Paris – Lévitan

In the thirties, Jewish businessman Wolf Lévitan opened a furniture store in Paris. After the Germans occupied Paris and France in June 1940, the store was taken over by the germans. The store later became a warehouse for stolen Jewish property, which was then sold on. The scope was so large that in July 1943 the Germans turned the warehouse into a labor camp for jewish prisoners. These were Jews taken from the Drancy camp in northern Paris, a camp that served as a transit camp for Jews in France who were to be deported to eastern Europe, mainly Auschwitz. The work consisted of sorting, registering, repairing and inventorying the stolen property. In addition to Lévitan, two additional camps were established in Paris with the same function, Austerlitz (November 1943) and Bassano (March 1944). A total of about 800 Jews were in these three camps, of which about 165 were deported to Eastern Europe. All three camps were linked to Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg (ERR), whose main task was to loot occupied countries.