After Defacing, France Renews Pledge in Marking 1942 Atrocity

France on Sunday commemorated the Vel d'Hiv roundup, a mass arrest of Jews by French police during World War II, as one of the most shameful acts undertaken by the country's wartime government. French police rounded up thousands of Jews over two days in July 1942, wresting children from their mother's arms and dispatching everyone to Nazi death camps. At a time of rising antisemitism, France honors those victims every year as it tries to keep their memory alive, the AP reports. France is home to Europe's largest Jewish population and has seen a surge in antisemitic acts, including threats, vandalism, and physical violence, since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.

A plaque in Paris honoring a couple and their daughter who saved a 13-year-old child during the roundup and were recognized by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations was vandalized ahead of the ceremony, French authorities said. "To attack the Righteous is to desecrate the entire universe," said Alice Rufo, a deputy defense minister. "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." After the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, the country was ruled by a government commonly known as Vichy France, which collaborated with Nazi Germany.

"Vel d'Hiv" derives from the name of the Winter Velodrome that many of the detainees were confined in before they were deported to concentration and extermination camps. On July 16 and 17, 1942, more than 4,500 police officers were mobilized and dozens of buses requisitioned. It was the largest roundup of Jews carried out in France during the war. Arrests continued until July 20. A total of 13,152 people were deported, a third of them children. It took France's leadership 50 years after the war ended to officially acknowledge the state's involvement in the Holocaust, when then-President Jacques Chirac apologized for the French authorities' role in the raids. As recently as 2017, a leading politician, Marine Le Pen, has said France has unfairly taken the blame for the mass arrest.