If the Drancy camp evokes for older generations the persecutions and atrocities committed against the Jewish population under the Vichy government, how many citizens today are familiar with this history? And more specifically, how many people know that this internment camp operated in one of the first modern housing estates built in the Paris suburbs, the cité de la Muette? This building has stood the test of time, and was listed as a historic monument in 2001. Opposite it, the Shoah Memorial inaugurated a museum in 2012 that explains the camp's role in the history of the Shoah.

But how can we understand the reasons that led the German army to choose this modern city as the last stop on the deportation route for the Jews of France, without understanding its strategic geographical location close to the railway network?

Long known to the victims' families, the Bourget-Drancy and Bobigny railway stations almost disappeared from the national memory. Yet these sites represented the last links with France for most of the Jewish people forced to board freight cars bound for the Reich's killing centers. Today, the Mémorial de l'ancienne gare de déportation de Bobigny offers a better understanding of this stage of the persecution, making the experiences of tens of thousands of people tangible to the general public.

But the Shoah was not the only event to leave its mark on the Seine-Saint-Denis region. During the Second World War, resistance movements and networks were formed to confront the German occupation and the Vichy government. Those who joined up faced harsh repression marked by internment, executions and deportation

In the commune of Les Lilas, the Romainville fort was transformed into an internment camp for resistance fighters and, in particular, women resistance fighters. Preserved graffiti on the walls of one of its casemates bears witness to the experiences of those interned there. Not far from the fort, in Pantin, the quai aux bestiaux was the departure point for 4 deportation convoys of Resistance fighters, the largest of which left on August 15, 1944 with 2,216 people. In the near future, the Mémorial national des femmes en résistance et en déportation (National Memorial to Women in Resistance and Deportation) at Fort de Romainville and the Mémorial du quai aux bestiaux, both prefigurations, will give the general public a better understanding of this history.

These preserved historical heritages are major tools for passing on this history to new generations. This website tells the story.