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Article: Echoes of the Holocaust in a Parisian suburb.(Personal account)
- Article from:
- Contemporary Review
- Article date:
- March 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Contemporary Review Company Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A spontaneous departure I made from the suburban train linking Paris with Charles de Gaulle Airport--the same railway route that was disrupted a couple of years ago on account of race-tinged riots among youths of Muslim descent--provided an indelible fusion of France's ethnic past and present.
Drancy, for most Parisian commuters, is today but one stop on the humdrum RER line. But for those with even a passing knowledge of Vichy and the Holocaust, Drancy is remembered as the notorious staging point at which 70,000 Jews were held by French authorities before being deported straight from the outskirts of Paris to Nazi extermination camps. An iconic image of France ...