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The Rafle du Vel'd'Hiv (short in French for the Vélodrome d'hiver's raid) is the name of the July 16, 1942 raid during the Vichy regime, when the French police forces arrested 12,884 Jews — including 4,051 children which the Gestapo had not asked for — 5,802 women and 3,031 men. Regardless, they were all sent to Drancy transit camp, guarded by French police, before being sent to concentration camps. This event proved the eagerness of Pétain's regime to collaborate with Nazi Germany in carrying out the Holocaust. By its own, this action represents more than a quarter of the 42,000 French Jews sent to Auschwitz in 1942, of which only 811 would come back after the end of the war. On July 16, 1995, president Jacques Chirac officially recognized the French police's responsibility in this raid.
[edit] Bibliography
- (French) Jean-Luc Einaudi and Maurice Rajsfus, Les silences de la police - 16 juillet 1942, 17 octobre 1961, 2001, L'Esprit frappeur, ISBN 2-84405-173-1 (Rajsfus is an historian of the French police, the second date refers to the 1961 Paris massacre under the orders of Maurice Papon, who would later be judged for his role during Vichy in Bordeaux)
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