On 2 September 1943, at 10 am, a train carrying 1,000 Jews leaves Bobigny Station. More than half of the deportees are French citizens. Leutnant Wannenmacher is responsible for supervising the train.

The train most likely takes the following route: Bobigny, Noisy-le-Sec, Épernay, Châlons-sur-Marne, Révigny, Bar-le-Duc, Novéant-sur-Moselle (Neuburg), Metz, Saarbrücken, Frankfurt/Main, Dresden, Görlitz, Liegnitz (Legnica), Neisse (Nysa), Cosel, Katowice (Kattowitz). It reaches Auschwitz on 4 September 1943.

On arrival at the camp, 232 men and 106 women are selected for forced labour. The men are tattooed with the numbers 145796 to 145027, the women are numbered 58300 to 58405.

The remaining 727 deportees are gassed immediately on arrival in the camp.

After the departure list of the next transport had been completed – it was termed an ‘evacuation’ – the squad leader hands over the papers with the date and method of ‘evacuation’ to the room overseers. These documents are green sheets which are distributed to the guards.

On the day of their deportation the prisoners leave their rooms and are herded in groups of 50 into the stairways close to the internment camp entrance.

In 1945 only 17 men and four women will have survived this transport.

Those who were murdered also included two young students. Jacqueline Bialek, born 1921 in Paris. During the war she lived in Montauban. Her brother Jacques Bialek was born in 1926 in Montmorency. He too was studying in Paris. During the war he withdrew to Montauban like his sister Jacqueline. Jacqueline is 22, her brother Jacques is 17 when they are murdered in Auschwitz.

They had their whole lives ahead of them.