Transport 50 from Drancy, Camp, France to Sobibor, Extermination Camp, Poland on 04/03/1943

On February 13, 1943 at 21:10, two Luftwaffe (German Air Force) officers were shot on their way to the Hotel du Louvre and died that night at a military hospital. In retaliation, the Germans decided to arrest and deport 2,000 Jews. On February 18, a series of arrests of Jewish men aged 16-65 were carried out, mainly in the South. Among others, the Jews targeted were foreign nationals and included Germans, Austrians, Poles, Czechs, Russians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and Jews who served in the Foreign Workers Groups (GTE, Groupes de travailleurs étrangers). The next day, the general secretary of the police at the Montpellier prefecture ordered the arrest of additional Jews on the 21st of that month. As a result, 1,778 Jews were arrested in 34 departments in the formerly unoccupied zone and sent to the Gurs transit camp. In other places also many Jews were arrested during those large-scale arrests in the south of France: at the Limoges prefecture, policemen and Gendarmes carried out similar arrests on the night of February 23rd. In the Dordogne Department, Gendarmerie units transported Jews in four buses to the Secrestat sports hall in the city of Perigueux. The commander of the police in Montpellier reported to the local Prefect that 34 Jews had been sent to Gurs at 09:20 on the morning of February 24, escorted by police officers who reported no special incidents. The next day, commander of the police in Perigueux informed the Prefect of Dordogne that 33 Jews had been transferred from Perigueux to the Nexon camp in the early morning, and that no incidents had been reported during their transfer. On the same day, 190 detainees from several other Departments were also brought to the camp. The prefect of Limoges asked the Chief Inspector of Transportation to provide him with six railway cars at the Nexon railway station in order to transfer 350 Jews from the local camp to Gurs....