Built around 1890, the cattle platform at Pantin station was used to unload cattle destined for the central Paris slaughterhouse, located in the Villette district. In 1944, it was the departure point for several convoys of deported victims of repression, including the last convoy to leave France on August 15, 1944. In all, 4 convoys departed, carrying 3,250 deportees, including 1,600 women.

Find out more about the location

Quai aux bestiaux, Pantin

1944, place of deportation of French resisters

History

Pantin station, April 18, 1944. For the first time, this platform at Pantin station was used for the departure of a deportation convoy of Resistance fighters and victims of repression. 401 women, arrested in various parts of France, were transferred to Nazi Germany, locked in freight cars. Their destination: the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. A second convoy followed on May 13, this time involving 534 women. After being abandoned, the quay was used again on August 11 and above all on August 15, the day of the last deportation convoy from the Paris region and the largest number of deportees during the entire Occupation.
Convoys of women resistance fighters

From 1941 onwards, the first deportations of women from France took place mainly from Paris stations, in small convoys, to Reich prisons. When mass deportations began in 1943, the women held at the Romainville fort and Fresnes prison left from the Compiègne camp and again from Paris stations. From January 1944 onwards, Fort de Romainville became the main place of internment for Resistance fighters, where they were rounded up before being deported.

The Pantin site was chosen as it was close to the camp and connected to the route heading east via Noisy-le-Sec. The two women's convoys of April 18 and May 13, 1944 were linked to large-scale arrivals at the Fort de Romainville camp.

The architecture of the platform

Among the 14-hectare goods station, the 730-meter-long “quai aux Bestiaux” was chosen for the convoys of deportees. 12 meters wide, it is bordered by two tracks. Its name derives from its use in connection with the Parisian abattoirs at La Villette, 1 km away. Its architecture reflects this, as the platform is paved at train level so that cattle can easily exit the wagons, and a water drainage system has been installed. Easily accessible by truck or bus, it offers every advantage for organizing large convoys.

For logistical and security reasons linked to the Fort de Romainville, the choice of Pantin was abandoned after these two convoys. From the end of May 1944 onwards, deportations were carried out on a weekly basis in passenger cars from the Gare de l'Est to the Saarbrücken Neue Bremm border camp, where larger convoys were reformed for Ravensbrück. When Paris was liberated, Pantin was again used on August 11 for the deportation of 98 women. They should have left from Paris, but the Allied advance, and above all an insurrectionary strike by railway workers, which began on August 10, prompted the Nazis to move the departure to Pantin. The deportees were nevertheless kept in passenger cars.

The August 15 convoy: the largest and last of the Resistance convoys

The August 15 convoy is an exceptional one.

Firstly, its size: with 2,216 people, 561 women and 1,655 men, it was the largest convoy to leave France. Eighty-five percent of the detainees were French, while the remainder were nationals of Allied countries and a few Germans. The camps and prisons in the Paris region were emptied. This time, the sinister K-type boxcars were used once again. In a sweltering August, they were filled throughout the day with at least sixty people per wagon.

The convoy also reflects the Nazis' totalitarianism. Yet they still took the time to “sort”. It was those perceived as the most dangerous who were deported that day. Despite a railway workers' strike, an intervention by the Swedish consul and the approach of Allied troops, at 11 p.m. the largest convoy of resistance fighters and victims of repression left Pantin's Quai aux Bestiaux for Germany. The train will take 5 days to reach the Buchenwald concentration camp, where the men will be numbered in the 76,800 to 78,500 series, and another day to Ravensbrück, where the women will be numbered in the “57,000” series.

More people died on this convoy than on the first three, with only half of the deportees (1,170) returning from deportation.

To remember

Pantin station was not used for deportations until 1944.
The August 15 convoy was the largest and last convoy of Resistance fighters.

Memory

Since the end of the war, the Quai aux Bestiaux has been the subject of a memorial deficit. Since the beginning of the 21st century, however, an eco-district has been planned to cover the site of the former goods station. A memorial project was then relaunched, with the idea of raising awareness of the history, first of the August 15 convoy, then of the three other convoys subsequently discovered.

In fact, in the immediate post-war period, the date and convoy of August 15 were the only ones remembered. A number of Pantinois saw it, and some even tried to help the deportees. The time of the deportation is also associated with the fighting that followed, which led to the burning of the Grands Moulins, Pantin's emblematic industrial site on the Ourcq canal, around 1 kilometer from the station. The memory is therefore primarily local.

Then, in 1954, a plaque reading “Ici le 15 août 1944 est parti le dernier train de déportés” was affixed. This is linked to the wishes of Paul Haag, Prefect of the Seine Department, and Richard Pouzet, Secretary General of the Prefecture, both of whom were involved in the convoy. The former's son was deported, while the latter was himself deported on August 15.

In 1965, filmmaker René Clément recreated the convoy directly on the platform for his film Paris brûle-t-il?

But commemorations and memorials on a major freight rail site were not easy for many years.

On May 4, 2000, at the initiative of the Association des Amis du Musée de la Résistance Nationale de la Seine-Saint-Denis and the City of Pantin, a new stele was affixed to the Quai aux Bestiaux on a symbolically reconstituted section of track. The text is succinct: “Gare de Pantin, Quai aux Bestiaux. On August 15, 1944, the last large convoy of deportees from the Paris region left for the Nazi camps of Buchenwald and Ravensbrück”. Only this convoy is mentioned, because no work had yet been done to uncover its predecessors.

For the 60th anniversary of the Liberation, in 2004, an important ceremony was held in memory of the August 15 convoy, in the presence of the daughter of the only Pantinois deportee in this convoy, Robert Savreux. A Resistance fighter who also benefits from a commemorative plaque in the town.

In 2009, as part of the future development of the eco-neighborhood, the city of Pantin entrusted the Association pour l'Histoire des Chemins de Fer en France (AHICF) with the task of carrying out an architectural and heritage diagnosis of the site, and historian Thomas Fontaine carried out research that shed light on the 3 convoys that preceded the August 15 convoy.

In 2012, the Comité Départemental du Tourisme de Seine-Saint-Denis commissioned a study to promote places of remembrance, internment and deportation in Seine-Saint-Denis, including the Quai aux Bestiaux as part of its link with the Romainville fort.

All this research has led to the creation of the Quai aux Bestiaux Memorial, a place of remembrance and education within the future eco-neighborhood. This momentum led the City of Pantin to organize the first ceremony commemorating all the convoys on May 13, 2024, laying the foundations for a new memorial policy.