PARIS — France gathered Sunday to remember the Vel d’Hiv roundup, a deeply shameful chapter in the country’s wartime history when French police carried out a mass arrest of Jewish people in 1942.
Over two days in July of that year, French police seized thousands of Jewish men, women, and children — tearing children away from their mothers and sending them all to Nazi death camps. France holds a yearly ceremony to honor those victims and keep the memory of what happened alive, particularly as antisemitism continues to rise across the country.
France is home to the largest Jewish population in Europe and has experienced a sharp increase in antisemitic acts — including threats, vandalism, and physical attacks — since the Hamas assault on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza that followed.
Just ahead of Sunday’s ceremony, French authorities reported that a memorial plaque in Paris had been vandalized. The plaque honored a couple and their daughter who sheltered a 13-year-old child during the roundup and were recognized by Israel with the title Righteous Among the Nations.
Alice Rufo, a deputy defense minister, responded to the vandalism with strong words. “To attack the Righteous is to desecrate the entire universe,” she said. “The plaque will be restored. Their memory remains undiminished. In the face of antisemitism, in all its forms, the Republic will not yield an inch.”
The Vel d’Hiv roundup took place under the Vichy France government, which came to power after Nazi Germany invaded France in 1940 and collaborated with the Nazi regime.
The name Vel d’Hiv comes from the Winter Velodrome, a sports arena where many of those arrested were held before being transported to concentration and extermination camps. On July 16 and 17, 1942, more than 4,500 police officers took part in the operation, with dozens of buses pressed into service. It stands as the single largest roundup of Jewish people conducted in France during World War II. Arrests continued through July 20, and in total, 13,152 people were deported — one-third of them children.
It was not until 50 years after the end of World War II that France’s leadership formally admitted the government’s role in the Holocaust. Then-President Jacques Chirac issued an official apology for French authorities’ participation in the Vel d’Hiv raids.
