 Memorial garden at the former Vel d'Hiv location | |
| Native name | Rafle du Vélodrome d'Hiver |
|---|---|
| English name | Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup |
| Date | July 16–17, 1942 |
| Location | Paris |
| Organised by |  Nazi Germany Vichy France |
| Participants | 7,000–9,000 French police and Gendarmerie |
| Arrests | 13,152 people[1]
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The Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup ( [vel ˈdiv] vell-DEEV; from French: la rafle du Vel' d'Hiv', an abbreviation of la rafle du Vélodrome d'Hiver) was a mass arrest of Jewish families in Paris on 16–17 July 1942 by French police and gendarmes at the behest of the German authorities. The roundup was one of several aimed at eradicating the Jewish population in France, in both the occupied zone and the free zone, that took place in 1942 as part of Opération Vent printanier (Operation Spring Wind). Planned by René Bousquet, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Theodor Dannecker and Helmut Knochen, it was the largest deportation of Jews from France.
According to records of the Préfecture de Police, 13,152 Jews were arrested,[1] including 4,115 children.[2] They were confined to an indoor sports arena, known as the ‘Vel d’Hiv’, or Vélodrome d’Hiver (lit.“Winter Velodrome”), in extremely crowded conditions, without any arrangements made for food, water, or sanitary facilities. In the week following the arrests, the Jews were taken to the Drancy, Pithiviers, and Beaune-la-Rolande internment camps,[2] before being deported in rail cattle cars to concentration camps, mainly Auschwitz, as part of the Holocaust.
For General de Gaulle, and the successive French governments, the French Republic could not be held accountable for the arrest and deportation of Jews to their death since the Vichy State was "both illegal and illegitimate". Socialist President François Mitterrand, in his turn 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, French President Jacques Chirac apologised for the complicit role of French police and French civil servants, calling it "the darkest hours that will forever tarnish our history". In 2017, President Emmanuel Macron more specifically admitted the responsibility of the French State in the roundup and hence in the Holocaust.[3]
- ^ a b "Pourquoi le rafle n'a pas ateint son objectif" (PDF). AIDH.org. p. 52. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 July 2008. Retrieved 31 December 2009.
- ^ a b "The Vel' d'Hiv Roundup". The Holocaust in France. Yad Vashem. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
- ^ Goldman, Russell (17 July 2017). "Macron Denounces Anti-Zionism as 'Reinvented Form of Anti-Semitism'". Retrieved 27 March 2018 – via NYTimes.com.