Nazi camp casts shadow over French celebrations

AS France celebrated the 60th anniversary of its liberation from Nazi Germany yesterday, another anniversary - more sombre and shameful - was remembered only by those who lived to see the liberation of the notorious Drancy detention camp.

A few days before the liberation, Red Cross workers crossed into the camp outside Paris and began distributing ration cards to its starving Jewish inmates.

The Germans had fled Drancy a day before, just hours after burning their files and sending one final cattle train jammed with terrified prisoners to a Nazi concentration camp.