The French army was quickly defeated when Germany invaded in The country was divided into two zones: the Occupied Zone in the north, which included Paris; and the Unoccupied zone, where the French government, established at the resort town of Vichy, was able to maintain some measure of control at the price of collaboration with Germany. The Vichy government, which was right-wing and anti-Semitic, lost no time in promulgating several statutes against Jews.
When the German authorities ordered the roundup and internment of foreign Jews at Drancy in , Vichy demanded that the French police comply. In July , the massive roundup of adult Jews in Paris was ordered by the German occupiers. Here the Vichy government went one step further, decreeing the arrest of children as well. Though the official reason was that it would be unkind to separate families, the children were soon forcibly torn away from their parents.
The adults were the first to be deported to Auschwitz and other camps; the children who came later had no hope of survival.
The story of the children of Drancy is one of the many tragedies of the Second World War. The compelling voices of these children survive in their letters, in the eyewitness accounts of a few survivors, and in the drawings of Georges Horan, smuggled out of Drancy and miraculously preservedโฆ.
History The French army was quickly defeated when Germany invaded in
