Transport 17, Train 901-12 from Gurs, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 05/08/1942

The first transport from the unoccupied zone departed from the Gurs camp on August 5, 1942. Of the 1,000 deportees, 997 were German nationals who were among the 6,538 Jews deported from Baden to unoccupied France on October 22, 1940, and interned by the Vichy government in the Gurs camp. Following the negotiations between German and French authorities at the beginning of July 1942, Theodor Dannecker, head of the Jewish Affairs Department in the Paris Sipo-SD, visited the internment camps in the unoccupied zone. He was accompanied by his deputy, Ernst Heinrichsohn, and the director of the PQJ (Police aux questions juives, Anti-Jewish Police) in the occupied zone, Jacques Schweblin. In a report summarizing his visit, Dannecker noted that the French officials and services were interested in a rapid solution to the Jewish question and were waiting for the necessary orders. His visit to the Gurs camp was referred to in a July 18 report from the camp’s chief to the Prefect of Basses-Pyrénées: “Captain Dannecker came today at 10:45. He informed us that he was to transfer all the Jews in the Gurs camp to Eastern Europe.” On August 5, Bousquet’s assistant for the unoccupied zone, Henri Cado, sent out directives to the regional Prefects throughout the unoccupied zone concerning the deportation of foreign Jews. He informed them that foreign Jews who had entered France after January 1, 1936, would be transported to the occupied zone before September 15. Among the Jews excluded from such measures were children under the age of 18. Cado indicated that parents who so desired would be permitted to leave their children in the unoccupied zone. A meeting was held on July 27 in Vichy between representatives of the Vichy government and a representative of the SNCF (La société nationale des chemins de fer français, French National Railway Company). Among the French representatives was Yves Fourcade, administrative director of police, who had devised a new program for the upcoming transports to the occupied zone: the destination would be the Drancy camp, the train passing the demarcation line at Chalon-sur-Sâone; the trains were to be ready to leave between 6:00 and 7:00 and would be made up of third-class cars without side doors. The first scheduled transport was to leave the Oloron–Sainte-Marie station with a total of 1,000 passengers and 150 guards and was to pass the demarcation line on August 7. Another meeting took place two days later during which it was decided that in order to facilitate surveillance, the trains would be made up of covered cars, each carrying 30 people and that two third-class cars would be placed in the center of the train for the surveillance team....