European project Convoi 77
The European project Convoi 77 intends to piece together the personal life story of each of the 1321 deportees of the last large convoy that left from Drancy to Auschwitz on July 31, 1944, by sending students from the 37 countries the deportees were from on their traces.
On the basis of the information available, we are able to trace about 400 deportees (personal documents, photos, testimonies…) There is no direct way to find documents concerning more than 900 of them: there are no descendants, entire families were wiped out.
However we have for each deportee basic information that should allow to trace them: name, maiden name for married women, date and place of birth.
Hence the idea of asking high school students, in each country, to look in their city or their village for the traces of these deported people who were born and lived where themselves live today, people their grandparents may have met sometimes or even known.
Either in groups or individually, under the supervision of their teachers these young people will carry out some research that could start in Town Halls or at the local archives, and lead them in places where these lost people grew up, studied, worked, lived. They will collect testimonies, while developing their knowledge about their surroundings, history.
Following a pilot project in the second half of 2016 in four French high schools, the European project Convoi 77 will be progressively put in place at the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year
This project is supported by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.