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On July
16-17, 1942, in one of the most brutal and overt deportation
operations, thousands of French police gathered up 12,884 Parisian
Jews-including families with children, and irrespective of sex, age,
and physical condition-and placed them in the Velodrome d’Hiver
stadium without any provisions whatsoever. In several locations,
children were separated from their parents. The victims were loaded
aboard cattle cars and sent to Drancy en route to Auschwitz.
This
deportation evoked the first substantial manifestations of
opposition to the Vichy regime among several segments of the French
population. It was impossible to keep the arrests of the Jews
secret, and the brutality invoked in separating families was
fiercely protested. The fact that most of the arrests were made by
French police prompted charges against the force concerning
collaboration with the Nazi regime on the part of France and its
institutions, particularly with respect to the murder of Jews in
this country. |
