(JTA) – The Pithiviers station housed around 3,500 Jews in May 1941. That was before the most infamous deportations of French Jews, and before Jews were being murdered en masse in Auschwitz. Recently, local authorities said they would devote hundreds of thousands of euros to preserve the place, set up educational exhibitions on its walls and declare it a historical monument. The abandoned train station, whose old rails have not been replaced, had remained unused for years after the Holocaust, the France3 television channel reported last week. Schools in its region of eastern France have been bringing pupils for years to see the station, which is currently closed to the public.