 Please wait...
60 years ago: the large-scale rounding up of Jews in FranceThe
arrests of Jews in 1940 were specific and mostly involved men,
foreigners and stateless people. They therefore did not provoke any
unanimous disapproval or criticism. When the arrests became general and
no longer spared French Jews, women and children, opinion changed.
The change was slow at first, but gathered speed with the raid on the
Vel d'Hiv and the large-scale raids of the summer of 1942 in the "free
zone". It can even be said that these raids caused a reversal of public
opinion in favour of those targeted. They also marked the beginning of
ill-feeling towards the Vichy regime.
|
| A radicalisation of the anti-Jewish policyIn
fact, as a result of these raids, Vichy came to be perceived as totally
subservient to the occupying forces, even amongst anti-Semites and
those partisan to extreme political collaboration. Apart from
associating France with Nazi Germany, the large-scale raids of the
summer of 1942 demonstrated a radicalisation of the anti-Jewish policy.
It was in effect the first time that the raids had taken on such
amplitude in France, indiscriminately targeting men, women, old people
and young children. From the summer of 1942 onwards, all Jews in France
were threatened, regardless of sex, age or nationality. And the threat
was very serious as in most cases, the arrests led to deportation to an
unknown destination outside the country. Public opinion appeared
disturbed by this radicalisation and disapproval was also expressed. How
could anyone accept the series of scenes of horror that accompanied the
raids, especially the screams and crying of young children as they were
snatched from their parents? Even more than the arrests, it was such
scenes that caused trauma and disapproval amongst the public, as much in
France as abroad. The reaction was so great and so negative that the
very foundation of the Vichy regime was shaken by it. A year earlier,
the rounding up of Jews had not stirred up such feeling. |
|  | | The rounding up of Jews in Paris. Source: DR |
| The raids of 1941It
is true that the first raid, organised in Paris in the spring of 1941,
was carried out without any publicity, almost secretly. It involved
6,494 men aged between 18 and 60, exclusively foreign Jews who, several
months after the census at the end of 1940, had received a simple "green
note" at their home address. This note invited them in a curt tone to
attend one of several Paris centres on the 14th May 1941, accompanied by
a relative or friend, for a "review of their situation". This summons
proved to be a trap and the "review" turned into arrest for 3,747 men.
Once interned, these men were taken to camps at Pithiviers and
Beaune-la-Rolande, in the Loiret, where most of them would remain for
several months, until the first deportations.
A second general arrest of foreign and french Jews occurred in Paris on
the 20th and 21st August 1941. It took place a short time after the
start of the German offensive in the USSR and was thus portrayed by the
propaganda as "an operation carried out in retaliation for communist
agitation". The pretext was weak, but sought primarily to justify the
intervention of the French police, supervised at the time by German
soldiers. During the raid, 4,232 men were arrested, mostly in the
streets of the 11th arrondissement. Shortly afterwards they ended up in
the Paris suburb of Drancy, in a camp that had just opened but which had
not yet come to be used as a nerve centre for the deportations of Jews
from France.
|
|  | | The rounding up of Jews in Paris. Source: DR |
| | On
the 12th December 1941 a third operation began, targeting the Jews of
Paris and the surrounding area. It was carried out directly by the
occupying forces (with men from the security services - SD - and the
Feldgendarmerie), but also had assistance from the French police. It was
a more limited act than the two previous ones in so far as just 743
Jews were arrested on the day. But the operation was no less important
as it involved for the first time "notable people", practically all of
them of French nationality. Arrested in "reprisals for a series of
anti-German attacks", these men were transferred to the camp at
Compiègne (to the north of Paris). Some of them, entrepreneurs,
businessmen, shopkeepers, engineers, doctors, lawyers and academics,
were released in the weeks that followed, but most of them remained
imprisoned and were later included in the convoys of deportees. The
first of these convoys comprised 1,112 men and left France on the 27th
March 1942. In June 1942, four convoys of the same size left Compiègne,
Drancy, Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande, bound for Auschwitz. |
| The raid at the Vel' d'HivThe
raid of the 16th and 17th July 1942 therefore took place after the
first deportations of Jews in France, at a time when the Nazis were
clearing the Polish ghettos and also starting deportations to Belgium,
the Netherlands and Denmark. This large-scale raid was of a different
kind to the previous raids in France: in fact, in less than forty eight
hours (from four O'clock in the morning on the 16th July until 1pm the
following day, the 17th July) the police arrested 12,884 Jews in Paris
and the suburbs. It was important, even though the number of arrests was
less than expected because of some "escapes". During the raid of the
Vel d'Hiv the police authorities did not just arrest men of working age.
This time, they also arrested men over 60 years of age, the sick, women
(5,802) and even children under 16 years old (4,051). The lie of
"transferring people to the East to work" was shattered.
An operation of such amplitude had necessarily been planned carefully
and at length. Some figures however speak for themselves. It must be
emphasised in particular that 9,000 French civil servants (and amongst
them 4,000 police officers) were called up for this raid, christened not
without irony "operation spring breeze". On this occasion no less than
27,000 files on Jews (registered through the application of the laws of
Vichy) had been taken from a central police file (the "Tulard" file),
and distributed among the teams of police officers on the ground
responsible for the arrests. The operation, which was without precedent
in the annals of the French police, had been conceived on the initiative
of the occupying forces. However, it was carried out from start to
finish under the orders of Pétain, Laval, Bousquet, Leguay and the
administrative and police management of the French State.
In addition to the number of French civil servants involved in this
raid, it is also important to mention the mobilisation of about sixty
police and TCRP (the forerunner of the Paris transport system, the RATP)
buses to transport the arrested Jews to Drancy and the Velodrome
d'Hiver (situated in the 15th arrondissement). It must also be stressed
that this Parisian complex, designed primarily for large sporting
events, was not suitable for holding a mixed crowd of people, amongst
them, as we have already mentioned, a large number of young children. In
addition, practically nothing had been arranged for the lengthy
imprisonment of such a number of people. The 8,000 people cooped up in
the sporting complex between the 16th and 22nd July thus had to cope
with a lack of water, terrible sanitary conditions and continuous noise.
In addition, amid all this confusion, there are records of health
problems and a proliferation of suicides and suicide attempts. The
situation only improved slowly, as the Vel d'Hiv gradually emptied
following the transfer of internees to Drancy, Pithiviers and
Beaune-la-Rolande. In these camps, the chaos and improvisation were
certainly less acute. This breathing space was only a short-lived
illusion for the internees at the Vel d'Hiv as most of them were then
deported. Their names appear amongst the 38 convoys bound for Auschwitz
which left France between the 17th July and the 11th November 1942.
|
|  | | An assembly following a raid. Source: DR |
| The raids in the provinces and the "delivery" of foreign Jews to the GermansIn
July 1942, the raids also targeted Jews who had taken refuge in the
towns in the occupied zone, especially in Bordeaux, Tours and Dijon.
Moreover, by applying the Franco-German agreements, the French State
delivered more than 10,000, foreign Jews interned in camps in the
southern zone to the occupying forces. In addition, to complete this
"delivery", it increased the number of raids on foreign Jews, notably on
the 26th, 27th and 28th August 1942, in the regions of Limoges,
Clermont-Ferrand, Lyon, Grenoble, Toulouse, Montpellier, Marseille and
Nice. Men, women and children arrested on these days were in turn sent
to Drancy and deported to Auschwitz. In 1943 and1944 arrests, raids and
deportations followed, both in Paris and in the occupied and southern
zones. In total, between March 1942 and August 1944, 75,000 Jews were
deported from France. The majority were foreign Jews but about a third
of these men, women and children were French Jews. It must be said that
the German authorities did not differentiate between French and foreign
Jews. For Nazi Germany, all Jews, regardless of age and nationality were
destined for deportation and extermination. Of course the Vichy regime
did not have the same objectives. It just wanted to "evacuate" foreign
Jews from the country. Whether willingly or unwillingly, its
involvement in the raids and deportations played a determining role in
the implementation of the final solution in France. |
| | Source:
Claude Singer, Historian, lecturer at the University of Paris I (DUEJ).
"Les Chemins de la Mémoire" Review no. 119 - July-August 2002 for
Mindef/SGA/DMPA |
Related places to discoverRelated bibliographiesRelated links to discover|
|
|
|
| The internment was a huge phenomenon that
would affect more than 600,000 people from 1938 to 1946, for highly
varied reasons... |
|
|
Le monument du Vel d'Hiv |
| Mémorial du Quai de Grenelle en hommage aux
victimes des persécutions racistes et antisémites et des crimes contre
l'humanité commis sous l'autorité de fait dite "Gouvernement de l'Etat
français" 1940-1944 |
|
| |
|
|
CD ROM Memories of the Deportation |
| Presentation of the CD ROM Memories of the Deportation |
| |
|
|
|
| 196, July-August 2009 |
| |
| |
 |
 |
|
