Over two days in the summer of 1942, French police carried out Western Europe’s largest wartime roundup of Jews, acting on orders from occupying German forces and their French allies in the Vichy Regime.
On July 16 and 17 of that year, a total of 12,884 Jews – men, women and children – were snatched from their homes in Paris and in neighbouring suburbs. Some were taken directly to an internment camp in Drancy, northeast of the capital. The rest were crammed into the Vélodrome d’Hiver, a stadium located on the banks of the Seine in the 15th arrondissement (district) of Paris, which would give its name to this sinister chapter in French history.
To mark the 80th anniversary of this tragic event, FRANCE 24 has gathered the eyewitness accounts of six survivors of the Vél d’Hiv roundup, all of them children at the time. They recall the shock and horror of those days, and the extraordinary circumstances that allowed them to avoid deportation to Nazi death camps.
Click below to read our web documentary.
