apartments were instead rented to law enforcement officers The outbreak of the Second World War stopped any continued construction and after the German occupation of France in 1940 after the installation of the Vichy Regime the U-shaped building became a central component of the insidious deportation of Jews in France as it was a convenient location near the Bourget-Drancy and Bobigny railway stations The first group of 4,000 Jews was interned there in August 1941 following raids conducted by French police in the 11th arrondissement of Paris The administrative structure and police logistics of the arrests have been little studied SS officers set fire to the camp’s archives before leaving but two internees managed to save the file of names What is known is that around 67,400 Jews of French passed through Drancy between June 1942 and July 1944 They were transported to concentration camps by 64 rail transport trips People living in the camp started building an underground escape tunnel but it was discovered before being finished Many had been taken in during the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup a mass arrest of foreign Jewish families by French police under instruction from German authorities 13,152 Jews in Paris were arrested between July 16 and 17 of 1942 and taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver (“Winter Stadium”) an indoor bicycle racing track located not far from the Eiffel Tower they were then sent to the Cité de la Muette as well as concentration camps in Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande One of the most famous people who lived in the camp was Simone Veil the pioneering politician who would go on to support women’s rights including legalising abortion as French health minister also served as president of the European Parliament But while celebrating the completion of her baccalaureate exam in her hometown of Nice as well as her mother and sisters were eventually sent to Auschwitz with Veil only surviving by lying about her age Her story was told in the 2022 film “Simone Veil As the Allies advanced in the early summer of 1944 thousands of Jews were brought from the South of France to Drancy Only around 1,500 people were still in the camp after German authorities fled and it was handed over to the Red Cross Alois Brunner was an Austrian SS officer in charge of the camp as well as other deportation operations around Europe Brunner was responsible for sending over 100,000 to the camps He was condemned to death in absentia in France in 1954 for crimes against humanity but he evaded capture in Syria for the rest of his life it continued to be used as a place of internment after liberation but now for Nazi collaborators the Holocaust gradually seeped into France’s historical consciousness and organisations campaigned to build a memorial in Drancy.  The first was a 1977 sculpture by ​​Holocaust survivor Shelomo Selinger The design features three blocks that form the Hebrew letter shin ש which is traditionally attached to the door of Jewish homes The two side blocks represent the doors of death with Drancy being considered “the antichamber of death.” The centre block features 10 figures which are being suffocated by the flames of remembrance lead to a freight car that once transported 100 people at a time to the gas chambers clearly marked with France’s state-owned railway company logo which unbeknownst to most train travellers commuting around the country as we speak was the very same company to deport the internees out of Bourget-Drancy to the death camps In 2001, the area was included in the list of protected sites and monuments in France. A Holocaust memorial museum was opened in 2012 by then president François Hollande The museum tells this horrific history through the testimonies of those who were deported in a building designed by Roger Diener The modern design is a nod to the architectural innovation that was behind the original project while its towering height gives a sense of the graveness of internment the remaining residence is filled with families who have requested social housing and are placed there without knowledge of its past But an engraving on the monument encourages taking a moment to pause and remember this dark past: “Passers-by Last Updated on January 13, 2023 by MessyNessy Léo was active in the leadership of the Jewish Scouts movement in France (EIF) He headed the movement's spiritual leadership a love of religion and Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) This is what Léo Cohn wrote to his colleagues in the Jewish Scouts movement in France on 30 July 1944 on the eve of his deportation from Drancy to Auschwitz: Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history Adolfo Kaminsky forged passports to help children flee the Nazis The Holocaust hero recently passed away at age 97 Adolfo Kaminsky’s life mirrored many of the upheavals in Jewish history in the 20th century His parents were Jews from Russia: his mother Anna fled to Argentina to escape pogroms in the early 1900s Adolfo’s father Salomon was posted in Buenos Aires by a Communist Jewish newspaper He and Anna met and started their family in Argentina; Adolfo the family moved to the town of Vire in the northern French region of Normandy and Adolfo left school at 13 to go to work then finally found a job that he greatly enjoyed He enjoyed the chemistry aspect of his job so much that he took a second job working as an assistant to a chemist in a dairy The lessons he learned there would help him later on in his new life as a resistance fighter were forced to register with the local authorities the Nazis set up a concentration camp just outside Paris in the suburb of Drancy The first contingent of Jews sent there were 4,200 Jewish men who were arrested in Paris Jews from throughout occupied France were being transferred to Drancy Drancy was a holding area for Jews before they were deported to Auschwitz The conditions inside Drancy were dreadful Many people died of disease and mistreatment Young children were torn from their parents upon entering the camp Adolfo and his family were sent to Drancy in 1941 “I knew what awaited those who were going to be deported,” he later recalled Adolfo’s brothers hoped that they might be spared and one of his brothers wrote desperate letters to the Argentinian consulate while they were imprisoned the Argentinian authorities intervened and Adolfo his two older brothers and his parents were freed “We were still in danger,” Adolfo later recalled His father contacted a member of a French Resistance movement requesting help in gaining false documents in order to hide their Jewish identities “I met with a little man nicknamed Penguin,” Adolfo remembered ‘I’ll put you down as a student’.”  Adolfo explained that he had to go out to work and the Resistance official asked him what his job was It was a turning point that would save not only Adolfo’s life but the lives of thousands of others The Resistance member looked at Adolfo and asked Do you know how to remove ink stains?” Adolfo answered yes and was recruited to help fight He joined an elite Resistance unit nicknamed “La Sixieme,” which altered official documents Adolfo’s entire life had prepared him for this point and knew about fonts and creating official-looking writing At the clothes dyer he’d learned how to dissolve ink And his job at the dairy taught him that lactic acid - contained in milk - could dissolve ink including the Waterman’s blue “indelible” ink and he never forgot the moment he did so to create his very first forged document: his own He created a false ID card naming him as Julien Adolphe Keller baptism certificate and birth certificate to cement his new identity It was a pattern he would repeat over and over again creating entirely new identities for French Jews to help them hide and escape from France the Wannsee Conference decided the fate of Europe’s Jews: the wholescale murder of every single Jewish man and child was adopted as official Nazi policy Jews were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz in large groups French police arrested 13,000 Jews in Paris and sent them to the Velodrome d’Hiver bicycle track where they were imprisoned in the summer heat for several days without food or water 42,000 French Jews had been deported through the Drancy concentration camp One round up of French Jews in particular tore Adolfo’s world apart: his mother Anna received word of a mass arrest of Jews and traveled to Paris to warn one of Adolfo’s brothers that he risked arrest Anna was killed on a train as she returned home Adolfo threw himself even more into his work we disguised ourselves as painters,” he later related It was an ideal way to explain away the smell of chemicals that permeated the apartment where Adolfo and his colleagues worked “Same for the inspector who came to read the electricity meter: each time he came into our laboratory he complimented us on our paintings.” Adolfo built equipment to age documents out of common household items such as a pipe and a bicycle wheel I was a stranger,” he later described in a documentary his daughter Sarah helped The New York Times make about his life Word got around that a master forger was working in Paris French police and Nazi officials were charged with finding the fugitive at all costs police officers entered a Paris Metro train Adolfo was traveling in General search!”  They stopped in front of Adolfo and demanded to know what was inside his satchel It contained the forgery materials they were searching for: rubber stamps “Would you like to see one?” The police officers shook their heads and moved on; it never occurred to them that a mere kid was the forger they were looking for Adolfo was so successful that his Resistance cell became a magnet for requests for false documents to help Jews evade arrest from all over France Adolfo and his colleagues received an impossible-sounding request: one Resistance group wanted to smuggle 300 Jewish children into Switzerland or other safe destinations They wanted Adolfo to create 300 birth certificates “My biggest fear was making a technical mistake a little detail that might escape me,” Adolfo explained “On every document rests the life or death of a human being We couldn’t stop… In one hour I can make 30 blank documents He finished the assignment just in the nick of time He estimated that he created documents for 14,000 Jews Adolfo’s work as a forger did not end with the conclusion of World War II Jewish partisans from the Land of Israel began to plan to help Jews who’d survived the Holocaust set sail for Europe and travel to Mandatory Palestine top-secret plan to smuggle desperate Holocaust survivors to the Land of Israel The British controlled the Land of Israel at the time nearly a quarter of a million Jewish survivors gathered in Displaced Persons Camps in Germany with the goal of traveling to ports along the Mediterranean and boarding ships that would take them to the Land of Israel or Mandatory Palestine as it was called at the time Thousands of Jews managed to move to the south of Italy where they awaited Bricha ships that would try and outrun the British blockade and make it to the port of Haifa Adolfo created false papers for Jews seeking to immigrate to Palestine He later moved to Israel and worked as a forger for the Irgun the Jewish underground movement which fought for Jewish independence from British rule Adolfo went on to work as a forger for various radical political movements around the world He never told his family about his political work he began working as an artistic photographer capturing cityscapes and other images of beauty in France he remained haunted by the Holocaust and the loss of so many of his friends and relatives and his fellow Resistance members during the Holocaust Many of his friends from the French Resistance who’d survived died by suicide after the war “I remember one day: I knocked on all the doors on a list that I received the day before and spent all night learning by heart,” he later explained “The names and addresses of dozens of Jewish families that would be rounded up the next day at dawn When I offered to make her documents she got offended: ‘Why should I hide and I’ve been French for many generations.’ I tried everything to convince her I knew if she stayed she and her children would be deported and sent to die.” She - as well as her children - likely perished I think that’s what saved me,” Adolfo explained By aiding resistance groups all over the world he was able to feel that he continued to help others and make a difference Adolfo married Jeanine Korngold in 1952; they divorced soon after and is survived by his wife and four children “I’ve had a very happy life with an adorable wife with children,” he explained in a 2017 documentary about his life which describes the lives of 40 remarkable women who inhabited different eras and lands giving readers a sense of the vast diversity of Jewish history and experience Thank you for signing up for the aish.com free newsletter either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content the French flag stood at half mast Monday in the suburb of Bobigny on the outskirts of Paris Wreaths of flowers lay at a small war memorial off to one side: Some were wilted which marked the anniversary of the end of World War I potent reminders of the battle that came to Paris on Friday night leaving at least 129 dead and a nation reeling In Bobigny, and indeed in many of the suburbs in northern Paris, fear has already replaced grief. In the aftermath of the attacks, French police have begun a crackdown across the country, including in Toulouse, Grenoble, Lyon and, late on Sunday night Inside the neighborhood's central administrative building speaking with Newsweek on the condition of anonymity admits that the neighborhood "has big problems Unlike the magnificent historic architecture of central Paris the buildings in Bobigny are cold and severe seeming more akin to Soviet-era design than Parisian grandeur One building near the prefecture is completely demolished The neighborhood feels like a battleground but says he is shocked to hear about the raids in Bobigny Five heavily armed police officers are questioning a young man who appears to be of Middle Eastern origin They make him empty his pockets and ask for his identification he is swiftly bundled into the police car and driven away have just finished a workout at the local Muslim community center just next to a mosque that is under construction They both wear veils: Lara's is bright pink but talk animatedly about the situation in Bobigny "There were police here this morning," says Lara pointing at a small black car parked across the street "They came to investigate that car there because it has Belgian number plates Another car with Belgian plates was found outside the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris where 89 were killed, and a second was found packed with Kalashnikov assault rifles in Montreuil has been named by police as a key suspect in the attack Two people were arrested in Belgium on Saturday and have been charged with "participating in a terrorist attack." Although the police have left the women alone This is going to be thrown on us Muslims and because we wear veils Lara insists the attacks have nothing to do with their community "It's Western countries that are responsible," she says angrily There's a whole generation of young people who have grown up with war Of course they're going to be radicalized against the West." Not far from Bobigny is the neighborhood of Drancy. It is here that Samy Amimour, 28, was born: Amimour has been identified by French authorities as one of the attackers in the Bataclan who blew himself up after police stormed the building he traveled to Syria and was recruited by the Islamic State (ISIS) Drancy is filled with looming gray apartment buildings and small is brand new and currently filled with bright Christmas decorations the mall is busy with shoppers going about their business just like any other Monday—with one important difference: Security guards are checking everyone's bags as they enter Here Comes Santa Claus is playing softly until the song is abruptly cut off by an announcement over the loudspeakers: "We invite you to observe a minute of silence to join in solidarity for the victims and families of the Paris attack." The whole mall freezes The knowledge that one of the perpetrators had lived in the neighborhood makes the silence all the more poignant Just next to the shopping mall is the Drancy Mosque A modern orange building with a tall green fence the mosque is busy with people arriving for the midday prayer but looks shocked to hear that one of the Paris assailants had lived in Drancy but it is no one from this mosque," he insists people look at me as if I'm a suicide bomber a Roma woman sits in a broken-down white van filled with garbage trying to open a carton of milk for her two small children About 200 yards farther north sits the Alimane Mosque Sandwiched in between a set of train tracks and a busy highway the dilapidated building is nothing like its modern counterpart in central Drancy the building would seem like a nondescript warehouse the mosque's secretary general is sitting behind his large wooden desk Bald and with a gray beard and intense brown eyes he asks that his name not be used for safety reasons almost hostile toward yet another journalist "Every time something like this happens," he says angrily Do you want me to be happy that this happened Our doors are open to everyone in our community "But I can assure you," he says emphatically "if anyone here tried to preach radicalism he admits people might have been recruited at the mosque and radicalized elsewhere: "Maybe someone gives you a book They invite you to a meeting at someone's house But more effective than books or secret meetings "Look at those films made by Daesh," he says he explains that responsibility also lies with the state saying the rifts that run through French society have left many young people vulnerable to such manipulation "I can show you a picture of my son's classroom," says the man but in the 16th [referring to Paris' bourgeois 16th district] everyone is white Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground Newsletters in your inbox See all Text description provided by the architects. For their project Simone de Beauvoir School in Drancy (93), France, Bond Society and Daudré-Vignier & Associés have based their intentions on three principal notions: spatial quality, functionality, and sustainable demand. Furthermore, the visible wooden post/beam structure is an important intention of the project and illustrates an environmental example that raises the awareness of young and old alike.  © Charly BroyezConstructing a public building requires a conceptual The Simone de Beauvoir elementary school is respectfully located in the heart of a dense residential neighborhood surrounded by soothing wooded areas It is part of a school context already present with the Jacqueline Quatremaire kindergarten as well as the municipal La Farandole nursery school this project takes the form of two wooden quadrilaterals placed on a limestone plinth largely glazed on the courtyard side and closed at the rear on the public space side It is established in an L-shaped composition to provide optimal free floor space and to create a boundary with Jules Guesde square on one side and two 18-storey residential towers on the other © Charly BroyezFunctional access and openings. Firstly, the school's largely glazed ground floor forms a "center of life". It is a place of education, social life, and interactions, extending the space beyond its simple teaching function. A tailor-made program and path. Four major hubs are located on the ground floor: - The reception hall serves the floors, the administrative center, and the food service area. The administrative center is in direct contact with the reception area and teaching facilities. On the upper floors, circulation isolates the blind servant grid on the garden side to distribute the served spaces (classes) on the courtyard side. - The leisure centre, located on the dividing line, is connected with the existing nursery school. - The multifunctional room and its storage room are located opposite the leisure center. The two spaces are separated by an open-air educational garden. - The restaurant located closest to the entrance is designed as a soothing stopover. It opens onto the reception hall and the playground, with a layout that reduces delivery routes and limits truck access to the playground. The elementary school is accessed from rue Jacqueline Quatremaire, between the existing kindergarten and the Farandole nursery school. This entrance is central through the reception hall. A pedestrian pathway runs alongside the kindergarten and ends in the parental waiting area at the entrance to the playground. The spaces opening to the courtyard are easily identifiable and accessible, with limited routes: horizontal traffic connects two stairwells serving the two floors. An important sustainable demand. The choice of materials was executed in line with RT 2012 thermal and environmental objectives. The school group is a project in which the two elevation levels are designed in wood. The superstructure is justified in the following ways: © Charly Broyez- Wood construction helps develop the forestry sector and constitutes a relevant alternative to an all-concrete structure.- Environmental quality and ecological interest: wood is a biologically renewable material and wood absorbs significant amounts of CO2 in its cells thus contributing to a reduction of the greenhouse effect It is also energy efficient during installation.- Dry-sector prefabrication: speed and precision Concrete construction is limited to the ground floor The stone base is a relevant response to express and protect the building The play of lights on these materials produces a maternal softness that is pleasant for the children The stone used in construction was acquired from the Vassens quarries in the Aisne This project represents a specific and prototypical production in its context and in its program Usability and environmental requirements prevail in the design which is intended to be conducive to a study environment and the development of students in accordance with the latest educational guidelines You'll now receive updates based on what you follow Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors If you have done all of this and still can't find the email 19.6.42. Nachmanowitz Marthe. 23.3.25. Paris. French. 258 rue Marcadet. J. xx Drancy. 13/8/42. 19.6.42 Pitoun Yvonne. 27.1.25. Algiers. French. 3 rue Marcel-Semblat. J. xx Drancy 13/8/42. These are quotations (real or imagined, copied or adapted?) from the register of the internment centre Les Tourelles, a former colonial infantry barracks. ‘J’ means Jewish. Drancy is the name of the camp where these 17-year-old girls were sent, and from where most of them proceeded to Auschwitz. In the face of all this, the very idea of a search warrant begins to seem too orderly, and too sane, a memory of another history, or prehistory. The narrator can’t map these lives onto his own, which is all he seems to want to do at the start. But he is not helpless. His conclusion, that what we don’t know about Dora is her secret, and precious for that reason, is perhaps too quick a consolation, but at least it isn’t an attempt at possession. I shall never know how she spent her days, where she hid, in whose company she passed the winter months of her first escape, or the few weeks of spring when she escaped for the second time. That is her secret. A poor and precious secret which not even the executioners, the decrees, the occupying authorities, the Depot, the barracks, the camps, history, time – everything that corrupts and destroys you – will have been able to take away from her. And the narrator’s other strategies, which also become Modiano’s own, are more effective and enduring. He doesn’t directly imagine other lives, as novelists often, indeed usually do, and he doesn’t just tell us those lives are unimaginable. He works through what he calls voyance, translated here as ‘clairvoyance’, and defined by Larousse as a set of intuitions ‘concerning past or future events’. There is a character in Middlemarch who fails to understand another person’s action because ‘he did not live in the scenery of such an event.’ Modiano gives us the imaginable scenery of unimaginable events. All that remains of the building occupied by the Prefecture of Police during the Occupation is the huge spectral barracks beside the Seine. It reminds us a little, whenever we evoke the past, of the House of Usher. And we can hardly believe that this building we pass every day is unchanged since the 1940s. We persuade ourselves that these cannot be the same stones, the same corridors. At another moment the narrator recalls a film made during the first year of the Occupation, a light comedy called Premier Rendez-vous. The physical film seems strange to him when he sees it long after its first appearance, veiled, oddly luminous. Suddenly I realised that this film was impregnated with the gaze of cinema-goers from the time of the Occupation – people from all walks of life, most of whom would not have survived the war . . . And, by some chemical process, this combined gaze had altered the very substance of the film, the lighting, the voices of the actors. The chemical process is a fantasy or a metaphor, but the mixing of memory and imagination is not. It’s just voyance. More by this contributorMichael Wood08 May 2025 Newsletter Preferences This site requires the use of Javascript to provide the best possible experience Please change your browser settings to allow Javascript content to run The French town of Drancy hosted the handover ceremony as BYD delivered a 13m e-Coach electric bus to local political representatives Greater Paris has introduced new Low Emission Zones to curb emissions the capital The electric bus was locally manufactured at BYD France’s facility in Beauvais in the Oise region and has a 59-seat capacity The 13-metre long electric coach will be put into service in the next few days the bus can be recharged “in a few hours” extracurricular activities and occasional transport services for citizens generally “In order to continue our commitment to a more ecological transport infrastructure and to continue to provide a transport service to the people of Drancy while respecting the environment we wanted to invest in a high-performance electric coach Our new BYD electric coach has sufficient autonomy for our needs and has accessibility for wheelchair users Funding for the single electric bus was provided by the Seine-Saint-Denis Prefecture with a public investment of €100,000 Member of Parliament and Metropolitan Councillor said “The Greater Paris Metropolis and the City of Drancy are working together to improve air quality and to make sure that our citizens are not exposed to pollution The LEZ is the tool to promote the use of the least polluting vehicles The Greater Paris Metropolis encourages and helps families to change their vehicles for less polluting modes of transport I agree with the Privacy policy electrive has been following the development of electric mobility with journalistic passion and expertise since 2013. As the industry's leading trade media, we offer comprehensive coverage of the highest quality — as a central platform for the rapid development of this technology. With news, background information, driving reports, interviews, videos and advertising messages. Bond Society and Daudré-Vignier & Associés have designed the new Simone de Beauvoir School in Drancy based on three principal notions: spatial quality, functionality, and sustainable demand.The new elementary school consisting of 10 classes, a leisure center, and a school restaurant, pay particular attention to routes and views between its architectural volume and the lighting sources. The scale of the building, the flexibility of the interior layouts, and the choice of colors make it easier for children to navigate.Furthermore, the visible wooden post/beam structure is an important intention of the project and illustrates an environmental example that raises the awareness of young and old alike.Concrete construction is limited to the ground floor, the infrastructure, the stairwells, and the elevator. Project: Simone de Beauvoir School in DrancyArchitects: Daudré-Vignier & Associés + Bond SocietyProject Supervisor (Daudré-Vignier & Associés): Eric MollardProject Supervisor (Bond Society) Marie Labro and Adelly LaauClient: Drancy City Town HallPhotographers: Charly Broyez Input your search keywords and press Enter. You can see how this popup was set up in our step-by-step guide: https://wppopupmaker.com/guides/auto-opening-announcement-popups/ You don't have permission to access the page you requested. What is this page?The website you are visiting is protected.For security reasons this page cannot be displayed. Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice Leo Bretholz made a daring escape from the Nazis by jumping off a moving train en route to Auschwitz. Decades later he led a campaign for reparations from the French railway that carried thousands of others to their deaths. Born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Bretholz became a leader among activists who have called for reparations from governments and companies in Europe that aided the Nazi regime in its execution of the Final Solution. The controversial issue of reparations has figured prominently in recent considerations of a planned light-rail system in Maryland, where Bretholz settled. The SNCF, the French railway system that historians say carried 76,000 people to Nazi camps, is the majority owner of Keolis, one of the companies invited to bid on the multibillion-dollar project. Bretholz was scheduled to testify before the Maryland General Assembly’s House Ways and Means Committee on a bill that would prevent Keolis from winning the contract if the SNCF does not pay reparations to victims. After the Germany invaded Belgium in 1940, Bretholz was deported to France. He entered Switzerland in 1942 but was returned to France and ultimately to the Drancy transit camp north-east of Paris. From there, he and thousands of others were sent east, bound for the death camp at Auschwitz, in what is now Poland. Years later, in testimony before the US House Foreign Relations Committee, he recalled the conditions on the train. “For the entire journey, SNCF provided what was one piece of triangle cheese, one stale piece of bread and no water,” he recalled. “There was hardly room to stand or sit or squat in the cattle car. There was one bucket for us to relieve ourselves. Within that cattle car, people were sitting and standing and praying and weeping, fighting.” In a recorded interview preserved by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Bretholz recalled his escape through a cattle car window on 6 November 1942. He and a friend removed articles of clothing, soaked the clothing in human waste from the bucket and repeatedly wrung out the moisture to increase the fabric’s strength. The two men then used the clothes to force open the bars. “We kept twisting the wet sweaters tighter and tighter, like a tourniquet,” he told the House committee. “The human waste dripped down our arms. We kept going for hours, until finally there was just enough room for us to squeeze through. It was night. I went first, and Manfred helped me climb out the tiny window... He followed me, and we held on tight so as not to slip and fall beneath the train, and waited for it to take a curve and slow down. Then we jumped to our freedom.” Bretholz lay in a ravine and then moved into a village, where he received aid from a priest. He said that the Resistance provided him with false identification documents. He worked with the Resistance, falsifying documents and scouting Germans, and later helped refugees in France after D-Day. Of 1,000 people on his train to Auschwitz, Bretholz said, only five survived the war. Many of his relatives also perished. He moved to the US in 1947, settled in the Baltimore area and ultimately became a US. citizen. He worked for much of his career in sales; at various times he sold textiles and cemetery plots and later managed bookshops. He wrote a memoir, Leap into Darkness: Seven Years on the Run in Wartime Europe, with the journalist Michael Olesker. While acknowledging the extraordinary suffering of the victims of Nazi persecution, opponents of reparations note that many companies and individuals were coerced into co-operating with the Nazi regime; those people, too, faced threats of deportation or death. Critics also note the essential impossibility of undoing the damage of the past. But Bretholz was insistent. “The train to Auschwitz was owned and operated by SNCF,” he said before the House committee. “They were paid by the Nazis per head and per kilometre to transport innocent victims across France and ultimately to the death camps.” He handed committee members a copy of an invoice. “SNCF pursued payment on this bill after the liberation of Paris,” he said, “after the Nazis were gone.” Bretholz often said that there was one victim he could not forget. She was an elderly woman on his cattle car. “If you get out,” she told him, shaking her crutch as he made his escape, “maybe you can tell the story. Who else will tell the story?” Leo Bretholz, salesman and Holocaust survivor: born Vienna 6 March 1921; married 1952 Florine Cohen (died 2009; two daughters and one son); died Pikesville, Maryland 8 March 2014. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies It began as a way to improve relations between Great Britain and the rest of the world in the turbulent years after the Second World War families across the West Midlands have built up lifelong friendships with residents in their communities' 'twin towns' hundreds of miles away while others are borne out of similar industrial heritages or even two places having the same name But they have given people a chance to visit areas they might otherwise never have seen and learn about cultures that were previously a mystery to them One of the longest running in the country is the Willenhall partnership with Drancy on the outskirts of Paris near Paris probably have the least in common of all the twin towns in the Midlands A once thriving industrial heart of the Black Country now struggling with empty shops and unemployment But over the last 55 years the two communities have built up strong links that organisers hope will continue for decades to come Drancy is known for a dark period of its history when the Nazis set up an internment camp for Jews there in the Second World War But civic leaders have since made a concerted effort to move the town forward with modern buildings contrasting with the 19th century art nouveau structures Willenhall: The clock tower in the town's Market Place - Drancy: Memorial for the Jews imprisoned in a Nazi internment camp during the Second World War Willenhall: Lockmaking - Drancy: Engineering – though residents often work outside of the area people from both towns have visited each other's homes and staged sightseeing holidays And a centrepiece of the annual exchanges is an art exhibition in both towns featuring work by their friends from overseas The display has been held at The Crossing at St Paul's for the last 10 years with Willenhall artists' work also being exhibited in Drancy who has been involved in the group for 32 years said the annual holidays abroad were a highlight of the year for many members He said: "You get a great mix of people and you get to see different ways of life and an insight into the way traditional French families live It has given people the opportunity to go on trips they wouldn't normally have gone on." The once-popular children's exchange was scrapped as more families went on foreign holidays themselves but more than 20 people still embark on the annual holidays France is a common location for twin towns as it has relatively easy transport links to England and is not too much of a culture shock for visitors Sandwell was twinned with the Parisian suburb of Le Blanc Mesnil 30 years ago and a series of events are being staged to celebrate the anniversary this year with French residents visiting Sandwell next year Organisers give members the chance to learn French but say it is not essential with twinning association chairman Pat Perry saying: "Part of the fun for some could be to learn about the French language and traditions – it is a fantastic opportunity to make friends with French people." with guest speakers in the winter and outdoor activities such as boules in the summer Mrs Perry said Le Blanc Mesnil was 'very similar' to Sandwell with bustling areas of shops and businesses But there is also rural tranquility with water parks and countryside that can feel a million miles away from the Black Country in the hot summer months The group is looking for new members and Mrs Perry has urged families to broaden their horizons She said: "Exchange visits usually last for five days various excursions and activities are organised and there is also free time to spend with the host families." When civic leaders in Wheaton Aston were looking for a community to twin with they did not have simple transport links in mind Wheaton in Illinois is 3,847 miles – or a 10-hour flight – from South Staffordshire So exchange visits between the two sets of residents are altogether rarer and take much greater planning While it is hard to fathom how some twinning links came to pass it is not hard to see the inspiration behind Wheaton Aston's The South Staffordshire village is paired with Wheaton in Illinois And the connection is not as far-fetched as you might think Wheaton in the US is one of the 25 highest earning cities in the country with the residents proud of its village-like atmosphere despite its 50,000-plus population Situated 25 miles west of Chicago and Lake Michigan Wheaton is also defined by vast expanses of land and the busy train line that runs through it linking it to the country's industrial and economic hubs Wheaton has rapidly expanded since the 1950s although its population growth has slowed down since the early 1990s as the city has become increasingly landlocked It took its name from two brothers who settled there in the 1830s bars and restaurants was banned there until 1985 Wheaton Aston: Shropshire Union Canal - Wheaton There are certainly huge differences between the two Wheatons.Wheaton has a population of more than 50,000 and most people working in nearby Chicago whereas the rural parish including Wheaton Aston Lapley and Stretton is home to less than 3,000 It began in 1990 when villagers Ray and Diana Cowley Since then villagers have communicated with their American 'twins' by letter YouTube videos have also been created and shared Mike Gresk and his wife Kathleen visited the village last month while they were on holiday in England taking tea and cake at St Mary's Church with villagers and have a pub lunch at the Hartley Arms Twinning associations are often more popular in smaller villages than towns or cities – and organisers believe that is because they often have a greater sense of community Kinver's has been one of the most active in the Midlands in recent years with more than 30 people going on exchange trips to Mer in the Loire Valley in France every two years mainly agricultural area have always settled in quickly in Kinver since the partnership was set up 26 years ago Twinning group chairman Heather Pickford said: "They love it – they see Kinver as being typically English with its timber-framed houses and high street "My aim is to encourage families to develop their own links between themselves so they can see their friends at any time of year not just when our trips are organised." The original organisers of the Kinver partnership intended to find a town in Germany but But Cannock community chiefs did opt for Germany after being swayed by the canal network in Datteln which is the scene of a popular boating festival each year culminating in 1996 with spectacular celebrations at the Datteln Kanalfest and the Cannock Carnival to mark the 25th anniversary They may be seen by some as a relic of the past but residents of twin towns say they have been given the chance to discover new cultures and make friends for life Mrs Pickford added: "It is more popular than ever in Kinver and I hope that continues for many years to come." Kinver is often seen as a quintessentially English village and a sanctuary from the built-up towns and cities which lie nearby is also a popular retreat for families wanting to escape the hustle and bustle of daily life With its quaint cottages in the hills contrasting with the ornate chateaux at Chambord and Blois that form part of the Loire world heritage site Mer has become a home from home for many of Kinver's villagers The association was set up in 1987 and more than 25 years later is more active than ever the sandstone caves at Kinver Edge - Mer: River Loire and the castles of Beaumont and Chantecaille Kinver: The Kinver Brewery - Mer: Agriculture and logistics They are more than 520 miles apart but for 34 years strong links have been forged between Cannock and Datteln in Germany The small town on the North Rhine lies at the heart of Germany's canal network with a waterways festival being one of the highlights of the year as boats gather on the junction of four canals The mining heritage common to both towns has formed one of the strongest bonds but other groups have also taken part in regular exchanges While Cannock has suffered from shop closures the number of empty stores has fallen by 25 per cent And Datteln is blessed with a thriving centre full of independent traders Every year members of the twinning groups visit each other's towns to see old friends and introduce new members to the local sights pigeon racing and amateur radio clubs are just some of the organisations to have visited Germany over the years Cannock: Cannock Shopping Centre - Datteln: Canal network Cannock: Automotive parts - Datteln: Tourism The borough of Sandwell is celebrating 30 years of being twinned with Le Blanc Mesnil And organisers say joining the twinning association is a great way to learn about different cultures and make new friends regular exchange visits have been organised where members of the twinning groups stay in each other's homes Le Blanc Mesnil is quieter and more rural than Sandwell built-up areas after a huge revamp over the last 60 years when nearly half of the city was wrecked during the Second World War Crowds of families flock to public water features and swimming pools during the hot summers when temperatures often reach 30°C Its name is interpreted by some as a reference to the houses of Le Blanc-Mesnil which were whitened due to the flour dust coming from the windmills located there in ancient times Sandwell: 309,000 - Le Blanc Mesnil: 51,220 Baggies' home - Le Blanc Mesnil: Town hall Sandwell: Steelwork - Le Blanc Mesnil: Building Nantes visit the Stade de Paris on Saturday to face-off with Drancy in the round of 64 of the French Cup looking to recover from a heavy loss at the weekend The Canaries were thumped 4-1 by Brest in Ligue 1 their seventh top-flight loss of the season pushing them ever closer to the relegation zone they are in 14th position in the league standings it hasn't been a good run for them domestically but they will look to the cup for some respite losing their most recent two outings in the league a 4-0 drubbing at the hands of IC Croix followed by a 1-0 loss to Reims 2 beating Pays de Cassel 2-1 in their first game before seeing off Noyelles-sous-Lens 3-0 in the next Ligue 1 side Nantes will be their toughest challenge so far as the Parisian outfit will have to produce their A-game to pull off an upset and stand a chance of progressing into the next round The Canaries are the favorites here given their experience and superior quality Drancy will look to pounce on their vulnerabilities but they do not have the means to capitalize on them Nantes should secure a victory in this encounter Tip 2 - Goals over/under 2.5: Under 2.5 goals Your perspective matters!Start the conversation