page_title: Drancy internment camp
section_title: Present-day
hierarchical_section_title: Drancy internment camp / Present-day
caption_attribution_description: English: Receipt for French francs taken from Jewish inmate at Drancy, stating that "the Aeltestenrat [Council of Elders] at the new place of settlement is under obligation to (re)pay its countervalue in Polish zloty"
context_page_description: Drancy was an assembly and detention camp for confining Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps during the German military administration of Occupied France during World War II. It was located in Drancy, a northeastern suburb of Paris, France.
  Between 22 June 1942 and 31 July 1944, during its use as an internment camp, 67,400 French, Polish, and German Jews were deported from the camp in 64 rail transports, which included 6,000 children. Only 1,542 prisoners remained alive at the camp when the German authorities in Drancy fled as Allied forces advanced and the Swedish Consul-General Raoul Nordling took control of the camp on 17 August 1944, before handing it over to the French Red Cross to care for the survivors.
  Drancy was under the control of the French police until 1943 when administration was taken over by the SS, which placed officer Alois Brunner in charge of the camp. In 2001, Brunner's case was brought before a French court by Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, which sentenced Brunner in absentia to a life sentence for crimes against humanity.
context_section_description: The camp was used after the war for the internment of collaborationists, then went back in 1946 to its original destination as low-income housing.
  In 1977, the Memorial to the Deportation at Drancy was created by sculptor Shlomo Selinger to commemorate the French Jews imprisoned in the camp.
  Until recently, the official point of view of the French government was that the Vichy regime was an illegal government distinct from the French Republic. While the criminal behaviour of Vichy France and the collaboration of French officials were acknowledged, and some former Vichy officials prosecuted, this point of view denied any responsibility of the French Republic. This perspective, held by Charles de Gaulle among others, underlined in particular the circumstances of the July 1940 vote of the full powers to Marshal Pétain, who installed the "French State" and repudiated the Republic. With only the Vichy 80 refusing this vote, historians have argued it was anti-Constitutional, most notably because of pressure on parliamentarians from Pierre Laval.
  However, on 16 July 1995, president Jacques Chirac, in a speech, recognized the responsibility of the French State, and in particular of the French police which organized the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv) of July 1942, for seconding the "criminal folly of the occupying country".
  On 20 January 2005, arsonists set fire to some railroad freight cars in the former camp; a tract signed "Bin Laden" with an inverted swastika was found.
  On 11 April 2009, a swastika was painted on a train car used for the deportation of Jews, a permanent exhibit.  This was condemned by the French Minister for the Interior, Michèle Alliot-Marie.
caption: Receipt for French francs taken from Jewish inmate at Drancy, stating that "the Aeltestenrat [Council of Elders] at the new place of settlement is under obligation to (re)pay its countervalue in [Polish] zloty"
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