On this day, the Drancy internment camp was established in France, and within three years, 7,000 prisoners passed through. Functioning as a concentration camp, the French authorities under the Nazi regime ran the camp until 1943. Despite the harsh conditions at Drancy, the Jews observed the High Holidays in a synagogue established in 1941, and many prisoners attended Shabbat services regularly, despite German prohibitions. In addition, prisoners of the internment camp could not leave their specific block, so they created “The Red Castle,” which utilized the buildings’ toilets as meeting grounds. During the summer of 1942, systematic deportations began from Drancy to extermination camps in occupied Poland. The first transport, on June 22, 1942, took 1,000 Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Throughout the 64 transits since then, 64,759 Jews were deported from Drancy, 61,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and 3,753 Jews were sent to Sobibor. From August 15 to 16, 1944, Allied forces neared Drancy, and German authorities quickly burnt camp documents and fled. The Swedish Consul-General, Raoul Nordling, took over the camp on August 17 and immediately asked the French Red Cross to care for the remaining 1,500 prisoners. Of the thousands of Jewish prisoners sent to Drancy, fewer than 2,000 survived the Holocaust.