Passing through Drancy
The RER from Paris Charles de Gaulle takes you through Drancy, where those deported during the Second World War were collected from all over France to be transferred to the camps in Poland. I always shudder as I pass through and wonder what it is like to live somewhere with such a dreadful past. I changed at the chaotic and frantic Gare du Nord for the metro to Montparnasse and found a fold-down seat in the crowded carriage. An (even more) elderly man came and folded down the seat next to me and we began to chat. I don't think I asked his age, but I did ask him if he was from Paris. "Oh, my story is a bit complicated." It turned out that he was born in the early forties to a couple of resistants. His father was captured and shot. His mother was deported. (This means she was sent to the camps, and almost nobody ever came back.) He grew up placed in a family. I talked about how different the UK experience of the war was, and how although my father served overseas, there is...