Transport 29 from Drancy, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 07/09/1942

The transport of September 7, 1942 was mostly made up of foreign Jews (864) who had been transferred from the unoccupied zone in two transports. One arrived at the Drancy camp from Nice on September 1 and another arrived from the Rivesaltes and Milles camps on September 3. Over 100 children were among the deportees from the unoccupied zone. In addition, approximately 200 Jews who had been arrested during the Vel d’Hiv round up in mid-July and detained in the Drancy camp were also included in this transport. On September 7, Heinz Roethke, head of the Jewish Affairs Department at the Paris SD, confirmed the departure of transport D 901-24 from the Bourget-Drancy train station to Auschwitz-Birkenau with a total of 1,000 Jews. Based on the schedule for the first deportation from Drancy in June 1942, the train presumably took the following route: From Drancy the train travelled through Bobingy, Noisy-le-Sec, Epernay, Châlons-sur-Marne, Revigny, Bar le Duc, Lerouville, and Novéant (Neuburg), the last stop before the German border. The transport chief was Sergent Krueger. The train was guarded by a detail from the French Gendarmerie made up of one officer and 30 men and a small contingent of Feldgendarmerie until it reached the border at Novéant. At that point the Ordnungspolizei took over its supervision. In November 1943, The German National Railway Company (Reichsbahn) set up a schedule for the transports from France. We do not have any documentation relating to transport schedules from the Franco-German border before that date, but in all likelihood they were very similar. Thus the earlier transports, including the one that departed from Drancy on September 7, 1942, presumably took the following route once it passed the Franco–German border: Saarbruecken, Frankfurt/Main, Dresden, Goerlitz, Nysa, Cosel, and Katowice before reaching Auschwitz. At the stop in Cosel, 80 km from Auschwitz, most of the able-bodied young men were taken off the trains and sent to work in different camps in the surrounding areas. On July 28, 1942, Roethke sent out directives to the Senior Commander of the Sipo-SD in France, Helmut Knochen, and to his deputy Kurt Lischka, with the schedule for the next 13 transports from Drancy that would depart in the month of August. He stated that: “German merchandise wagons are to be used for the deportations, as has been the case until now.” There is no official document after this date relating to a change in policy and thus the transports after August 1942 were most likely organized in the same way. Although the wagons were German, the train’s engine and its personnel were provided by the SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français, French National Railway Company) up to the Franco-German border. This was confirmed by SNCF historian Christian Bachelier. At the border, a German engine and personnel replaced the French ones....