Transport 63 from Drancy, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 17/12/1943

On December 11, 1943, Obersturmführer Dr. Heinz Röthke who took over the RSHA Paris branch of Jewish Affairs in July 1942 from Theodor Dannecker, requested authorization to form a transport of 800–1000 Jews. A response came from Berlin on December 15, agreeing to the deportation of 1,000 people. In the end 848 people were deported. Klarsfeld’s Le Calendrier lists 501 men, 345 women, and four undetermined, a total of 850 people. However, the lists in Klarsfeld's book "Memorial de la Deportation" indicate 848 people for this transport. According to testimony by Camille Teboul, some of the internees were singing La Marseillaise during the transfer from Drancy to the Paris-Bobigny train station. Transport 63 departed from the Paris-Bobigny station on December 17, 1943, with 848 Jews. Among the deportees were several leaders of the UGIF (Union Général des Israélites de France), including its vice-president André Baur. The president of the UGIF, Raymond-Raoul Lambert, attempted to help Baur. Lambert kept a diary in which we read that on August 18, 1943, he asked the Premier of Vichy-France, Philippe Pétain, to free Baur: "Baur was arrested in Paris and transferred to Drancy because his cousin had escaped from the camp. I had to intervene in his favor, but there was no hope. It seems to me that the government is nothing but a fiction." According to a telegram sent by Alois Brunner, the train departed from the Paris-Bobigny station at 12:10 p.m. This transport was the ninth under Brunner’s direction....