Source: Memorial de la Shoah. We are 38 students from two 9th grade classes at the Jean-Paul Laurens secondary school in Ayguesvives, in the Haute Garonne department. Every week, on Fridays, we met Jim as we would a fellow traveler.
We teased out his story through a range of historical documents that allowed us to reconstruct some fragments of his life. We first came across Jim in four documents from the Shoah Memorial in Paris, kindly provided by the Convoy 77 team.
The first of those was a photograph one of the slabs that makes up the Wall of Names at the Shoah Memorial. The second document that we were given is an extract from the list of people deported on Convoy 77, which left Drancy camp on July 31, Map of the route across Europe taken by Convoy At the end of July , the situation in Paris was very volatile.
The Allies, who had landed on June 6, were advancing towards Paris. On July 20, an attack on Hitler and a coup attempt failed. The leaders of the Gestapo, who had been arrested by the Wehrmacht, were released. Alois Brunner, the commander of Drancy camp, took advantage of the confusion to continue his murderous madness to the very end. Convoy 77 left Drancy on July 31, carrying people of 37 different nationalities. It arrived at Auschwitz on August 3.
Of the deportees on board, were sent to the gas chambers as soon as they arrived at the camp. The camp was liberated by the Red Army on 27 January His date and place of birth are listed as being July 8, in Strasbourg. His last known address was in the town of Fronsac in the Haute-Garonne department of France.
