On Looking at 2,500 Pictures of French Children Deported in the Cattle Cars from Drancy to Auschwitz

Baby Marceline Kogan, a cowlick in her hair, offers us a Bonne Annee, a good year, as she smiles at us from the Kogan's New Year's card for 1941: Marceline is deported with her mother, Felicie, on convoy 45, November 11, 1942.

Liliane Lip sits on a cushion in her birthday suit: Liliane is 2 when she is separated from her parents and deported alone on convoy 29, September 7, 1942.

Doris Lewy, ears sticking out, frowning, can't sit still for the camera: Doris is deported when she is 15 months old, with her 3-month-old baby sister, Nicole, and her father, grandfather, grand- mother, and her great grandmother, on convoy 72, April 27, 1944.

Sarah Kornfeld sits in the park with her three children, Hélène, 7, Anna, 6, and Simone, 3: all but Simone wear the yellow star, all are separated forcibly from their mother and deported on convoy 25, August 28, 1942.

Jean-Pierre Guckenheimer laughs as he lathers his father's face with shaving cream: he is deported with his parents Ernst and Herta, and his grandfather, Markus, on convoy 62, November 20, 1943.

Bertrand Herz, 14, poses with his sister Françoise, both are deported on July 30, 1944, from Toulouse to Buchenwald, both survive, their parents Will and Louise do not.

Aron Muhlstein is immaculate in his foulard tie and knicker suit, his beret cocked to one side; he wears a tallith and holds his prayer book firmly in both hands: Aron is deported on convoy 61, October 28, 1943.

George-Andre Kohn, handsome, in his neat tie and shirt, looks older than his 12 years when he's deported on the last convoy, 79, of August 17, 1944: George-Andre is taken to the Neuengamme camp, injected ith tuberculin bacil, and hung the day before the camp's liberation, in the basement of a Hamburg school.

copyright 2003 Stephen Herz