Holocaust survivors mark 80 years since Paris roundup of thousands
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron decried his Nazi-collaborator predecessors and rising antisemitism, vigorously vowing to stamp out Holocaust denial as he paid homage Sunday to thousands of French children sent to death camps 80 years ago for one reason alone: because they were Jewish.
Family by family, house by house, French police rounded up 13,000 people on two terrifying days in July 1942, wresting children from their mothers’ arms and dispatching everyone to Nazi death camps.
France honored those victims this weekend.
For the dwindling number of survivors of France’s wartime crimes, a series of commemoration ceremonies Sunday were important. At a time of rising antisemitism and far-right discourse sugarcoating France’s role in the Holocaust, they worry that history’s lessons are being forgotten.
A week of ceremonies marking 80 years since the Vel d’Hiv police roundup on July 16 and 17, 1942, culminated Sunday with an event led by Macron, who pledged that wouldn’t happen ever again. “We will continue to teach against ignorance. We will continue to cry out against indifference,” Macron said. “And we will fight, I promise you, at every dawn, because France’s story is written by a combat of resistance and justice that will never be extinguished.”
He denounced former French leaders for their roles in the Holocaust and the Vel d’Hiv raids, among the most shameful acts undertaken by France during World War II.
Over those two days, police herded 13,152 people — including 4,115 children — into the Winter Velodrome of Paris, known as the Vel d’Hiv, before they were sent on to Nazi camps.