Fort de Romainville

48°53′06″N 2°25′22″E / 48.885126°N 2.422718°E / 48.885126; 2.422718LocationLes Lilas, Île-de-France
Occupied FranceBuilt bySecond French RepublicOperated bySSCommandantBickenbachOriginal useMilitary fort for the protection of ParisFirst built1844–48OperationalOctober 1940 – 19 August 1944InmatesFrench Resistance, French communistsKilled152Notable inmatesPierre Georges, Danielle Casanova, Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, Hélène Solomon-Langevin, Charlotte Delbo

Fort de Romainville, (in English, Fort Romainville) was built in France in the 1830s^[1] and was used as a Nazi concentration camp in World War II.

Use in World War II

Fort de Romainville was a Nazi prison and transit camp, located in the outskirts of Paris. The Fort was taken in 1940 by the German military and transformed into a prison. From there, resistants and hostages were directed to the Nazi concentration camps. People were interned there before being deported to Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald or Dachau concentration camps; the deportees comprised 3,900 women and 3,100 men.

In the Fort itself, 152 persons were executed by firing squad. A few escaped, such as Pierre Georges, alias "Colonel Fabien." From her cell, Danielle Casanova motivated and encouraged her comrades to confront their torturers.^[2] From February 1944, the Fort held primarily female prisoners (resistants and hostages), who were jailed, executed or redirected to the camps. At liberation in August 1944, many abandoned corpses were found in the Fort's yard.

Gallery

• 
  Memorial plaque to the hostages shot at Romainville
• 
  Memorial plaque to the internees deported and the prisoners shot at Romainville
• 
  Memorial plaque to women of the Resistance sent to Auschwitz from Romainville

References

See also

PreludeBeginningsParticipantsGovernmentsParties and
organizationsLegal and
treatiesPolicy &
politicsPress and
propagandaTerritory

French North Africa	French Algeria Morocco Tunisia

French West Africa	Ivory Coast Dahomey Sudan Guinea Mauritania Niger Senegal Upper Volta Togoland

French Equatorial Africa	Chad Middle Congo Ubangi-Shari Cameroon

Asia & Oceania	French India French Indochina Cambodia French protectorate of Laos Cochinchina Annam Tonkin Kouang-Tchéou-Wan New Hebrides

Jewish
affairs

Laws	Law on the status of Jews Law regarding foreign nationals of the Jewish race Second law on the status of Jews
Administration	Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs Order of Physicians [fr] UGIF
Roundups	French Riviera [fr] Green ticket Clermont-Ferrand [fr] Izieu Marseille Lyon Vel' d'Hiv Villeurbanne [fr]
Discrimination and plunder	Aryanisation Nazi plunder Yellow badge Yellow badge in France [fr]
Camps	Beaune-la-Rolande Drancy Gurs Milles Natzweiler-Struthof (subcamps) Noé Pithiviers Récébédou Rieucros Romainville Royallieu-Compiègne Rivesaltes Septfonds Vernet
Deportation	Deportation convoys [fr] Deportation timeline Holocaust timeline The Holocaust in France

Military

Forces	Regular 1st Regiment [fr] 7th Military Division 14th Military Division 15th Military Division Armistice Army Army of the Levant Air Force Navy Guard Militia Service d'ordre légionnaire Groupe mobile de réserve Milice Franc-Garde Special Brigades Auxiliary SS Charlemagne division Carlingue Légion impériale Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism
Battles	1940 Mers-el-Kébir Gibraltar Dakar Gabon Indochina Franco-Thai War Ko Chang 1941 Syria–Lebanon Saint Pierre and Miquelon 1942 Madagascar Operation Bright Moon Wallis and Futuna Torch Anton Toulon Réunion
Officers	François Darlan Henri Giraud Philippe Pétain

DissolutionAftermath
& ImpactHistory
& Media

History	The Destruction of the European Jews Strange Defeat
Film	Bombing the Nazis The Eye of Vichy Milice, film noir The Sorrow and the Pity Uranus
Fiction	Castle to Castle Section spéciale Le Silence de la mer Suite française