Camp du
Vernet, in the south of France near Pamiers in Aričge, held
12,000 Spaniards of the Durruti Division after their defeat
in the Civil War. Also among the inmates was the writer
Arthur Koestler who described its terrible conditions.
Beginning in 1940 the Vichy regime used it as a detention
center for foreigners considered suspect or dangerous. In
1942 it became a transit camp for French Jews. The last
group of Camp du Vernet prisoners were deported to Dachau in
June 1944.
On August 21,
1941, Drancy, a northeast suburb of Paris, became the
location of an assembly and detention camp for Jews. From
June 22, 1942, until July 31, 1944, almost 65,000 Jews were
transported from Drancy to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibór
death camps in Poland. At first Drancy was administered by
French collaborators, but on July 2, 1943, German Nazi SS
official Alois Brunner took command, after which conditions
for inmates deteriorated catastrophically. Solidarity and
organized resistance were strong among the inmates, and made
possible forty-one successful escapes. Drancy was liberated
on August 17, 1944.
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Below: A
May 28, 1941, air mail letter from a Camp du Vernet prisoner
to New York, with camp censor marks front and back. A
September 19, 1941, letter from a Jewish prisoner at Drancy
to his wife at Paris. The octagonal purple censor's cachet
of the East Paris guard force, Brigade No. 93 of Drancy, is
less common than later Drancy censor markings recorded in
the literature.
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