Take advantage of the Journées du Patrimoine 2025 to visit Bobigny's former deportation station on the weekend of September 20 and 21. Immerse yourself in the darkest pages of French history by discovering this station, which deported many victims to the Auschwitz camps.
If you were born in Bobigny, you've probably heard the chilling story of the Bobigny train station, used by the Nazis to transfer men, women and children to Auschwitz. In 13 months, from the summer of 1943 to the summer of 1944, 22,407 men, women and children of all ages were loaded into lead-lined wagons and taken to the Auschwitz extermination camp.
After the Second World War, this 3.5-hectare site belonging to the SNCF was leased to a scrap dealer, who moved out in 2005. The SNCF wanted to demolish the buildings several times, but the Fonds Mémoire d'Auschwitz (AFMA) association and Georges Valbon (mayor of Bobigny) raised the issue with the French government in 1987, and demolition was narrowly avoided.
It wasn't until 2005 that this place of remembrance was listed on the supplementary inventory of historic monuments, and recognized as one of Hauts Lieux du Souvenir de la déportation de Seine-Saint-Denis (the Muette camp at Drancy, the Bourget and Bobigny railway stations, the quai aux bestiaux, the military cemetery at Cimetière Musulman, the Fort de Romainville).
Because, despite everything, it's important to remember these dark times, the city of Bobigny is offering a guided tour of the former deportation station. Visit a historic site that bears witness to the Shoah, and discover its future landscaping and scenography, to ensure that the memory lives on through new generations.
For an hour and a half, visitors will be taken on a guided tour of the Bobigny railway station, now a place of remembrance. This guided tour takes visitors on a historical and memorial journey, tracing the role played by the station in the deportation of some 22,500 people, considered Jewish by the Nazis, to killing centers and concentration camps between July 1943 and August 1944.
How did this station become a link in the genocidal machine? How were the deportations organized? Thanks to historical research, archives and personal accounts, visitors will discover not only the mechanics of deportation, but also the individual stories behind it.
The tour will also shed light on the slow recognition of this place as a memorial site. Why did we wait so many years to inaugurate this memorial? What choices guided its design and scenography? Through a chronological approach, visitors will understand the evolution of this site from its use during the Second World War to its rehabilitation as a place of remembrance.
A time for discovery, but also for reflection on the work of remembrance and its transmission to future generations.
As part of its thematic program devoted to survivors, the Mémorial de l'ancienne gare de déportation de Bobigny is hosting a photographic exhibition by Karine Sicard Bouvatier: Déportés. Their ultimate transmission.
The exhibition compares portraits of Holocaust survivors - some of whom were deported from the Bobigny station - with those of young people today, aged between 15 and 19, the same age as the survivors at the time of their deportation. Through this comparison, Karine Bouvatier brings to life the stolen youth of these witnesses, weaving a strong and moving link between the generations.
At a time when the last survivors are disappearing, this photographic work carries an essential message: to pass on their memory to today's young people, the last generation still able to hear their voices, so that they in turn become the transmitters of this history.
Come and discover this historic site!
Dates and Opening Time
From September 20, 2025 to September 21, 2025
Location
Former Bobigny deportation station
151 Avenue Henri Barbusse
93000 Bobigny
Prices
Free
Official website
garedeportation.bobigny.fr
