Bobigny station rehabilitated and open to schoolchildren

It is a place long forgotten by everyone: the Bobigny deportation station, in the heart of Seine-Saint-Denis. From here, 22,453 Jews left for the death camps. Less than a hundred came back, like Ginette Kolinka. “I don’t remember anything about this place“, she declares. On April 13, 1944, she was in convoy 71, with her father, her brother and her nephew.”Meeting up with young people, we were joking. For us, we were going to a labor camp. So a work camp, we’re young, it’s not scary“, she recalls.

Simone Veil makes it a Memorial

There is no image of this station during the Second World War. A place hidden by the Nazis. Just a few photos of the La Muette camp in Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis), where the deportees were gathered before taking the train. To accelerate the extermination of the Jews, Bobigny enters into service on July 18, 1943, 21 convoys will leave for Auschwitz.

After the war, the place was occupied by a scrap dealer, until 2005. A presence that paradoxically protected the building. “We have found, after carrying out restoration work, the cobblestones on which the deportees traced their last steps before getting into the freight cars”. says Bernard Saint-Jean, head of the station development project.