Censored Letter from Drancy Internment Camp

Authors

Object ID

2012.1.34

Object Name

Letter

Files

Description

Envelope with title, "Kriegsgafanyenpost" with address and message written in pencil.

Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:

Frontstalag (Frontstammlager) 111 Drancy censored lettersheet sent by Jewish POW Solomon Narinsky to his wife Sonia, in Frontstalag 142, Besancon. Initially a POW camp holding North African colonial POWs, Frontstalag 111 also held 79 British prisoners and foreign laborers who were in France. Solomon Narinsky was a renowned photographer who had at this time a photography studio in Paris. His wife Sonia was also a photographer swept up in the dragnet after the German invasion of France in May 1940. Frontstalag 142 was a camp for Anglo-American citizens who were mostly Jewish and who would be used as bargaining chips swapped for German POWs. Mr. Narinsky was released as part of a prisoner exchange in 1944. He would move back to Palestine to Kibbutz Ein Harod. In August 1941 the U-shaped building complex “La Cite de la Muette,” that was the hub of Drancy for POWs, became the transit camp transporting Jews to extermination camps such as Auschwitz.

Dimensions

13 1/2 x 6"

Keywords

Drancy, Besancon, Censor, Auschwitz, Sonia Narinsky, Salomon Narinsky, Ton S. Narinsky

Subcollection

Transit

Recommended Citation

"Censored Letter from Drancy Internment Camp" (2016). Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2012.1.34.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/698