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Article: A housing estate on the way to Auschwitz Suburban Paris was home to a vast wartime concentration camp. Suzanne B ardgett traces its hidden history Would we have acted any differently? In which suburb would our Drancy have been - Peckham? Deptford?
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- January 2, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1995 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Pain and incomprehension still show in Erik Rosen's face as he
recalls the day the Nazis came for him. A teenage refugee from Nazi
Germany, he was living in Nice. Life was comfortable; a family
snapshot taken on the Promenade des Anglais shows a w ell-to-do young
man in knickerbockers, his mother on his arm, a fur stole slung
around her shoulders. Then came the morning in 1943 when Erik, then
aged 14, was arrested and taken to the Gestapo HQ at the Hotel
Excelsior.
Suspected of carrying a false identity card, he was ordered to
lower his trousers. His Jewishness thus established, he was arrested
and put on a train for Paris, where he joined thousands of other Jews
imprisoned in an oddly ...