Inaugurated on July 18, the former Bobigny deportation station memorial site welcomes you to a restored setting featuring new landscaping and scenography.
Long forgotten, the former Bobigny railway station was the site of the deportation to Auschwitz of a third of France's Jews. In 13 months, from summer 1943 to summer 1944, 21 convoys were organized and 22,500 men, women and children, interned at the Drancy camp, were deported to the killing centers from this station. This is a major French memorial site for the Second World War.
Few places of remembrance of internment and deportation have kept their original configuration intact. The good state of conservation of the former Bobigny deportation station and its evocative power (the spirit or memory of the place) are the basis for the project to enhance the site.
The idea is to preserve this heritage as a trace of the history and memory of the Holocaust, while respecting its authenticity and emphasizing its historical and symbolic value. The industrial and railway character of the site will be highlighted by the astonishing overgrown vegetation present on site.
From the historic entrance to the freight yard, where the deportees embarked, our guide will take you on a tour that retraces the history of the site during the Second World War, based on eyewitness accounts and the railway landscape of the time. It covers the history of the site under German occupation, the different phases of the Deportation and convoy organization, the conditions of transport and arrival at Auschwitz, the implementation of the "Final Solution", and links with the Bourget and Drancy railway stations.
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