Images of the 'billet vert' roundup

An exceptional discovery for History

Shoah Memorial, September 2020. Two collectors present themselves at the photo library with five photographic contact sheets laminated on large cardboard sheets. Among these photographs, only seven are already known to specialists on the subject and have been published. They are marked with a cross on the original plates. The others are unpublished. This is the complete report. An exceptional set of 98 images comes back to light, 80 years after the fact. This report documents the first mass arrest of Jews in France, the raid on May 14, 1941 called the "billet vert", ordered by the Occupant and organized by the French authorities.

Today, an exhibition and a book offer the public to participate in the investigation that allowed to find the identity of the photographer, Harry Croner, and to understand his "look" on these tragic events, look on which the German censorship fell, condemning these historical photographs to an oblivion of more than 80 years.

Publication The Raid of the 'greenback'. The photos found, May 14, 1941.

Texts by Lior Lalieu and Jean-Marc Dreyfus. Éditions Calmann-Lévy – Mémorial de la Shoah, 2026, 176 pages.

On sale at the Memorial bookstore