It is June in Paris, 1942, and a young girl named Jeannine is 15 years old.


 It has been just two years and one week since the German occupiers and the Vichy government signed an armistice and began their persecution of the Jews. First they decided who counted as Jewish, then they located and registered them with the police, and after that they put rules in place to push Jewish people out of the economic and cultural life of France.

One can only imagine how all of this looked to a teenage girl. She must have wondered if the world had lost all sense. In the previous two years, French Jews had already started being taken away and held in camps near Paris. The first large roundup in Paris happened in 1941, when more than 8,000 people were arrested at once. These arrests were fast and violent, with families torn apart in front of each other. Seeing all of this, Jeannine’s parents, Elias and Celine, must have been desperate to keep their daughter safe.

Soon the French detention camps became overcrowded, and something “had to be done.” The chosen solution was to send people “to the East.” In March 1942, one thousand prisoners were sent to a camp in Poland called Auschwitz. This was not just another detention site, but a camp created for forced labor and mass killing.

Only three months later, Elias, Celine, and their daughter Jeannine were placed on the fifth transport to Auschwitz. Their train left at 5:20 in the morning with 1,038 people on board. The journey took three painful days with no water, no food, and no toilets. At the Alsace border, some locals tried to offer water after hearing the cries from the train, but the Germans refused. The passengers’ well-being meant nothing to them. When the train arrived at Auschwitz during the night, those still able to move were forced to walk the one kilometer to the main entrance while being attacked by soldiers and dogs.

What happened after this is not known. The young family simply disappeared into the chaos and cruelty of the camp. There is, however, one small detail recorded in history: Jeannine is known to be the first French girl under the age of 16 to be deported to Auschwitz. By the time the war ended, 76,000 French Jews had been sent “to the East,” and only around 2,500 survived. Elias, Celine, and Jeannine were not among them.

May their memories be honored and remembered.

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