Austerlitz Station
In May 1941, about 3,700 Jews were deported from the Austerlitz Station in Paris to the collection camps of Pithiviers and Beaune-La-Rolande. In 1942, another 7,800 Jews were deported to the same camps. The Jews were later deported to Auschwitz.
Current status: Preserved with memorial tablet (2007).
Address: Cour de l’Arrivée, 750 13 Paris.
Get there: Metro to Austerlitz Station.
Follow up in books: Weisberg, Richard H: Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France (1998).
When the SS took control over the French police in the occupied part of France in the spring of 1942, the Vichy regime’s prime minister, Pierre Laval, appointed Rene Bousquet as police chief. Laval gave Bousquet mandate to make decisions in police matters. Bousquet negotiated with the SS autonomy for the French police in exchange for cooperating with the German occupation forces. A collaboration that, among other things, meant that they actively participated in the arrests and deportations of Jews on French soil.