Transport 19, Train 901-14 from Drancy, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 14/08/1942

The transport for Auschwitz-Birkenau that departed from the Drancy camp on August 14, 1942, was made up mostly of Jews who had been sent to Drancy from various camps in the unoccupied zone. This transport was part of the first phase of deportations from the unoccupied zone in which foreign Jews already detained in several camps were gathered and transported to Drancy. The Jews deported from Drancy on August 14 came from the Milles, Récébédou, Noé, and Rivesaltes camps on a transport that left on August 10 and arrived in Drancy two days later. Some 238 Jews already detained in the Drancy camp were added to this transport. Most of the latter had been arrested during the Vel d’Hiv roundup in mid-July 1942, and the group included many families, among them at least 22 children. This was the first time children under the age of 12 were included in a transport to Auschwitz. Thirty Jews who had been transferred to Drancy from the Poitiers camp in the occupied zone in August 1942 were also on this train. On August 4, Hauptsturmfuhrer Freise, Sipo-SD kommando of Poitiers, sent out a telex concerning the transfer from the Poitiers camp. He indicated that 440 Jews were to leave Poitiers on August 6 at 4:45 in the morning to arrive at the Ivry Paris station at 15:25. They were to be guarded by French police and the German military police, the Feldgendarmerie. The regional Prefect of Poitiers had arranged with the Prefect of Paris for the appropriate vehicles to be ready at the train station to accommodate the transfer. The 440 Jews who arrived in Drancy from the Poitiers camp on August 6 were deported in six transports throughout August and September 1942. A detainee at the Drancy camp wrote a letter on August 13 describing the preparation for the next transport: “While I am writing to you a new transport is being organized in the courtyard, the seventh deportation which I have witnessed since I arrived on June 24.… The majority of these unfortunate deportees are from the unoccupied zone, Gurs, Le Vernet, Noé, etc. The PQJ took everything they had left after the long years of misery and wandering.… Today there are many women among the deportees whose husbands had been deported earlier and many children.”...