Transport 22 from Drancy, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 21/08/1942

The transport of August 21, 1942 included approximately 1,000 Jews. Over 500 were children who had been transferred to Drancy on August 19 from the Beaune-la-Rolande camp where they had been detained since the Vel d’Hiv roundups a month earlier. Most of these children were French nationals whose parents had been deported in the previous weeks, separated from their children. On August 11, Horst Ahnert, Roethke’s assistant at the Department of Jewish Affairs, informed the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Reich Main Security Office) that because the arrests of the Jews were coming to a halt, he planned to send the children detained in the Loiret camps in order to allow for the continued departure of trains at the planned rate. Two days later, Adolf Eichmann’s deputy in the department of Jewish Affairs at the RSHA, Rolf Guenther, approved the deportation of the children but ordered that no train be filled exclusively with them. In order to avoid this, the children were first transferred to the Drancy camp where, a few days after their arrival, they joined approximately 400 adults who were boarding a train to the East. Among the adult deportees, approximately 300 were Jews who had been detained in Drancy since their arrest during the Vel D’hiv roundup. Approximately 60 Jews were transferred from Pontarlier, a French town in the region of Franche-Comté in the occupied zone. A note from the Service of Foreigners and Jewish Affairs at the Police Prefecture, dated August 17, confirmed that 66 Jews from Pontarlier were to arrive in the Drancy camp the next day at 7:00 am. The French Gendarmerie was ordered to isolate these new arrivals behind barbed wire while they waited to be searched....