The Convoi des 31000 or Convoy of the 31000s was a deportation convoy that left Romainville, France, for Auschwitz Concentration Camp on 24 January 1943. The women who were transported were mostly Communist Party members or Resistance fighters. Its name stemmed from the fact that the women were assigned numbers between 31625 and 31854 when they reached Auschwitz. It was the only convoy to transport women of the French Resistance to Auschwitz. Out of 230 women who arrived at the concentration camp, only 49 survived their ordeal. A number of women from the convoy testified against the Nazis after the war, wrote autobiographies, were awarded the Legion of Honour or were decreed to be Righteous Among the Nations.
Background In 1941 Otto von Stülpnagel introduced the Night and Fog directive (Nacht und Nebel) which provided for deporting "enemies of the Reich" to the eastern territories in order to isolate them from the rest of the world, forbidding them to make any communications with their families. For the Germans, the directive was designed to alarm the families involved and dissuade them from continuing their relatives' work in the Resistance. This can be seen in a letter from Heinrich Himmler to members of the Gestapo: "After careful consideration, the will of the Führer is to modify the measures against those who are guilty of crimes against the Reich or against the German forces in the occupied territories. Our Führer believes that a prison sentence or hard labour for life sends a message of weakness. The only possible deterrent is either the death penalty or something that will leave the family and the rest of the population in doubt as to the fate of the criminal. Deportation to Germany will fulfil this purpose."
Over the months, this practice was used against French people who were suspected of espionage, treason, aiding enemies of the Reich or illegal possession of weaponsall accusations which were liable for the death penalty.
Journey
Detention
Those waiting to be deported were imprisoned at Fort Romainville, a former prison which was commandeered by Nazi forces in 1940 for use as a transit camp. One of the first women in the convoy to arrive at the camp was Maria Alonso, a Spaniard, who was arrested for providing a mimeograph machine to resistance fighters. Alonso was appointed head of the Women's Section. Ten days later, she was joined by the young women involved in printing and distributing communist propaganda under Arthur Tintelin. They included Madeleine Doiret, Jacqueline Quatremaire, Lucienne Thevenin, Jeanne Serre and Vittoria Daubeuf. On 24 August, the women caught during the Politzer-Pican-Dallidet raid in Paris arrived, including Madeleine Dissoubray, Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, Danielle Casanova, Charlotte Delbo and Madeleine Passot, as well as a young girl of sixteen, Rosa Floch, arrested for having written “Vive les Anglais” on the wall of her school.
The inmates set up a system of pooling food packages to improve each other's rations in view of their widespread hunger. Danielle Casanova convinced some of the women whose windows faced the street to shout about their poor provisioning. This forced the director of the camp to improve their food. Casanova and Germaine Pican were sent to the dungeon for this action, but the soup the women were given did become more substantial. Another inmate, Marie Politzer, organized gymnastics sessions and cold showers every morning to keep the women fit.
A newsletter, gleaned from listening to the guards, cooks and new arrivals, circulated in the prison. Written in methylene blue on the wrapping paper of Red Cross parcels, it was titled Le Patriote de Romainville. The testimonies of women such as Madeleine Passot and Madeleine Dissoubray show that the internees felt they were a “team” and did not have to “make friends” because they were all closely connected. As in other prison camps, theatre became important for the women: Charlotte Delbo directed plays and Cécile Charua made the costumes. After the Sunday midday meal, "Artistic afternoons" were organized, attracting some German guards and the male detainees. One of the last women to reach Romainville was Georgette Rostaing, who had been arrested on 3 January 1943.
Departure
On the evening of 22 January 1943, all the women in the fort were gathered together and 222 of them are called forward. They were told that they would need only one small suitcase and warm clothes for their departure. Although the women did not know their final destination, they were apparently not afraid, as they believed being sent to work in a factory in Germany could not be worse than the cells of the Gestapo.
On 24 January, the 230 women were taken to the Compiègne freight station and loaded into the last four cattle trucks. The front part of the train had been occupied by 1,446 men since the day before. For the trip, they were given a loaf of bread and a 10 cm piece of sausage each. In the crowded cattle trucks, the women set up a rotation system: half of them sitting, the others lying down and vice versa, their suitcases stacked around them. At each stop along the journey, they stuck notes through the doors hoping they would be picked up and delivered. On the first day, the train stopped at Châlons sur Marne where a railway worker whispered to them through the doors: "They are beaten. They lost Stalingrad. You will be back soon. Courage, dears." When the wagons reached Halle-sur-Salle, the men's trucks were separated from the women's. The women were sent on to Auschwitz, the men to Sachsenhausen. During one of the stops, a German guard cried out: "Enjoy it. You are on your way to a camp from which you will never return." At Breslau station, they were given a lukewarm drink and their first food since their departure. They finally arrived at Auschwitz on the morning of 27 January.
Auschwitz
The first few days
On 27 January 1943, the 230 women entered Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp singing La Marseillaise. Taken into a shed, some refused to drink the thin porridge given to them, complaining about the smell of the red enamel bowls they had been given. They learned later that these bowls had previously been used by owners who suffered from dysentery to relieve themselves at night. During the first day, Danielle Casanova volunteered to become the new camp dentist, at the request of the SS. The position allowed her to find similar work also for Maï Politzer and Betty Langlois. After Casanova's departure, the other women were forced to undress to return all their personal items before being taken to a second room where they had their hair cut, their pubic hair shaved, and their bodies disinfected with a cloth soaked in gasoline. After a steam bath, they were tattooed on the inside of their arms, with numbers ranging from 31,625 to 31,854. It was these numbers with gave the deportation the name "Convoy of the 31000s". Wearing prisoners' clothes that did not fit, the 230 members of the convoy sewed an F on a pink triangle on their uniformF for French and the pink triangle for political deportees.
Soon afterwards, the group was sent to Block 14 for two weeks in quarantine. During quarantine, the women were not required to work but had to attend roll calls, standing in the snow for hours. Madeleine Dissoubray recalled later that they tried to protect each other from the cold, putting the weakest in the middle to try to keep them warm. The first to die were the oldest: Marie Grabb, a 63-year-old resistance fighter from the Tours region, who died before the roll call on the first day; Léona "Nanna" Bouillard, 57 year old who could not be revived after falling during the second call. While in quarantine, several others died: Léa Lambert; Suzanne Costentin who was beaten to death by a guard; and Yvonne Cavé who died of frostbite after her shoes were stolen.
'The Race' On 10 February, an event took place which became known to survivors as 'The Race'. After spending the day standing in the snow, the 15,000 women in the camp are forced to run past the doctors and guards who made a "selection" from the weaker women, in what some consider an act of revenge on the part of the German SS, after the victory of the Soviets at Stalingrad. Fourteen women from the Convoi des 31000 were killed, including Sophie Brabander, Sophie Gigand and Aminthe Guillon, whilst Alice Viterbo spent several weeks in Block 25 before dying.
Life in the concentration camp
On 12 February, the women were sent to Block 26. The following day after walking in the snow for two hours, the women are tasked with clearing a field with shovels, as part of the Birkenau Camp's expansion. For sustenance they received half a litre of black coffee in the morning, thickened water as a soup at noon and 300g of bread in the evening, sometimes with margarine, jam, sausage or cheese. Several women died, including: Berthe Lapeyrade, who refused to get up after falling in a swamp and was beaten to death; Alice Varailhon, shot by a guard; Annette Epaud, who was sent to Block 25 then to the gas chamber because she gave water to an inmate who was thirsty.
In Spring 1943 a typhus epidemic broke out, ravaging the camp. Several of the French women died. The first was Raymonde Sergent in March, then Maï Politzer a few days later. Rosa Floch, youngest in the convoy, then Andrée Tamisé, whose health had already been weakened by dysentery, and finally Claudine Guérin, who lost her mind because of the fever. Élisabeth Le Port died on 14 March 1943. By 10 April 1943, there were only 70 left. On 1 May, Danielle Casanova fell ill and, despite being vaccinated by the SS doctors, died of typhoid nine days later.
Sub-camp Raisko Shortly after their arrival, five women from the convoyMadeleine Dechavassine, Marie-Élisa Nordmann-Cohen, Hélène Solomon-Langevin, Laure Gatet and Alice Loebwere sent to work in the Raisko Sub-camp. This camp was responsible for the production of kok-saghiz, a dandelion with latex in its root, which was used to create rubber. Located outside the camp, Raisko was an old school surrounded by fields and greenhouses. It was run by an SS officer who was afraid of contagion and allowed women to be clean and remain in relatively good health. Those who were most qualified in chemistry were assigned to the laboratory to do experiments, whilst others worked in the fields, took care of the plants or helped the chemists. It was one of the least dangerous sub-camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
At the start of the summer, Marie-Claude Vaillant Couturier overheard that the Frenchwomen were to be transferred to Ravensbrück. At the end of April, Emmanuel Fleury, Marie-Thérèse Fleury's husband, heard from the Resistance that his wife had died. A telegram had been sent to the French Resistance in London and broadcast on the BBC's Radio Londres. Around that time, the families of the deportees sent letters to the French Red Cross and to the government to ask for news of their loved ones following several other death notices arriving in France. On 17 August Radio Londres reported on the detention conditions of the Communist women, who had been transferred from Romainville to Auschwitz. When it was stated that there was only one tap for 5,000 women, the reporters thought it was a mistake and corrected it to one tap for 500 women. Following these eventsalthough no document has been found to prove itthe women in the Raisko sub-camp were allowed to write a letter in German to their French-speaking families.
The women at Raisko from Convoy 31000 also discovered that there were 37 others in Auschwitz-Birkenau who were still alive.
Transfer to Ravensbrück