A train towards the hell

Le 20 juillet 1942 fut peut être une belle journée ensoleillée. Mais elle fut aussi, dans l'histoire d'Angers, l'une des plus sombres.

The most saddest day of Angers for centuries took place on July 20th 1942. Contemporaries maybe didn't realize that caracteristic even if that day was a Monday in spite of the previous one which was a Sunday. During that Sunday, and probably the week before, more than 800 people (824 exactly including 430 women) were gathered in Angers for a long, terrible and fatal journey for "the bottom of the night", because they were Jews.

On July 20th at 20 h 35, the train in which they were locked up
went away towards Auschwitz by Paris. At 20 h 35, Angers city was probably rather quiet and the train has maybe gone through a peaceful atmosphere. After three days, the "travellers" arrived in the extermination camp where they were separated according they were men or women, or rather, male of female.

The roundup was precisely prepared, with the help of the French police. Few informations were given to the families. Eighteen men and 3 women came back. Three of them were native from Angers : the Bergoffen, the Borland and the Moscovici. Three persons (one in each family) survived the extermination camp and learnt, back in Angers, that their relatives had died.