Questions and answers

• Where was the document used and who created it?

  These cards come from the French camp at Drancy near Paris. The building used as a camp was originally planned as social housing, but was never completed. At the beginning of the war, it was turned into an internment camp by the French government. From 1941 onwards, the Nazis used it as an internment camp. From the summer of 1942 onwards, the camp became the central transit point for deportations to the extermination camps in the east. 
  After the camp had initially been run by the French police under the supervision of the German authorities, the Nazis took complete control in July 1943; an SS officer became camp commander. 

• When was the document used?

  Drancy was used by the Nazis between August 1941 and August 1944, during which time a total of around 70,000 people passed through the camp. The last deportation left Drancy on 17 August 1944.

  When the Nazis fled Drancy in August 1944 ahead of the advancing Allies, they burned many documents to cover their tracks. However, the cards on the inmates had already been sent by the French Red Cross to the International Commission of the Red Cross between July and September 1943. There they went to the Central Office for Prisoners of War, in particular the Service des Civils Internés Divers (CID), the office for civil cases. The office distributed the cards to the respective national offices.

• What was the document used for?

  Drancy was the central location for deportations from France to the extermination camps in the East. The majority of Jews deported from France passed through Drancy (approximately 64,000 people); fewer than 2,000 of them survived the Holocaust. Many of them had immigrated to France in the 1920s and 1930s and came from Poland, Germany or Austria.

  The cards often contain not only information about the person's arrest, but also details of their internment in various French camps. After the decision on the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942, the number of deportees rose sharply. For the administration of the inmates in the camp system, an index card was created for each individual upon their arrival, on which personal data and information about their arrest, internment and onward transport were noted. Thus, there are also cards for small children. Some of them were deported separately from their parents and were not clearly identified by name on the cards.

  The cards are available in different formats and colours. Most of the cards have pre-printed categories. These were not always filled in completely, so the information on the cards varies greatly. They were filled in by hand and are sometimes difficult to read. When the person was deported, the date of transport was added, and in some cases the wagon number. The destination of the deportation was not specified; the vast majority of people were taken to Auschwitz.

   

• How common is the document?

  The card index contains approximately 70,000 cards. The original collection of cards from Drancy is now held in the French National Archives. A digital copy is held by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

• What should be considered when working with the document?

  The cards were filled out by the perpetrators. Terms such as ‘départ’ (French for departure) for the deportation of people to extermination camps greatly trivialise the situation.

  If you have any additional information about this document, please send your feedback to eguide@arolsen-archives.org. The document descriptions in the e-Guide are updated regularly – and the best way for us to do this is by incorporating the knowledge you share with us.