Newsgroups: soc.history,soc.culture.jewish
From: Ken McVay 
Subject: Holocaust Calendar: August 17
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
X-Remember: http://www.nizkor.org

[Follow-ups set]

August 17

1938

The 2nd Ordinance pertaining to the execution of the "Law about
Changes of Family Names and  First Names forces Jewish citizens to
adopt the mandatory first names of "Israel" and "Sara" respectively as
of January 1, 1939. (Ruerup, 112)

1944

The last deportation transport from Drancy leaves for
Buchenwald concentration camp with fifty-one deportees; four
women and thirty-one men survive. (USHMM 1994, 55)

The SS evacuates Drancy, leaving more than fifteen hundred
prisoners in the hands of French gendarmerie. The Swedish
Red Cross under Swedish Consul Nording assumes control of
the Drancy transit camp. In effect, Drancy is liberated by
the Red Cross. (Ibid.)

August 17-18

1944

During the night 150 Gypsy prisoners escape from the Vichy
internment camp for "nomads," located at Saliers. Saliers
was opened as an internment camp for Gypsies in early
October 1942 in the Camargue region of France. The escape is
facilitated by the camp commandant, Albert Robini, who fears
that the prisoners will be killed either deliberately by the
retreating German military or accidently by advancing Allied
troops. By late August the Saliers camp is abandoned; it
will be officially closed on October 15 by the prefect of
the Bouches-du-Rhone Department. (See August 25) (USHMM
1994, 55)

Seventy-two French and foreign Jews are executed, together
with thirty-seven non-Jewish resistance prisoners; the
bodies are buried in a large pit at the Bron airfield near Lyon. (Ibid.)

                         Work Cited

Ruerup, Reinhard, Ed., trans. By Werner T. Angress. Topography of
   Terror. Berliner Festspiele GmbH, Berlin: 1987
                              
USHMM (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Fifty
   Years Ago: Darkness Before Dawn: Days of Remembrance, April
   3-10, 1994. Washington, D.C.: 1994

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