'"'"'"1 NEWS 1
French Death
Camp Recalled
Paris (JTA) — French au-
thorities last week observed
the 50th anniversary of the
opening of the Drancy con-
centration camp in a Paris
suburb, where tens of
thousands of Jews were
herded to await deportation
to Nazi death camps.
The victims were all ar-
rested by French police.
The camp consisted of a U-
shaped block of unfinished
buildings guarded by French
police loyal to the Vichy
regime. It was supervised by
Alois Brunner, one of the
last major Nazi war
criminals still at large and
believed to be living in
Syria.
The chief of the Vichy
police, Rene Bousquet, who
ordered the mass round-ups
of Jews, was finally ordered
by the Supreme Court in
March to stand trial for
crimes against humanity.
The site of the Drancy
camp has changed little in a
half-century. The buildings
became a municipal housing
project after the war.
But in the center of the
block, a monument was
erected recently to inform
the public of what happened.
Just behind the monu-
ment, the local municipality
placed a cattle car, similar to
the ones which hauled Jews
to Auschwitz. Inside, docu-
ments were placed on
display to explain the mean-
ing of "deportation" and
"final solution" in the con-
text of the car.
Simone Veil, a former
Cabinet member and presi-
dent of the Parliament of
Europe and one of the few
Drancy detainees to survive
Auschwitz, attended.
"It is important to say
again and again that what
has been done to the Jews
cannot be compared to
anything else that has
happened in the world,"
Mrs. Veil said.
"There are already people
in France denying the real-
ity of the gas chambers,
others who say more subtly
that of course the concentra-
tion camps were horrible,
but perhaps the survivors
are slightly overdoing it.
"This makes me sick,"
Mrs. Veil said. "We knew
when we came back from
Auschwitz that those who
had not been there would
find it hard to believe us,
and we didn't tell every-
thing. I am concerned about
what will happen after we,
the witnesses of the Holo-
caust, will disappear," she
said.
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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