Questions to Lior Lalieu,
curator of the exhibitionas part of the exhibition "Images of the 'green ticket' roundup"

© Jérôme Aubignat

Lior Lalieu, head of the photo library at the Shoah Memorial, co-curator of the exhibition.

In what way is the discovery of these photos unique? Are there other similar funds? 

These photos are exceptional, there is no similar fund. The iconography of the Shoah in France is terribly poor. On the roundup of the Vel d'Hiv, which carried away nearly 13,000 Jewish men, women and children from France, there is only one photo, that of the buses parked in front of the Vel d'Hiv, on July 16, 1942. Of the 76,000 Jews deported from France, to date, not a single centimeter of film has been found. German and French censorship was such that no photo seems to have been taken of these tragic episodes of the persecution of the Jews in France. Yet, 80 years later, a complete report of the first roundup of the Jews of France, that of 14 May 1941 in Paris, at the Gymnase Japy, reappears. 

How can we analyze these photographs? What do they reveal? What do these images show? 

The double gaze of a German photographer who, after investigation, turns out to have Jewish origins. These photos reveal the sweep of the greenback in all its tragic dimension, the trap that closed on the men summoned on May 14, 1941, women and children who helplessly watch what is unfolding before their eyes, caught themselves in this trap. The German protagonists, the French police and even the neighbors, all the actors or witnesses of the roundup, are on the images found. 

Is the investigation continuing, have you found out who the people in these photos are? 

The investigation continues. We are determined to find the names of the men, women, and children on the "greenback." The recovered images reveal their faces for the first time. Their fate is very rarely mentioned. The exhibition will give them back an existence and a moving resonance.

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