On February 2, 1943, after fierce fighting, the Soviets crushed Hitler’s troops at Stalingrad.
The Battle of Stalingrad completely changed the course of the war; Nazism was no longer on the offensive. This victory marked the beginning of the German army’s retreat from Eastern Europe. For the resistance forces, the liberation of the country became a real possibility.
In Paris, as throughout France, the resistance against the occupiers intensified, but the brutal repression orchestrated by the Nazis and their collaborators showed no sign of letting up. In February 1943, numerous convoys of Jews—both foreign and French—departed from Drancy bound for theAuschwitz death camp. The last illusions of the French Jews, who had believed themselves to be protected, were definitively shattered.
The Nazi authorities set the “Final Solution” plan into motion: they stepped up deportations to the camps.
The extermination of the Jews throughout Europe became a reality in France for the young Resistance fighters who had come from Eastern European countries—countries they had left behind or where their parents had been born. Many of them realized that their families, who had remained in Poland, Hungary, Romania, and elsewhere, had been wiped out.
