Transport from Les Milles, Camp, France to Drancy, Camp, France on 13/08/1942

On August 13, a transport left the Milles camp with 538 Jews of foreign nationalities: among them 365 German Jews, 111 Austrian Jews, and 25 Polish Jews. During this phase of the deportations from the unoccupied zone, parents were given the option of leaving their children behind with Jewish relief organizations, so very few minors were included in this transport. Raymond Raoul Lambert, head of the UGIF-South (Union générale des israélites de France, General Union of Jews in France) was present at the Milles camp prior to this deportation. He noted the events of that day in his journal: “The railway cars were closed all night and the men and women were forbidden from coming out, not even to relieve themselves. Before making their way to the railways cars some of the people were given only five minutes to prepare their luggage, and the guards looted their rooms. The guards brutalized those who were not walking fast enough…. I would need a volume to note all of this.” The train departed from Les Milles on August 13, 1942, at 6:45 and arrived at the demarcation line at Chalon-sur-Sâone at 17:51, where it remained until 18:41. It reached Drancy at 4:23 on August 14. The deportees were accompanied by four officers and 129 men from the GMR (Groupes mobiles de réserve, the Mobile Reserve Groups). At the demarcation line, the transport was handed over to Gendarmerie commandos from the occupied zone. The new arrivals from the Milles camp spent only a few days in Drancy: 300 were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau on August 17 and the rest of them followed on August 19.