Chronological Index:

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January 13, 1943: Upon the German authorities’ request, prefect Parmentier ordered mass arrests of French Jews in Normandy, implementing new reprisal measures following the murder of a Wehrmacht officer in the Rouen train station the day before. On January 16, 222 people were thus transferred to Drancy, including 170 French citizens (S. Klarsfeld, 1983-2001). ***

January 22-27, 1943: Upon Himmler’s request, the Germans carried out a vast military/policing operation to destroy the Vieux Port neighborhood of the French city of Marseilles. Its entire population was “filtered.” Hundreds of people were arrested and transferred to the Compiègne camp, in view of their deportation; among them were around 800 Jews (C. Oppetit, 1993; Ryan, 1996; A. Meyer, 2002: 143-158). ***

January 15-28, 1943: In Nantes, in a trial known as that of “the 42 [accused]” (“les 42”), the military court of Feldkommandantur 518 sentenced 37 persons from the local Francs-tireurs partisans Français or FTPF, (the "Partisan irregular riflemen," Resistance fighting formations created by the PCF) to death; most of them had been arrested since summer 1942 by the French authorities. They were treated as “criminals,” as the German judges focused on elements such as the murder of the French juge d’instruction (committing magistrate) initially in charge of the case against them, in the middle of the Palais de Justice (courthouse) (F. Liaigre, 2007; see also S. Defois’ forthcoming paper “Le Procès des 42, Nantes, janvier 1943. Propagande et criminalisation de la résistance communiste,” given at the Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme seminar entitled Autour des guerres mondiales. Ordre civil et ordre militaire : les limites de la justice militaire, 1914-1955). In terms of the number of death sentences served, this was probably the deadliest trial of the whole of the Occupation. **

January 24, 1943: Over 1,500 men and 230 women were taken from Compiègne into the German Reich, on the second mass convoy of deportees arrested in the framework of repressive measures to leave the occupied zone; the first had left on July 6, 1942. The rail cars of the convoy were separated at Halle, once it was past the German border. The men were sent to the Sachsenhausen camp, near Berlin, where most of them were put to work in the Heinkel factory Kommando (unit of workers), for the German war effort (E. Rimbot, 2006). The women, including Danielle Casanova and Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier (two famous French Communist activists and members of the Resistance), were sent to Auschwitz, where the conditions were terrible, partly due to a typhoid fever epidemic. By April 10, only 70 of them were still alive. The persons put on the convoy at Compiègne were mostly Communists, and many of them had been arrested in the context of the hostage policy. But at least as far as the men were concerned, this convoy was also linked to the deportation policy determined by Himmler’s December 1942 decree for the supply of camps with slave labor. This was probably why the Germans forced a few dozen Gypsies onto the train; they were the only ones deported from the occupied zone (C. Delbo, 1965; D. Peschanski, 2004; FMD, 2004; Th. Fontaine, 2005; E. Rimbot, 2006). **

February 9-13, 1943: The interruption of the deportation of the Jews of France had lasted about three months. But then three convoys were planned in early February. The first, number 46 (there were mistakes in the numbering of these trains by the German services: this one was not actually the 46th), left on February 9, carrying around 1,000 prisoners. The numbers of Jews held in the transit camps did not leave the Jewish Affairs Department much leeway: on the second convoy, which left on February 11, there were 170 deportees over the age of 60. They had only just been taken out of the asylums where they had been interned previously (S. Klarsfeld, 1983-2001). ***

February 13, 1943: Two Luftwaffe officers were killed during the Carousel in Paris. “The first reprisal measure elaborated jointly by the Military Command, the German embassy and the Sipo-SD was a plan for the deportation of 2,000 Jews.” (S. Klarsfeld, 1983-2001: 228) Mass round-ups of Jews were immediately planned in the southern zone, with the Vichy authorities’ help; male foreigners aged 16 to 65 were targeted. ***

March 2, 1943: A new convoy, number 49, left Drancy in the direction of Auschwitz. Once again, there had been some difficulty gathering the necessary contingent of deportees; most of them were elderly, and had been taken from the Rothschild hospice or arrested during the last Paris round-up, that of February 11, which had led to the capture of 1,500 Jews, thanks to the French Prefecture of Police. On convoy 49, over 300 prisoners were over the age of 70; 395 were in their sixties (S. Klarsfeld, 1983-2001). ***

March 4-6, 1943: Almost 2,000 Jews, who had been arrested following reprisal measures taken on February 15, were deported to the Sobibor camp in two convoys, almost as soon as they had arrived from the southern zone. It was the first time that a deportation convoy from France was sent straight to this death camp. Nearly all of the prisoners on board were gassed directly upon arrival (S. Klarsfeld, 1978-2001). **

March 23-25, 1943: The third and fourth convoys were sent from France to Sobibor; they were also the last. The prisoners on board were mostly Jews that had been rounded up in Marseilles in early January. Out of the 2,000 that were deported, only 15 or so from the second convoy were selected for labor upon their arrival. On March 25, Knochen answered Eichmann on the subject of the schedule of future deportations, saying that until the Vichy government passed the law abolishing the naturalization of Jews who had become French starting in 1932, “special convoys for the transport of Jews [would] not be necessary.” (S. Klarsfeld, 1983-2001: 244) From then on, the Jewish Affairs Department essentially relied on the mass round-ups due subsequently to this Vichy government law. No convoys were organized from the end of March to the end of June 1943. ***

March 25 and 27, and April 1, 1943: Three convoys, carrying a total of 166 men, left the Gare de l’Est in Paris, heading to Trèves, then to the Mauthausen concentration camp. They were former hostages due to be shot, who had been re-labeled as “security” detainees, categorized as NN by the Gestapo, partly to guarantee they would be deported secretly. As the execution of hostages had been suspended and the number of hostages present in the “official” reserve at the Romainville fort could not go over 200, their departure had actually been planned since December 1942. From that point on, other convoys of former hostages, male and female detainees considered highly dangerous and labeled NN, were deported by the Gestapo directly to a concentration camp in this type of small convoy. From July they were sent to Natzweiler and Ravensbrück; starting in August they were mostly deported to Buchenwald and Mauthausen, via the Saarbrücken camp for sorting prisoners (FMD, 2004; Th. Fontaine, 2007). ***

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