The Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup ( ; from , an abbreviation of ) was a
mass arrest of Jews in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
on 16–17 July 1942 by
Vichy French police at the behest of the
German occupational authorities. Occurring during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, Jews arrested during the roundup were deported to
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
and targeted for extermination as part of
the Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
. It was one of several measures aimed at eradicating
French Jews in both the area of France
under direct German occupation and the so-called "''
zone libre''" that took place in 1942 as part of (Operation Spring Wind). Planned by
René Bousquet,
Louis Darquier de Pellepoix,
Theodor Dannecker and
Helmut Knochen, the roundup was the largest deportation of Jews from France.
According to
Paris Police Prefecture records, 13,152 Jews were arrested,
including 4,115 children.
They were confined in the
Vélodrome d'Hiver, an indoor sports arena, in extremely crowded conditions without any arrangements made for food, water or sanitary facilities. In the week following the arrests, arrested Jews were taken to the
Drancy,
Pithiviers and
Beaune-la-Rolande internment camps
before being deported in
cattle cars to
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe.
The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...
, primarily
Auschwitz.
In the view of President
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free France, Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Re ...
's administration and the successive French governments, France could not be held accountable for the roundup since the Vichy state was "both illegal and illegitimate". President
François Mitterrand refused to acknowledge the responsibility of the French state, stating that "Vichy was not the Republic". Only in 1995, in contrast with the silence of his predecessors, did President
Jacques Chirac apologise for the role of French police and civil servants in the roundup, calling it "the darkest hours that will forever tarnish our history". In 2017, President
Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron (; born 21 December 1977) is a French politician who has served as President of France and Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017. He was Ministry of Economy and Finance (France), Minister of Economics, Industr ...
more specifically admitted the responsibility of the French state in the roundup and hence in
the Holocaust in France.
Background
The
Vélodrome d'Hiver was a large indoor sports arena at the corner of the and in the
15th arrondissement of Paris
The 15th arrondissement of Paris () is one of the 20 arrondissements of Paris, arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, it is referred to as ('the fifteenth').
The 15th arrondissement, called , is situated on the Rive ...
, not far from the
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower ( ; ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower from 1887 to 1889.
Locally nicknamed "''La dame de fe ...
. It was built by
Henri Desgrange
Henri Desgrange (; 31 January 1865 – 16 August 1940) was a French cycle sport, bicycle racer and Sports journalism, sports journalist. He set twelve world track cycling records, including the hour record of on 11 May 1893. He was the first o ...
, editor of
L'Auto, who later organised the
Tour de France, as a
velodrome (
cycle track) when his original track in the nearby ''Salle des Machines'' was listed for demolition in 1909 to improve the view of the Eiffel Tower. As well as track cycling, the new building was used for
ice hockey
Ice hockey (or simply hockey in North America) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. Tw ...
,
wrestling
Wrestling is a martial art, combat sport, and form of entertainment that involves grappling with an opponent and striving to obtain a position of advantage through different throws or techniques, within a given ruleset. Wrestling involves di ...
,
boxing
Boxing is a combat sport and martial art. Taking place in a boxing ring, it involves two people – usually wearing protective equipment, such as boxing glove, protective gloves, hand wraps, and mouthguards – throwing Punch (combat), punch ...
,
roller-skating,
circus
A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicy ...
es, spectacles and demonstrations. In the
1924 Summer Olympics
The 1924 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the VIII Olympiad () and officially branded as Paris 1924, were an international multi-sport event held in Paris, France. The opening ceremony was held on 5 July, but some competitions had al ...
, several events were held there, including foil fencing, boxing, cycling (track), weightlifting, and wrestling.
The Vel d'Hiv was also the site of political rallies and demonstrations, including a large event attended by
Xavier Vallat,
Philippe Henriot,
Leon Daudet and other notable antisemites when
Charles Maurras was released from prison. In 1939 Jewish refugees were interned there before being sent to camps in the Paris region and in 1940 it was used as an internment center for foreign women, an event that served as a precedent for its selection as internment location.
The "Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup" was not the first roundup of this sort in France during World War II. In what is known as the
green ticket roundup (), 3,747 Jewish men were arrested on 14 May 1941, after 6,694 foreign Jews living in France received a summons in the mail (delivered on a green ticket) to a status review (). The summons was a trap: those who honoured their summons were arrested and taken by bus the same day to the
Gare d'Austerlitz, then shipped in four special trains to two camps at
Pithiviers and
Beaune-La-Rolande in the
Loiret department. Women, children, and more men followed in July 1942.
The Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup, as part of the "
Final Solution", was a continent-wide plan to intern and exterminate Europe's Jewish population. It was a joint operation between German and collaborating French administrators. The first anti-Jewish ordinance of 27 September 1940, promulgated by the German authorities, forced Jewish people in the Occupied Zone, including foreigners, to register at police stations or at
sous-préfectures ("sub-prefectures"). Nearly 150,000 people registered in the
department of the Seine that encompasses Paris and its immediate suburbs. Their names and addresses were kept by the French police in the fichier Tulard, a file named after its creator,
André Tulard.
Theodor Dannecker, the SS captain who headed the German police in France, said: "This filing system subdivided into files sorted alphabetically; Jews with French nationality and foreign Jews had files of different colors, and the files were also sorted, according to profession, nationality and street." These files were then given to the
Gestapo
The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
, in charge of the "Jewish problem." At the request of the German authorities, the Vichy government created in March 1941 the Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives or CGQJ (Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs) with the task of implementing antisemitic policies.
On 4 July 1942
René Bousquet, secretary-general of the national police, and
Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, who had replaced
Xavier Vallat in May 1942 as head of the CGQJ, travelled to Gestapo headquarters at 93 rue Lauriston in the 16th arrondissement of Paris to meet Dannecker and
Helmut Knochen of the SS. The previous roundups had come short of the 32,000 Jews promised by the French authorities to the Germans. Darquier proposed the arrest of stateless Jews in the Southern Zone and the
denaturalization of all Jews who acquired French citizenship since 1927. A further meeting took place in Dannecker's office on the avenue Foch on 7 July. Also present were Jean Leguay, Bousquet's deputy, Jean François, who was director of the police administration at the Paris prefecture, Émile Hennequin, head of Paris police, and André Tulard.
Dannecker met
Adolf Eichmann on 10 July 1942. Another meeting took place the same day at the CGQJ, attended by Dannecker,
Heinz Röthke,
Ernst Heinrichsohn, Jean Leguay, Gallien, deputy to Darquier de Pellepoix, several police officials and representatives of the French railway service, the
SNCF
The Société nationale des chemins de fer français (, , SNCF ) is France's national State-owned enterprise, state-owned railway company. Founded in 1938, it operates the Rail transport in France, country's national rail traffic along with th ...
. The roundup was delayed until after
Bastille Day
Bastille Day is the common name given in English-speaking countries to the national day of France, which is celebrated on 14 July each year. It is referred to, both legally and commonly, as () in French, though ''la fête nationale'' is also u ...
on 14 July at the request of the French. This national holiday was not celebrated in the occupied zone, and they wished to avoid civil uprisings. Dannecker declared: "The French police, despite a few considerations of pure form, have only to carry out orders!"
[ CDJC-CCCLXIV 2. Document produced in court Oberg- Knochen in September 1954, cited by Maurice Rajsfus in ''La Police de Vichy – Les forces de l'ordre au service de la Gestapo, 1940/1944'', Le Cherche Midi, 1995, p. 118]
The roundup was aimed at Jews from
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
,
Austria
Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
,
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''ÄŒesko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...
, the
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
and the ''apatrides'' ("stateless"), whose origin couldn't be determined, aged from 16 to 50. There were to be exceptions for women "in advanced state of pregnancy" or who were breast-feeding, but "to save time, the sorting will be made not at home but at the first assembly centre".
The Germans planned for the French police to arrest 22,000 Jews in Greater Paris. They would then be taken to internment camps at
Drancy,
Compiègne
Compiègne (; ) is a Communes of France, commune in the Oise Departments of France, department of northern France. It is located on the river Oise (river), Oise, and its inhabitants are called ''Compiégnois'' ().
Administration
Compiègne is t ...
,
Pithiviers and
Beaune-la-Rolande. André Tulard "will obtain from the head of the municipal police the files of Jews to be arrested. Children of less than 15 or 16 years will be sent to the ''
Union générale des israélites de France'' (UGIF, General Union of French Jews), which will place them in foundations. The sorting of children will be done in the first assembly centres."
Police complicity
The position of the French police was complicated by the sovereignty of the
Vichy government
Vichy France (; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was a French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II, established as a result of the French capitulation after the defeat against ...
, which nominally administered France while accepting occupation of the north. Although in practice the Germans ran the north, the formal position was that France and the Germans were separate. The position of Vichy and its leader, Marshal
Henri Philippe Pétain, was recognised throughout the war by many foreign governments.
This independence had to be preserved. German interference in internal policing, says the historian
Julian T. Jackson, "would further erode that sovereignty which Vichy was so committed to preserving. This could only be avoided by reassuring Germany that the French would carry out the necessary measures."
Jackson adds that the decision to arrest Jews and Communists and Gaullists was "an autonomous policy, with its own indigenous roots." In other words, the decision to do so was not forced upon the Vichy regime by the Germans. Jackson also explains that the roundup of Jews must have been run by the French, since the Germans would not have had the necessary information or manpower to find and arrest as many as 13,000 people.
On 2 July 1942, René Bousquet attended a planning meeting in which he raised no objection to the arrests, and worried only about the ("embarrassing") fact that the French police would carry them out. Bousquet succeeded in reaching a compromise – that the police would round up only foreign Jews. Vichy ratified that agreement the following day.
[
Although the police have been blamed for rounding up children younger than 16—the age was set to preserve a fiction that workers were needed in the east—the order to do so was given by Vichy's Prime Minister, Pierre Laval, supposedly as a "humanitarian" measure to keep families together. This too was a fiction, given that the parents of these children had already been deported; documents of the period have revealed that the anti-Semitic Laval's principal concern was what to do with Jewish children once their parents had been deported. The youngest child sent to Auschwitz under Laval's orders was 18 months old.
Three former SS officers testified in 1980 that Vichy officials had been enthusiastic about deportation of Jews from France. Investigator Serge Klarsfeld found minutes in German archives of meetings with senior Vichy officials and Bousquet's proposal that the roundup should cover non-French Jews throughout the country.] In 1990, charges of crimes against humanity were laid against Bousquet in relation to his role in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup of Jews, based on complaints filed by Klarsfeld.
The historians Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper record:
Klarsfeld also revealed the telegrams Bousquet had sent to Prefects of ''départements'' in the occupied zone, ordering them to deport not only Jewish adults but children whose deportation had not even been requested by the Nazis.
Roundup
Émile Hennequin, director of the city police, ordered on 12 July 1942 that "the operations must be effected with the maximum speed, without pointless speaking and without comment."
Beginning at 4:00 a.m. on 16 July 1942, French police numbering 9,000 started the manhunt. The Police force included gendarmes, gardes mobiles, detectives, patrolmen and cadets; they were divided into arresting teams of three or four men each, fanning across the city. A few hundred followers of Jacques Doriot volunteered to help, wearing armband with the colours of the fascist French Popular Party (PPF).
In total 13,152 Jews were arrested. According to records of the Paris Préfecture de police, 5,802 (44%) of these were women and 4,051 (31%) were children. An unknown number of people managed to escape, warned by a clandestine Jewish newspaper or the French Resistance
The French Resistance ( ) was a collection of groups that fought the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, Nazi occupation and the Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy#France, collaborationist Vic ...
, hidden by neighbors or benefiting from the lack of zeal or thoroughness of some policemen. Bagage restrictions for the arrested were harsh: they could take only a blanket, a sweater, a pair of shoes and two shirts. Most families were split up and never reunited.
Some of those captured were taken by bus to an internment camp in an unfinished complex of apartments and apartment towers in the northern suburb of Drancy, the rest were taken to the Vélodrome d'Hiver which had already been used as an internment center in the summer of 1941.
The Vel' d'Hiv'
The Vel' d'Hiv' was available for hire to whoever wanted it. Among those who had booked it was Jacques Doriot, who led France's largest fascist
Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural soci ...
party, the '' Parti Populaire Français'' (PPF). It was at the Vel' d'Hiv' among other venues that Doriot, with his Hitler-like salute, roused crowds to join his cause. Among those who helped in the ''Rafle du Vel' d'hiv were 3,400 young members of Doriot's PPF.
The Germans demanded the keys of the Vel' d'Hiv' from its owner, Jacques Goddet, who had taken over from his father Victor and Henri Desgrange. The circumstances in which Goddet surrendered the keys remain a mystery and the episode is given only a few lines in his autobiography.
The Vel' d'Hiv' had a glass roof, which had been painted dark blue to avoid attracting bomber navigators. The dark glass increased the heat, as did the fact that windows were screwed shut for security. The numbers held there vary from one account to another, but one established figure is 7,500 of a final figure of 13,152.[''Le Figaro'', 22 July 2002] There were no lavatories: of the 10 available, five were sealed because their windows offered a way out, and the others were blocked. The arrested Jews were kept there with only food and water brought by Quakers
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestantism, Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally ...
. The Red Cross and a few doctors and nurses were allowed to enter. There was only one water faucet. Those who tried to escape were shot on the spot. Some took their own lives.
After five days, the prisoners were taken to the internment camps of Drancy, Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers, and later to the extermination camps.
After the roundup
Roundups were conducted in both the northern and southern zones of France, but public outrage was greatest in Paris because of the numbers involved in a concentrated area. The Vel' d'Hiv' was a landmark in the city centre. The Roman Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
church was among the protesters. Public reaction obliged Laval to ask the Germans on 2 September not to demand more Jews. Handing them over, he said, was not like buying items in a discount store.[ Laval managed to limit deportations mainly to foreign Jews; he and his defenders argued after the war that allowing the French police to conduct the roundup had been a bargain to ensure the life of Jews of French nationality.
In reality, "Vichy shed no tears over the fate of the foreign Jews in France, who were seen as a nuisance, '' ("garbage") in Laval's words.][ Laval told an American diplomat that he was "happy" to get rid of them.][
When a Protestant leader accused Laval of murdering Jews, Laval insisted they had been sent to build an agricultural colony in the East. "I talked to him about murder, he answered me with gardening."][
]
Drancy camp and deportation
The internment camp at Drancy was easily defended because it was built of tower blocks in the shape of a horseshoe. It was guarded by French gendarmes. The camp's operation was under the Gestapo's section of Jewish affairs. Theodor Dannecker, a key figure both in the roundup and in the operation of Drancy, was described by Maurice Rajsfus in his history of the camp as "a violent psychopath.... It was he who ordered the internees to starve, who banned them from moving about within the camp, to smoke, to play cards, etc."
In December 1941, forty prisoners from Drancy were murdered in retaliation for a French attack on German police officers.
Immediate control of the camp was under Heinz Röthke. It was under his direction from August 1942 to June 1943 that almost two thirds of those deported in SNCF
The Société nationale des chemins de fer français (, , SNCF ) is France's national State-owned enterprise, state-owned railway company. Founded in 1938, it operates the Rail transport in France, country's national rail traffic along with th ...
box car transports requisitioned by the Nazis from Drancy were sent to Auschwitz. Drancy is also where the Jewish children captured in a raid of a children's home in Izieu were sent before being shipped to Auschwitz, where they were murdered. Most of the initial victims, including those from the Vel' d'Hiv', were crammed into sealed wagons and died from lack of food and water. Those who survived the passage were murdered in the gas chambers.
At the Liberation of Paris in August 1944, the camp was run by the Resistance—"to the frustration of the authorities; the Prefect of Police had no control at all and visitors were not welcome"[—who used it to house not Jews, but those it considered collaborators with the Germans. When a pastor was allowed in on 15 September, he discovered cells measuring by that had held six Jewish internees with two mattresses between them.][ The prison returned to the conventional prison service on 20 September.
]
Aftermath
The roundup accounted for more than a quarter of the Jews sent from France to Auschwitz in 1942, of whom only 811 returned to France at the end of the war.
With the exception of six adolescents, none of the 3,900 children detained at the Vel d’Hiv and then deported survived.
Pierre Laval's trial opened on 3 October 1945. His first defence was that he had been obliged to sacrifice foreign Jews to save the French. Uproar broke out in the court, with supposedly neutral jurors shouting abuse at Laval, threatening "a dozen bullets in his hide".[ It was, said historians Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper, "a cross between an and a tribunal during the Paris Terror".][ From 6 October, Laval refused to take part in the proceedings, hoping that the jurors' interventions would lead to a new trial. Laval was sentenced to death, and tried to commit suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule. Revived by doctors, he was executed by a firing squad][ at Fresnes Prison on 15 October.][
Jean Leguay survived the war and its aftermath and became president of Warner Lambert, Inc. in London (now merged with Pfizer), and later president of Substantia Laboratories in Paris. In 1979, he was charged for his role in the roundup.
Louis Darquier was sentenced to death in 1947 for collaboration. However, he had fled to Spain, where the ]Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (born Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general and dictator who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces i ...
regime protected him. In 1978, after he gave an interview claiming that the gas chambers of Auschwitz were used to kill lice, the French government requested his extradition. Spain refused. He died on 29 August 1980, near Málaga
Málaga (; ) is a Municipalities in Spain, municipality of Spain, capital of the Province of Málaga, in the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia. With a population of 591,637 in 2024, it is the second-most populo ...
, Spain.
Helmut Knochen was sentenced to death by a British military tribunal in 1946 for the murder of British pilots. The sentence was never carried out. He was extradited to France in 1954 and again sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. In 1962, French president Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free France, Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Re ...
pardoned him and he was sent back to Germany, where he retired in Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the states of Germany, state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos (river), Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the ...
and died in 2003.
Émile Hennequin, head of Paris police, was sentenced to eight years' penal labour in June 1947.
René Bousquet was last to be tried, in 1949. He was acquitted of "compromising the interests of the national defence", but declared guilty of for involvement in the Vichy government. He was given five years of '' dégradation nationale'', a measure immediately lifted for "having actively and sustainably participated in the resistance against the occupier". Bousquet's position was always ambiguous; there were times he worked with the Germans and others when he worked against them. After the war he worked at the Banque d'Indochine and in newspapers. In 1957, the '' Conseil d'État'' gave back his ''Légion d'honneur'', and he was given an amnesty on 17 January 1958. He stood for election that year as a candidate for the Marne. He was supported by the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance; his second was Hector Bouilly, a radical-socialist general councillor. In 1974, Bousquet helped finance François Mitterrand's presidential campaign against Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. In 1986, as accusations cast on Bousquet grew more credible, particularly after he was named by Louis Darquier, he and Mitterrand stopped seeing each other. The parquet général de Paris closed the case by sending it to a court that no longer existed. Lawyers for the International Federation of Human Rights spoke of a "political decision at the highest levels to prevent the Bousquet affair from developing". In 1989, Serge Klarsfeld and his , the and the filed a complaint against Bousquet for crimes against humanity for the deportation of 194 children. Bousquet was committed to trial but on 8 June 1993 a 55-year-old mental patient named Christian Didier entered his flat and shot him dead.[
Theodor Dannecker was interned by the ]United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...
in December 1945 and a few days later committed suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death.
Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...
.
Jacques Doriot, whose French right-wing followers helped in the round-up, fled to the Sigmaringen enclave in Germany and became a member of the exile Vichy government there. He died in February 1945 when his car was strafed by Allied fighters while he was travelling from Mainau to Sigmaringen. He was buried in Mengen.
Action against the police
After the Liberation, survivors of the internment camp at Drancy began legal proceedings against gendarmes accused of being accomplices of the Nazis. An investigation began into 15 gendarmes, of whom 10 were accused at the Cour de justice of the Seine
The Seine ( , ) is a river in northern France. Its drainage basin is in the Paris Basin (a geological relative lowland) covering most of northern France. It rises at Source-Seine, northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plat ...
of conduct threatening the safety of the state. Three fled before the trial began. The other seven said they were only obeying orders, despite numerous witnesses and accounts by survivors of their brutality.
The court ruled on 22 March 1947 that the seven were guilty but that most had rehabilitated themselves "by active participation, useful and sustained, offered to the Resistance against the enemy." Two others were jailed for two years and condemned to '' dégradation nationale'' for five years. A year later they were reprieved.
Government admission
For decades the French government declined to apologize for the role of French policemen in the roundup or for state complicity. De Gaulle and others argued that the French Republic
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
had been dismantled when Philippe Pétain instituted a new French State during the war and that the Republic had been re-established after the Liberation. It was not for the Republic, therefore, to apologise for events caused by a state which France did not recognise. President François Mitterrand reiterated this position in a September 1994 speech.
On 16 July 1995, the newly elected Gaullist President, Jacques Chirac, reversed that position, stating that it was time that France faced up to its past. He acknowledged the role that "the French State" played in the persecution of Jews and others during the War.
Il est difficile de les évoquer, aussi, parce que ces heures noires souillent à jamais notre histoire, et sont une injure à notre passé et à nos traditions. Oui, la folie criminelle de l'occupant a été secondée par des Français, par l'Etat français. Il y a cinquante-trois ans, le 16 juillet 1942, 450 policiers et gendarmes français, sous l'autorité de leurs chefs, répondaient aux exigences des nazis. Ce jour-là , dans la capitale et en région parisienne, près de dix mille hommes, femmes et enfants juifs furent arrêtés à leur domicile, au petit matin, et rassemblés dans les commissariats de police.... La France, patrie des Lumières et des Droits de l'Homme, terre d'accueil et d'asile, la France, ce jour-là , accomplissait l'irréparable. Manquant à sa parole, elle livrait ses protégés à leurs bourreaux.
("These black hours will stain our history forever and are an injury to our past and our traditions. Yes, the criminal madness of the occupier was assisted by the French, by the French state. Fifty-three years ago, on 16 July 1942, 450 French policemen and gendarmes, under the authority of their leaders, obeyed the demands of the Nazis. That day, in the capital and the Paris region, nearly 10,000 Jewish men, women and children were arrested at home, in the early hours of the morning, and assembled at police stations... France, home of the Enlightenment and the Rights of Man, land of welcome and asylum, France committed on that day the irreparable. Breaking its word, it delivered those it protected to their executioners.")
To mark the 70th anniversary of the Vél d'Hiv' roundup, President François Hollande
François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (; born 12 August 1954) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2012 to 2017. Before his presidency, he was First Secretary of the Socialist Party (France), First Secretary of th ...
gave a speech at the monument on 22 July 2012. The president recognized that this event was a crime committed "in France, by France," and emphasized that the deportations in which French police participated were offences committed against French values, principles, and ideals.
The earlier claim that the Government of France during World War II was some illegitimate group was again advanced by Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front Party, during the 2017 election campaign. In speeches, she claimed that the Vichy government was "not France".
On 16 July 2017, also in commemoration of the victims of the roundup, President Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron (; born 21 December 1977) is a French politician who has served as President of France and Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017. He was Ministry of Economy and Finance (France), Minister of Economics, Industr ...
denounced his country's role in the Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
and the historical revisionism that denied France's responsibility for 1942 roundup and subsequent deportation of 13,000 Jews. "It was indeed France that organised this oundup, he said, French police collaborating with the Nazis. "Not a single German took part," he added. Chirac had already stated that the government during the War represented the French state. Macron was even more specific in this respect: "It is convenient to see the Vichy regime as born of nothingness, returned to nothingness. Yes, it's convenient, but it is false. We cannot build pride upon a lie."
Macron made a subtle reference to Chirac's 1995 apology when he added, "I say it again here. It was indeed France that organized the roundup, the deportation, and thus, for almost all, death."
Memorials and monuments
Paris
A fire destroyed part of the ''Vélodrome d'Hiver'' in 1959 and the rest of the structure was demolished. A block of flats and a building belonging to the Ministry of the Interior now stand on the site. A plaque marking the Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup was placed on the track building after the War and moved to 8 boulevard de Grenelle in 1959.
On 3 February 1993, President François Mitterrand commissioned a monument to be erected on the site. It stands now on a curved base, to represent the cycle track, on the edge of the quai de Grenelle. It is the work of the Polish sculptor Walter Spitzer and the architect Mario Azagury. Spitzer's family were survivors of deportation to Auschwitz. The statue represents all deportees but especially those of the Vel' d'Hiv'. The sculptures include children, a pregnant woman and a sick man. The words on the Mitterrand-era monument still differentiate between the French Republic and the Vichy Government that ruled during WW II, so they do not accept State responsibility for the roundup of the Jews. The words are in French: "", which translate as follows: "The French Republic pays homage to the victims of racist and anti-Semitic persecutions and crimes against humanity committed under the de facto authority called the 'Government of the French State' 1940–1944. Let us never forget." The monument was inaugurated on 17 July 1994. A commemorative ceremony is held here every year in July.
A memorial plaque in memory of victims of the Vel' d'Hiv' raid was placed at the Bir-Hakeim station of the Paris Métro
The Paris Métro (, , or , ), short for Métropolitain (), is a rapid transit system serving the Paris metropolitan area in France. A symbol of the city, it is known for its density within the capital's territorial limits, uniform architectur ...
on 20 July 2008. The ceremony was led by Jean-Marie Bockel, Secretary of Defense and Veterans Affairs, and was attended by Simone Veil, a deportee and former minister, anti-Nazi activist Beate Klarsfeld, and numerous dignitaries.
Drancy
A memorial was also constructed in 1976 at Drancy internment camp, after a design competition won by Shelomo Selinger. It stands beside a rail wagon of the sort used to take prisoners to the death camps. It is three blocks forming the Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
letter Shin, traditionally written on the Mezuzah at the door of houses occupied by Jews. Two other blocks represent the gates of death. Shelomo Selinger said of his work: "The central block is composed of 10 figures, the number needed for collective prayer ( Minyan). The two Hebrew letters Lamed and Vav are formed by the hair, the arm and the beard of two people at the top of the sculpture. These letters have the numeric 36, the number of Righteous thanks to whom the world exists according to Jewish tradition."
On 25 May 2001, the cité de la Muette—formal name of the Drancy apartment blocks—was declared a national monument by the culture minister, Catherine Tasca.
A new Shoah memorial museum was opened in 2012 just opposite the sculpture memorial and railway wagon by President François Hollande. It provides details of the persecution of the Jews in France and many personal mementos of inmates before their deportation to Auschwitz and their death. They include messages written on the walls, graffiti, drinking mugs and other personal belongings left by the prisoners, some of which are inscribed with the names of the owners. The ground floor also shows a changing exhibit of prisoner faces and names, as a memorial to their imprisonment and then murder by the Germans, assisted by the French gendarmerie.
The Holocaust researcher Serge Klarsfeld said in 2004: "Drancy is the best known place for everyone of the memory of the Shoah in France; in the crypt of Yad Vashem ( Jérusalem), where stones are engraved with the names of the most notorious Jewish concentration and extermination camps, Drancy is the only place of memory in France to feature."
Film documentaries and books
* André Bossuroy, 2011
''ICH BIN''
with the support from the Fondation Hippocrène and from the EACEA Agency of the European Commission (Programme Europe for citizens – An active European remembrance), RTBF, VRT.
* William Karel, 1992. ''La Rafle du Vel-d'Hiv'', La Marche du siècle, France 3
France 3 () is a French free-to-air Public broadcasting, public television network. The second flagship network of France Télévisions, it broadcasts a wide range of general and specialized programming.
France 3 is structured as a Region ...
.
* Annette Muller, ''La petite fille du Vel' d'Hiv'', Publisher Denoël, Paris, 1991. New edition by Annette et Manek Muller, ''La petite fille du Vel' d'Hiv'', Publisher Cercil, Orléans, 2009, preface by Serge Klarsfeld, prize ''Lutèce'' (Témoignage).
* Tatiana de Rosnay, '' Sarah's Key (novel)'', book: St. Martin's Press, 2007, (also 2010 film)
The events form the framework of:
* ''Les Guichets du Louvre
''Black Thursday'' () is a French film from 1974 directed by Michel Mitrani. Based on a semi-autobiographical 1960 novel by Roger Bousinnot, the film portrays the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup in 1942, when French police arrested over 13,000 Jewish inhabita ...
'', 1974. French film directed by Michel Mitrani
Michel Mitrani (1930 - 1996) was a French film director and screenwriter. He was the founder of the Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels in 1987. His 1974 film ''Black Thursday (film), Les Guichets du Louvre'' was entered into the 24t ...
.
* '' Monsieur Klein'', 1976. French film directed by Joseph Losey
Joseph Walton Losey III (; January 14, 1909 – June 22, 1984) was an American film and theatre director, producer, and screenwriter. Born in Wisconsin, he studied in Germany with Bertolt Brecht and then returned to the United States. Hollywood ...
, much of which was shot on location. The film won the 1977 César Awards
The César Award is the national film award of France. It is delivered in the ' ceremony and was first awarded in 1976. The nominations are selected by the members of twelve categories of filmmaking professionals and supported by the French Min ...
in the categories of Best Film, Best Director, and Best Production Design.
* ''Velódromo del invierno'', 2001. Novel by Juana Salabert which won the 2001 Premio Biblioteca Breve.
* '' The Round Up'' (''La Rafle''), 2010. French film directed by Roselyne Bosch and produced by Alain Goldman.
* '' Sarah's Key'', 2010. French film directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner and produced by Stéphane Marsil.
See also
* Reparations (transitional justice)
* The Holocaust in France
* Timeline of deportations of French Jews to death camps
* Union générale des israélites de France
* Vichy France
Vichy France (; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was a French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II, established as a result of the French capitulation after the Battle of France, ...
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
Further reading
* Jean-Luc Einaudi and Maurice Rajsfus, ''Les silences de la police – 16 juillet 1942, 17 octobre 1961'', 2001, L'Esprit frappeur
L'Esprit frappeur ( French for "ghost" or " poltergeist"), is a French publishing house, specialized in low-cost books. Before the change to euros, it used to sell its books for 10 or 20 Francs; they now cost between 2,5 euros and 5 euros. ''L'E ...
, (Rajsfus is an historian of the French police; the second date refers to the 1961 Paris massacre under the orders of Maurice Papon, who would later be judged for his role during Vichy in Bordeaux)
* Serge Klarsfeld, ''Vichy-Auschwitz: Le rôle de Vichy dans la Solution Finale de la question Juive en France – 1942,'' Paris: Fayard, 1983.
* Claude Lévy and Paul Tillard, ''La grande rafle du Vel d'Hiv,'' Paris: Editions Robert Laffont, 1992.
* Maurice Rajsfus, ''Jeudi noir'', Éditions L'Harmattan. Paris, 1988.
* Maurice Rajsfus, ''La Rafle du Vél d'Hiv'', Que sais-je ?, éditions PUF
Primary sources
* Instructions given by chief of police Hennequin for the raid : http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/vichy/police.htm#Jews
* Serge Klarsfeld, "Vichy-Auschwitz: Le rôle de Vichy dans la Solution Finale de la question Juive en France – 1942," Paris: Fayard, 1983. Klarsfeld's work contains nearly 300 pages of primary sources on French roundups in 1942.
External links
*
Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence: ''Case Study: The Vélodrome d'Hiver Round-up: July 16 and 17, 1942''
Le monument commémoratif du quai de Grenelle à Paris
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20061012122235/http://new.filter.ac.uk/database/getinsight.php?id=51 Occupied France: Commemorating the Deportation
additional photographs
French government booklet
2012 speech of President François Hollande
The Vel' d'Hiv Roundup
at the online exhibition The Holocaust in France at Yad Vashem website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vel Dhiv Roundup
The Holocaust in France
Nazi war crimes in France
Vichy French war crimes
Paris in World War II
1942 in France
Reparations
July 1942 in Europe
1942 in Judaism