Transport 64 from Drancy, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 07/12/1943

The transport left from the Paris-Bobigny train station on December 7, 1943, with 1000 Jews. Four young men who belonged to resistance movements were able to escape during the journey. SS-Obersturmführer (lieutenant) Heinz Röthke had asked for Eichmann’s authorization to prepare this transport in a telegram sent in November 1943. He received it on December 3. On December 4, Hagen and Oberg informed Himmler that the transport would depart on December 7, 1943. The train, with 1,000 Jews aboard, left the Paris-Bobigny station at 12:10 p.m., escorted by the German police under the command of Lieutenant Wannenmacher. The transport followed the usual deportation route indicated by the German Reich Railway (Deutsche Reichsbahn) to the Gestapo as of November 1943 : Paris-Bobigny, Noisy-le-Sec, Epernay, Châlons-sur-Marne, Revigny, Bar-le-Duc, Novéant-sur-Moselle, Metz, Saarbrücken, Homburg, Kaiserslautern, Mannheim, Frankfurt am Main, Fulda, Burghaun, Erfurt, Apolda, Weißenfels, Engelsdorf Mitte (Leipzig), Wurzen, Dresden, Görlitz, Kohlfurt, Arnsdorf, Königszelt, Kamenz (Niederschlesien), Neisse, Cosel, Heydebreck, Katowice, Mysłowice, Auschwitz. The train was handled by SNCF engineers and conductors until the new Franco-German border in Novéant-sur-Moselle, which had been renamed Neuburg an der Mosel after Hitler annexed Alsace-Lorraine. In Neuburg, they were replaced by German railway workers from the Reichsbahn. The next stop was Metz, located in the territory annexed by the Germans. The train then ran along the southern border between Germany and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to Görlitz, an entry point into the former province of Silesia. The transport continued to the railway hub in Kohlfurt (Wegliniec) and from there further south via Heydebreck, the former Kandrzin (Kędzierzyn) into the south-eastern end of the Reich until it reached occupied Polish Silesia in Katowice (Kattowitz) which served as the capital of the newly created East Upper Silesia. Auschwitz-Birkenau, just 40 km south of Katowice was part of it and, as Katowice, annexed to the Reich. Some transports (not the case for Transport 64) made a stop at the Cosel train station, where the physically able men were taken off the train and sent to work in mines in the region, while the rest of the passengers continued to Auschwitz-Birkenau....