Transport 20, Train 901-15 from Drancy, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 17/08/1942

In addition to the Jews from the unoccupied zone, thousands of Jewish children who had been detained in the two Loiret camps, Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande, since their arrests during the Vel d’Hiv roundups of mid-July 1942 were deported in August 1942. Their parents had been deported earlier and the children had remained alone in the camps. At a meeting held on August 13 between Heinz Roethke, who had replaced Dannecker as head of the Jewish Affairs Department, and his assistant Ernst Heinrichsohn and French representatives Jean Leguay, second in command at the French National Police, and his chief of staff Commander Thomas Sauts, it was made clear that under no circumstances should a transport be made up exclusively of children. In order to abide by this directive, Jews arriving from the unoccupied zone were to join the children’s transport in a proportion of 300 adults to 500 children. Leguay promised to prepare for the arrival of enough Jews from the unoccupied zone to fill this quota. The transport of August 17, 1942, included 301 adults who had been transferred to Drancy from the Milles camp and approximately 530 children under the age of 16, who had been transferred from the Loiret camps. Odette Daldroff, herself interned in Drancy, recalled the preparation for this transport: “We attempted to make a list of their names; we were surprised by one tragic thing: the little ones did not know their names. Before their departure, all deportees had their heads shaved, including the children of both sexes.… One boy was in tears. He was about five years old. He was beautiful, with blonde curls that had never been cut; he kept repeating that he didn’t want them to cut his hair, that his mother loved his curls so much and that she would not recognize him when they found one another.”...