Vel' D'Hiv Roundup - Drancy Camp and Deportation

Drancy Camp and Deportation

The internment camp at Drancy – which is now the subsidised housing that it was intended to be – was easily defended because it was built of tower blocks in the shape of a horseshoe. It was guarded by French gendarmes. The camp's operation was under the Gestapo's section of Jewish affairs. Theodor Dannecker, a key figure both in the roundup and in the operation of Drancy, was described by Maurice Rajsfus in his history of the camp as "a violent psychopath... It was he who ordered the internees to starve, who banned them from moving about within the camp, to smoke, to play cards etc."

In December 1941, forty prisoners from Drancy were executed in retaliation for a French attack on German police officers.

Immediate control of the camp was by Heinz Röthke. It was under his direction from August 1942 to June 1943 that almost two-thirds of those deported in SNCF box car transports requisitioned by the Nazis from Drancy were sent to Auschwitz. Drancy is also the location where Klaus Barbie transported Jewish children that he captured in a raid of a children's home, before shipping them to Auschwitz where they were killed. Most of the initial victims, including those of the Vel' d'Hiv, were crammed in sealed wagons and died en route due to lack of food and water. Those who survived the passage died in the gas chambers.

At the Liberation in 1944, the camp was run by the Resistance – "to the frustration of the authorities; the Prefect of Police had no control at all and visitors were not welcome." – which used it to house not Jews but those it considered had collaborated with the Germans. When a pastor was allowed in on 15 September, he discovered cells 3.5m by 1.75m that had held six Jewish internees with two mattresses between them. The prison returned to the conventional prison service on 20 September.