Commemoration of the Vel D'Hiv roundup on 16 and 17 July 1942
Photo Credits: Memorial of the Shoah/coll. BHVP
Stationed in front of the Vélodrome d'hiver, the buses and police cars that were used to transport the Jews during the big raid on July 16 and 17, 1942. Paris, 15th arrondissement. This is the only photo found to date by Serge Klarsfeld of the Vel d'hiv roundup.
On July 16, 1942 at 4 o'clock in the morning, the big roundup is triggered. 4,500 police officers are mobilized. The persons targeted are primarily German, Austrian, Polish, Czechoslovakian, Russian and stateless Jews. It is no longer only men who are targeted, like the raids of 1941, but also women up to 60 years old and children. Children under 16 years old are taken at the same time as their parents. The roundup lasts until July 17 at 5 PM. 12,884 people are arrested, including a large number of women and children. Single people and couples without children are sent to Drancy. The families are interned for 6 days at the winter velodrome in difficult conditions before being transferred to the camps of Loiret, previously emptied of 3700 Jews interned in 1941 and deported in June and July 1942. During the month of July, the mothers will be separated from their children and transferred to Drancy for deportation. The children who remained alone will be deported in their turn from Drancy to Auschwitz between 15 and 25 August 1942.
(Jacques Fredj, The Jews of France in the Shoah)
Circular of the Police Prefecture of the Vel D'Hiv Roundup, 1942
