Transport 74 from Drancy, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 20/05/1944

As of January 1, 1944, head of the Militia, Joseph Darnand, replaced René Bousquet as Secretary General of Police. He reinforced the collaboration of the French Gendarmerie with the SD in its operations against the resistance and the Jews. From December 1943, the Allies launched massive strategic aerial bombings on France in preparation for the future landing in June 1944. The interchange at Noisy-le-Sec, located on the deportation train line from France, was also heavily affected. In France the Nazis multiplied the executions of hostages and the deportations of members of the resistance while expediting the arrest and deportation of the Jews. The offices of the Union Générale des Israélites de France – Union of French Jews (UGIF) were closed and its personnel arrested. The children's homes shortly became targets of roundups, the first being the Maison d'Izeu, most of whose residents were deported on April 13. Some Jews who until then had been interned and held as bargaining chips were also later deported. This for example was the case with the Vittel camp whose Jews were transferred to Drancy to be deported to Auschwitz in this transport on April 29, 1944, and for the wives and children of POWs who were deported from Drancy to Bergen-Belsen on May 2, July 21 and 23. In Serge Klarsfeld's memorial to the Jews of France (Mémorial de la déportation des juifs de France from 1978) these transports are numbered 80 (transport 80A on May 2, 80B on July 21, and 80D on July 23). The 74th transport left Paris-Bobigny on May 20, 1944. The deportation list, compiled at Drancy, comprises 1,200 names. A copy of this list was sent to the Union of French Jews (UGIF). It was recovered by the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Centre (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine – CDJC) after the war, and edited by Serge Klarsfeld in his memorial to the Jews of France (Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France). According to Serge Klarsfeld in his book "Le Calendrier de la persécution des Juifs de France" (The Calendar of the Persecution of the Jews in France – Fayard 2001, vol. 3), this transport comprised 565 men, 632 women and three unspecified deportees....