First transports from Drancy Camp to Auschwitz

The first transport from Drancy, with 1,000 Jews aboard, set out for Auschwitz-Birkenau on June 22. Drancy, a collection and detention camp for French Jews in the large northeastern suburb of Paris of this name, became a junction from which Jews were deported from France to labor and extermination camps. Guarded by members of the French Gendarmerie armed with machine guns, the camp held as many as 4,500 Jews at a time. The first deportation from Drancy was the third that left France as part of the “Final Solution”. The deportations from France went on for over two more years, in the course of which some 75,000 Jews were deported.