French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was choked by
tears and had to interrupt his speech for a few moments
during a ceremony at the Vel d'Hiver memorial at Drancy to
mark the 63rd anniversary since the big roundup of Parisian
Jews. He read aloud a letter written by a child at the Drancy
Detention Camp describing the horrendous conditions and the
fears the Jews faced at the Nazi transit camp run by the
French under the Vichy government.
Ten years ago France proclaimed July 17th the official day to
mark the deportation of the Jews. On July 17, 1942 French
police raided apartments, forcing Jews at gunpoint to board
buses that transported them to the Vel d'Hiver Velodrome. (A
velodrome is a large area that was used for bicycle races.)
At that point the majority of Jews still had faith in the
French police and they thought they would be sent back home
at the end of the day. They found themselves detained and
left without food or water. The French police referred to the
operation as the "Jew hunt."
A total of 12,850 Jewish men, women and children were
arrested that day. Whole families with infants were loaded
onto the buses based on address lists and were kept at the
velodrome until being transported to Drancy and from there to
the death camps.
Henri Boulevko, a survivor who was arrested a few months
later and transported to Auschwitz, said this was the first
mass roundup of Jews. "I was out in the street and I saw
children of all ages being taken away with their parents by
the French policemen. Despite the Nazi occupation and the
antisemitic laws of the Vichy regime, we did not expect to
see a manhunt on such a large scale. Until then only Jews who
were foreign citizens were arrested. The children had looks
of fear. Nobody knew where they were being taken. There was a
bad premonition. People said they were being taken for work
in Germany, but they wondered what kind of work the children
and babies would do."
Villepin said President Jacques Chirac acknowledged France's
crimes ten years ago to prevent the memory from being lost or
distorted. As prime minister he said the terrorism that
struck London recently poses a new danger to humanity and
must be fought.
