“White Way”, in memory of convoy 8

On July 21, it was published near the Angers Station the monumental work “Voie blanche”, created by the sculptor Emmanuel Saulnier. It commemorates the 872 Jewish men, women and children who were deported by convoy number 8. This eighth deportation train of the French Jewish population left Angers on 20 July 1942, bound for an extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau .

This is one of the rare convoys that leave the provinces to go straight to the Nazi camps. Initially aimed at deporting adult foreign Jews, it was added by French Jewish families gathered in Maine-et-Loire and neighboring regions, in defiance of the agreement between the French and German authorities to Jews of French nationality to be banned. The first arrests began on July 15 under the authority of the German forces with the support of the French police. Coming from Le Mans, Poitiers, Tours, Rennes and Angers, those gathered were sent in for three days under the supervision of French gendarmes before being loaded into freight vehicles. The convoy left Angers on the evening of July 20. The train made a few stops to disembark a number of people for transfer to camps within France. According to the Yad Vashem memorial, 824 people arrived at Auschwitz on July 23. Only 20 to 30 survivors of convoy 8 returned to France in 1945.