Transport 10 from Drancy, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 24/07/1942

Those with children were first detained in the Velodrome d’Hiver stadium in Paris before their transfer to the Pithiviers or Beaune-la-Rolande camps. Those without children were transferred to the Drancy camp and would be deported from there in the upcoming transports. The Jews deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on July 24, 1942 were among the childless Jews arrested on July 16-17 and transferred to Drancy. On July 22, Heinz Roethke sent directives to the command of the Feldgendarmerie (German Military Police) in Paris regarding the upcoming transports of Jews. A schedule for the next six deportation trains was established, the first of which was the train scheduled to leave on July 24, 1942. Roethke asked the Feldgendarmerie for an escort to be made up of one officer and 8 policemen. This guard was to be ready at 6:00 in the morning at the Drancy camp on the date of departure. Roethke confirmed the departure of transport DA 901 from the Bourget-Drancy train station on July 24 at 8:55 am with a total of 1,000 Jews destined for Auschwitz. Based on a schedule for the first deportation from Drancy in June 1942, the train presumably took the following route: from Drancy the train travelled through Bobingy, Noisy-le-Sec, Epernay, Châlons-sur-Marne, Revigny, Bar le Duc, Lérouville, and Novéant (Neuburg), the last stop before the German border. The transport chief was Sergeant Poller. The French Gendarmerie and a small contingent of the Feldgendarmerie guarded the train as far as the border at Novéant. At that point the Ordnungspolizei took over its supervision. In November 1943, The German National Railway Company (Reichsbahn) set up a schedule for the transports from France. We do not have any documentation in connection with transport schedules from the Franco-German border to Auschwitz-Birkenau before that date, but in all likelihood they were very similar. Thus presumably the earlier transports to Auschwitz, including the one that departed from Drancy on July 24, 1942, took the following route once past the Franco–German border: Saarbruecken, Frankfurt/Main, Dresden, Goerlitz, Nysa, and Katowice before reaching Auschwitz....