Drancy: station history
Served by: RER B.
Did you know?
A station in Seine-Saint-Denis, on RER line B, 11.5 kilometres from Paris-Nord, at kilometre point 11.538. A stopping point was set up in 1868 at the place called « Pont des sables ». In 1903 Drancy and Le Blanc-Mesnil joined forces to fund the building of the station, which won the right to carry the name Drancy.
Anecdote
The name Drancy is also that of a camp, set up from 1941 to 1944 in the cité de la Muette, a U-shaped housing estate designed by Marcel Lods and Eugène Beaudouin and built between 1931 and 1934. An internment camp, then a transit camp from 1942, it is described as « the hub of the anti-Jewish deportation policy in France »: 63,000 of the 76,000 Jews deported from France left from there, from the Bourget-Drancy station and then from Bobigny station, and fewer than 2,000 returned. A memorial by Shelomo Selinger, erected in 1976, and a railway wagon bear witness to this history. Drancy station itself was rebuilt in 1936 by the Compagnie du Nord.
Around Drancy
- Mémorial de la Shoah de Drancy, 1200 m away — A memorial site opposite the former internment camp, dedicated to the history of the deportation.