08/20/2026
On August 20, 1941, the first Jewish prisoners arrived at Drancy, an internment camp in a suburb of Paris that would become the major transit camp for the deportation of Jews from France.
French authorities administered and guarded Drancy under German control until the German Security Police and Security Service took direct control in July 1943. Between 1941 and 1944, tens of thousands of Jews were imprisoned at Drancy. Approximately 64,000 Jews were deported from the camp, the vast majority to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Fewer than 2,000 survived.
Among them was Rajzel Rozencwajg, mother of local Holocaust survivor Charlotte Adelman.
Charlotte’s parents tried to protect Charlotte and her brother Max by placing them in an orphanage in Paris. During a visit to Charlotte, her parents were arrested by the Germans and sent to Drancy. They were scheduled for deportation to Auschwitz on August 31, 1942. Charlotte’s father escaped before the train departed, but her mother, Rajzel, was deported to Auschwitz and did not return.
Charlotte survived the Holocaust in hiding and was eventually reunited with her father after the war.
Charlotte’s story reminds us that Holocaust history lives in individual lives, names, families, and testimonies. As we remember the thousands who passed through Drancy, we also remember Rajzel by name and honor the story her daughter Charlotte has carried forward. 🕯
