By submitting the above I agree to the privacy policy and terms of use of JTA. Almost two months had gone by since the Normandy landings, and the Allies were closing in on Paris — but Nazi authorities in the French capital had other priorities. On July 31, , the final transport of French Jews left the transit camp of Drancy in the northern suburbs of Paris carrying children.
It was bound for Auschwitz. The exhibit, which shows hundreds of portraits of Jewish children, already has appeared in 18 railway stations across France and at the head office of the SNCF, the national railway company.
The pictures are part o! Set up in by Serge Klarsfeld and his German-born wife Beate — who have spent decades seeking and prosecuting Nazi war criminals and the French collaborators who assisted them — the group has organized more than 80 commemorations over the past two years to mark the departure of every transport to the camps. For Klarsfeld, who approached the railway company t o host the exhibitions in , the choice of train stations was both a logical and a highly symbolic decision.
More importantly, he pointed out, was the centrality of trains in the deaths of millions of Jews during the Shoah. Klarsfeld, who successfully pursued and brought to trial Nazi war criminals like Klaus Barbie and French officials such as Maurice Papon and Rene Bousquet, rejects claims that the railway company should be held responsible for providing the trains for the deportations.
Charles Barron, another French Holocaust survivor who was liberated from Dachau in, said he was particularly struck by the contrast between his own deportation and th!
