The Shoah in France

Summary from Serge Klarsfeld, Les 11,400 enfants Juifs céportés de France, juin 1942-août 1944, Paris: Mairie de Paris, 2007

There were approximately 320,000 Jews in France in 1940, half of whom were foreign Jews; among these 320,000 Jews, there were 70,000 children under the age of 18.

55,000 foreign Jews and 25,000 French Jews were victims in France of the “Final Solution.”

Almost 76,000 Jews were deported from France. Of these, there were only 2,500 survivors. About 3,000 others died in French internment camps and another 1,000 were executed or summarily assassinated because they were Jewish.

Of all the years of the Occupation, 1942 was the blackest: 42,000 Jews were deported in 43 convoys to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Two-thirds of the 32,000 Jews deported in 1943-1944 were deported from the provinces whereas in 1942, two-thirds of the 42,000 Jews who were deported came from Paris and its environs.

Of the 11,400 children deported from France, 6,000 were deported during the summer of 1942. 2,000 of them were less than six years old.

During 1943, 17,000 Jews were deported in 17 convoys. Four of these went to Sobibor.

In 1944, 15,000 Jews were deported in 14 convoys. Two of these left from Lyon and Toulouse. One convoy went to Lithuania in Estonia.

1,000 Jews from the north of France and from Pas-de-Calais were deported to the Belgian camp of Malines.

240,000 Jews, three-fourths of the Jews of France, including 84% of Jewish children, survived, in essence because of the sympathy and solidarity of the French population.