The Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup is the largest mass arrest of Jews carried out in France during World War II. Between July 16 and 17, 1942, more than 13,000 people, about a third of whom were children, were arrested in Paris and its suburbs to be deported: fewer than a hundred would return.
Carried out at the request of the Third Reich, these arrests were conducted with the collaboration of 7,000 French police officers and gendarmes, assisted by 300 to 400 militants from the French Popular Party of Jacques Doriot, under the orders of the Vichy government, following negotiations with the occupying forces led by René Bousquet, Secretary General of the National Police.
On July 16, 1995, President Jacques Chirac broke with the stance of his predecessors by recognizing, in front of the memorial, the responsibility of the “French State”: “France, the homeland of the Enlightenment and Human Rights, a land of refuge and asylum, on that day, committed the irreparable. Failing in its word, it delivered those it was protecting to their executioners.”
On July 22, 2012, during the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the roundup, President François Hollande declared that “This crime was committed in France, by France” and that this crime “was also a crime against France, a betrayal of its values. These same values that the Resistance, Free France, and the Righteous managed to embody with honor.”
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary celebration of the roundup, on July 16, 2017, President Emmanuel Macron, in line with his predecessors since Jacques Chirac, reaffirmed the responsibility of France. He notably stated: “So yes, I repeat here, it was indeed France that organized the roundup and then the deportation and thus, for almost all, the death of the 13,152 Jewish individuals torn from their homes on July 16 and 17.”
