Transport 36, Train 901-31 from Drancy, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 23/09/1942

On September 8, 1942, Jean Leguay, Second in Command at the French National Police in the occupied zone, met with Heinz Roethke, Dannecker’s successor as head of the Jewish Affairs Department at the French Sipo-SD , and confirmed that 7,000 arrests had been made in the “free zone.” Thus, he added, the French authorities could guarantee enough Jews to meet the transport quotas only until September 14; afterwards, the number of Jews available for deportation would not suffice. In response, Röthke said that the original plan—seven transports departing on September 15–30—would proceed in any case; if necessary, additional arrests would be made and the 4,000 Jews interned in camps in the occupied zone would be deported as well. To meet this quota, Roethke advised his superiors on September 12 that 3,000 additional Jews would have to be found. Leguay informed Roethke that the pace of the arrest of Jews by the French police would have to slow down owing to other demands on their time. Roethke then decided to transfer as many of the Jews taken by Sipo and SD units in the departments of the occupied zone as possible to Drancy. Following this decision, his deputy, Horst Ahnert, instructed all Sipo and SD headquarters in the occupied zone to send all the Jews that were incarcerated in their jurisdictions to the Drancy camp by Monday evening, September 21, 1942. He also asked that he be informed by telex before Monday morning as how many Jews were being sent by each headquarters. Messages arrived from different areas. A fast freight train departed for Drancy from Bordeaux at 09:10 carrying 70 Jews in three cars. On the same day, 17 men and 128 women were transferred from Angers, temporarily emptying the camp in Tours. The prefect of the Marne region wrote that a train had left on the morning of September 21 at 11:55. After its arrival, the inspector of the Drancy camp received the details of the transport from the head of its escort detail, Laffaire: the transport included 56 Jewish detainees (20 men and 36 women), some 99,623 francs confiscated from the detainees, as were a package containing jewellery and ration cards, a watch, and a document packet for some of the women. Some 28 Jews were also brought from prisons in the Dijon area....