Transport 78 from Lyon, Rhone, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 11/08/1944

The transport left Lyon for Paris on August 11, 1944. SS-Obersturmführer Klaus Barbie was in charge of assembling it. The train pulled out of the Guillotière freight depot railway station in the early afternoon (between 2:00 - 2:30 pm) with approximately 650 men, women and children on board. One group consisted of male resistance fighters, some of them Jewish, the other group were Jews from Lyon and the periphery. The third group were female resistance fighters. However, since in particular women often succeeded in hiding their Jewish identity (such as the renowned Ravensbrück internees, Mila Racine and Denise Vernay), they were subsequently deported as political detainees. As a result, as Serge Klarsfeld states in his 1978 Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France (Memorial to the Jews deported from France), it has been difficult to determine the exact number of Jewish deportees on this transport.

Most of those arrested in late July and at the beginning of August were brought to the Montluc assembly camp ("Sammellager Montluc"), a jail in the stronghold Fort of Montluc in the city of Lyon (3rd arrondissement)....