Jump to navigation. As the Nazis had included Belgium and France in a suitable territorial ensemble in May , they also adapted the implementation of persecution and ultimately extermination of the Jews to the particularities of the occupied countries. The important decisions however, were made in Berlin. The deportations from Central Europe and the particularities of the German occupation in France and in Belgium are discussed in the second part of the general introduction of this online course, and thus will not be dealt with here.
This chapter will focus on the origins of the Drancy and Mechelen camps, their operation and on the daily life of the internees. To conclude, the statistics of the deportations from both these camps will be analyzed in depth. Drancy was the antechamber of death for over It was located in proximity to three train stations, among which le Bourget and Bobigny had rail connections with Germany and beyond; to Poland.
The large building, built in a U-shape, could easily be transformed into a camp able to accommodate over 5. Four towers joined by a double ring of barbed wire surrounded the camp. The City of Muette was a place of detention for communists or foreigners "who posed a threat to national defence and public security". It was opened by the French government in September , and passed into the hands of the occupiers in June , who used it to detain prisoners of war or British and Canadian civilians.
They were gradually transferred to other camps. On 20 August, , Drancy became an assembly camp for Jews, after the arrival of the first internees arrested for racial motives. By 24 August, 4. When attacks against the occupier or its collaborators occurred, the Nazis took hostages among the Jews in Drancy and had them shot. The first transport for Auschwitz-Birkenau left on 22 June, Between 22 June and 17 August , 62 transports left Drancy.
It was not the only camp from which convoys of the Final Solution departed. The Mechelen assembly camp fell into the same framework of genocidal deportation. Until then, the building served only as military barracks.
