By late 1941, the Germans, who were occupying much ofthe USSR, had failed to take Moscow and were forced to retreat for the first time. This setback prompted them to hasten the implementation of their genocide plan.
On January 20, 1942, the Wannsee Conference is held near Berlin. Fifteen high-ranking officials of the Nazi regime decided to implement the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” The total destruction of the Jews of Europe was planned. In fact, the extermination had already begun in Eastern Europe, where the mass murder of the Jewish population would later be known as the “Shoah by bullets.”
Although the decision to exterminate all the Jews of Europe has been finalized, the practical details for Western Europe have yet to be determined.
In France, on March 27, 1942, the first deportation convoy of Jews left the Drancy camp and stopped at the Compiègne-Royallieu camp. The Jews—both foreign nationals and French citizens—were supposed to perform “forced labor in the East.”
This illusion vanished when the elderly, women, and children began to be deported to camps. The persecution of Jews was systematic, planned, and carried out on an industrial scale throughout Europe.
In 1942, 45 convoys of deportees left France for the extermination camps.
