Edit Drancy Memorial – Cite de la Muette

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Now in use again as an apartment complex, the towers of “Cite de la Muette” or “The City of the Mute” bear a silent testament to the horror of the Shoah. It was here that the Jews of France were detained and brutalized by French guards after being rounded up by French police. Although the camp was taken over by German authorities prior to being liberated, the complicity of France in the crimes of the Holocaust is still a point of contention in French politics. This site was the internment point for Jews being sent on to the death camps at Auschwitz, a trip which few would return from. Estimates are that 65,000 were sent from Drancy to their deaths and a further 2,500 died in the Drancy camp from abuse and neglect. In 1973, a sculptural memorial by Jewish artist Shlomo Selinger, titled “At the Gates of Hell” was erected on the open end of the u-shaped complex. This massive granite sculpture is composed of elements and symbols representing the passage of the souls through the gates of death and the continuing presence of the Jewish faith. A replica of the boxcars used to transport prisoners to the death camps now stands in the center of the complex, poised atop a section of railway line that further symbolizes the final journey that so many have taken from this place.