Summer '44, a train to hell

It is one of the most tragic stories of the Second World War. In the early summer of 1944, as the war turned to the advantage of the Allies and France was about to be liberated, hundreds of French were loaded onto a train in Toulouse, bound for Dachau.

This political deportation convoy was one of the last trains to leave for the death camps. But instead of the usual three days, its journey lasted two months. 57 days of hell.

Tracks were cut, sabotage, machine-gunning, hijacking... The train kept stopping, disappearing and reappearing. Why did Nazi Germany, in the midst of its rout, insist on deporting its prisoners? Who were these deportees to be so valuable to Hitler? How did these men and women, herded together like cattle, experience their ordeal? How did the Resistance fight to free them?

All these questions are answered in this documentary through archive images and unpublished testimonies.