Commemoration of the Vel D'Hiv roundup of 16 and 17 July 1942
Photo credits: Shoah Memorial/coll. BHVP
Stationed in front of the Vélodrome d'hiver, the buses and police cars used to transport Jews during the big roundup on 16 and 17 July 1942. Paris, 15th arrondissement. This is the only photo found to date by Serge Klarsfeld of the Vel d'hiv roundup.
On 16 July 1942 at 4 a.m., the big roundup was triggered. 4,500 police officers were mobilized. The persons targeted are primarily German, Austrian, Polish, Czechoslovak, Russian and stateless Jews. It is no longer only men who are targeted, as in the raids of 1941, but also women up to 60 years old and children. Children under 16 are taken away at the same time as their parents. The roundup lasts until 5 p.m. on 17 July. 12,884 people were arrested, including a large number of women and children. Single people and couples without children were sent to Drancy. The families were interned for 6 days in the winter velodrome under difficult conditions before being transferred to the camps of Loiret, previously emptied of 3,700 Jews interned in 1941 and deported in June and July 1942. During the month of July, mothers will be separated from their children and transferred to Drancy to be deported there. The children left alone were deported from Drancy to Auschwitz between 15 and 25 August 1942.
(Jacques Fredj, Les Juifs de France dans la Shoah)
Circular from the Police Prefecture of the Vel D'Hiv Roundup, 1942
