Transport 18, Train 901-13 from Gurs, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 08/08/1942

Following these negotiations, Theodor Dannecker, head of the Jewish Affairs Department at the Paris Sipo-SD, visited the internment camps in the unoccupied zone. He was accompanied by his assistant Ernst Heinrichsohn and the director of the PQJ (Police aux questions juives, Police for Jewish Affairs) 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. He also noted that there were approximately 3,800 ‘transportable’ Jews in the various camps. The Jews already detained in the camps would be the first to be deported when the deportations from the unoccupied zone began in early August 1942. A series of meetings were held in July 1942 to discuss the implementation of the deportations from the unoccupied zone. Present at the meetings were representatives of the Vichy government as well as a representative of the SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français, French National Railway Company). At the July 27 meeting, Yves Fourcade, the director of police administration, devised a new program for the upcoming transports to the occupied zone: the destination would be the Drancy camp and the train would pass the demarcation line at Chalon-sur-Sâone. A transport scheduled to leave the unoccupied zone would pass the demarcation line on August 9 and was to include about 1,000 Jews with a surveillance team of 150 guards. Another meeting took place two days later during which it was decided that in order to facilitate the surveillance, the trains should be made up of covered cars, each carrying 30 people, and that there should be two third-class cars in the middle of the train for the surveillance team. That transport actually carried a total of 1,115 Jews from four different internment camps: 600 from Gurs, 175 from Le Vernet, 175 from Récébédou, and 165 from Noé. 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. The train departed from the Oloron–Sainte-Marie train station in Aquitaine on August 8 at 6:15 carrying Jews from the Gurs camp. Most of the deportees were German. Ria Rosenthal noted in her post-war testimony: “Those whose names had been called were given three hours to prepare their suitcases. They then walked two hours in the scorching heat to the garage where they were boarded onto trucks. The guards were vicious; they beat the deportees who did not walk fast enough. Some trampled on the bodies of the elderly who could not keep up. No one showed any sign of compassion for the deportees.”...