Transport 76 from Drancy, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 30/06/1944

The transport of June 30, 1944 departed from the Paris-Bobigny train station. 1,156 names appear on the list compiled at Drancy before the deportation. A copy of this list was sent to the 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 ("Le Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France"). About half of the deportees were French citizens. One of them, Jean-Louis Steinberg, a 22 year-old student at the time, was rounded up in Paris with his mother, his father and his brother Claude. Jean-Louis, the only one of his family who survived, testified as follows: "We were arrested on June 18, 1944 in our home by French police dressed in civilian clothes. They brought us to Drancy by bus. This camp was a real pigsty. It had no washrooms and no toilets, only trenches where the prisoners had to relieve themselves in public (…) but this was nothing compared to what awaited us. On June 30, French police literally piled us into a freight train, a hundred deportees per car, everybody together, men, women, kids, even babies and it was so crammed that we were unable to sit. There was no air circulation either since the windows were locked. The car had one pail with water and an empty bucket for nature's call. This of course, was also to be done in public. The journey lasted 5 days in the midst of the summer, the heat was unbearable. When we arrived in Auschwitz, the SS opened the doors and screamed to hurry out and leave the luggage behind. We had to muster and they immediately started the selection - women and children on one side and the men on the other. Thus my brother Claude and my father and I were separated from my mother. This was the last time I saw her."...