Glossary

Following the occupation of France during World War II, a complex originally planned as a large public housing project but used as police barracks was converted for use as a major detention centre primarily for Jews but also homosexuals and others labeled as "undesirables" who were seized by Nazi orders pending shipment to Auschwitz and other German extermination camps.
Drancy deportation camp was an infamous temporary prison camp in the city of Drancy, north of Paris. France used to hold Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps. 65,000 Jews were deported from Drancy, of these, 63,000 were murdered including 6,000 children and only 2,000 were alive when Allied forces liberated the camp on August 17, 1944. It was directed by Alois Brunner (1912-) from June 1943 to August 1944, whose case was brought before French court in 2001 by Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, where he was sentenced in absentia to life sentence for crimes against humanity.