Transport 71 from Drancy, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 13/04/1944

Transport 71 departed from the Paris-Bobigny station on April 13, 1944, with 1,499 deportees, according to the list prepared in the Drancy camp before the departure. A copy of this list was sent to the Union of French Jews (Union générale des israélites de France - UGIF), recovered by the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Centre (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine – CDJC) after the war, and edited by Serge Klarsfeld in his 1978 work titled "Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France". However, Klarsfeld’s "Le Calendrier de la persécution des Juifs de France" notes that there were 1,500 deportees (624 men, 854 women, and 22 undetermined) on this transport. Among them were 34 of the 44 children arrested at the orphanage La Maison d’Izieu on April 6, 1944. 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, Leipzig - Engelsdorf Mitte, Wurzen, Dresden, Görlitz, Kohlfurt, Arnsdorf, Königszelt, Kamenz N.S., 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. The transport arrived in Auschwitz on April 16, 1944. A total of 165 men (serial numbers 184097–184261) and 91 women were selected for slave labour (their numbers are not known). The remainder of the deportees were gassed immediately upon arrival.