Roundup of the Vél d’Hiv: Emmanuel Macron goes to Pithiviers, from where convoys left for the extermination camps

Elisabeth Borne shakes hands with Arlette Testyler, victim of the Vél d’Hiv roundup, in Paris, Sunday July 17, 2022. GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP “It was 80 years ago and yet, here, the echo of the horror still resounds”: the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, participated in the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the Vél d’Hiv roundup, in Paris, on Sunday July 17, before an expected speech by Emmanuel Macron from the station of Pithiviers (Loiret), in the middle of the afternoon. At the site of the old velodrome, “France has delivered more than 13,000 people to torture, hatred, death”, recalled Ms. Borne before members of the representative bodies of the Jewish community of France and the victims of the roundup. “It is indeed our laws (…), it is indeed our police” who organized and implemented the handing over of Jewish men, women and children to the German occupier, she insisted, evoking, through this raid, “the transition from a France that protects to a France that betrays itself”. Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Les miraculés du Vél’d’Hiv’: “It’s the only slap I received from mom. I understood later that she had saved my life” “Our country had to and must look its history in the face”, also declared the daughter of Joseph Borne, Jewish and resistant, arrested by the Gestapo then deported to Bunchenwald . “It is not being patriotic to tear up the pages of history that bother us, to hide them or to diminish them,” said Ms. Borne, triggering applause in the audience. Emmanuel Macron must denounce “historical revisionism” Emmanuel Macron, from a new place of memory in the old station of Pithiviers, from where eight convoys left for the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, must also denounce, Sunday , “historical revisionism”, in particular about the role of Marshal Pétain during the Second World War, according to an adviser to the Elysée quoted by Agence France-Presse. From 3:30 p.m., the Head of State will deliver an “offensive speech” against anti-Semitism, which “still lurks and sometimes insidiously”, which is “very worrying”, specified the same source. Read also: “A President of the Republic who honors Pétain”: Mathilde Panot divides the left and outrages Emmanuel Macron’s camp Accompanied by several personalities, including historian Serge Klarsfeld and camp survivor Ginette Kolinka, Emmanuel Macron is expected in the small Loiret station, a hundred kilometers south of Paris, which has not welcomed travelers since the end of the 1960s and which has just been transformed into a museum by the Shoah Memorial. It was through this station that some of the 13,000 Jews – including 4,115 children – passed through, arrested in Paris and the suburbs on July 16, 1942 and the following days by 9,000 French officials. More than 8,000 of them, including the elderly and the sick, were taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver stadium in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. Before being evacuated to the camps of Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis), Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande (Loiret). From Pithiviers station alone, eight convoys then left for the extermination camps, representing more than 8,000 deportees, making it the second largest deportation site in France after that of Drancy. Only a few dozen adults will survive. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne arrives at the commemoration ceremony for the 80th anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv roundup in Paris on Sunday July 17. GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP In his speech, lasting about twenty minutes, Emmanuel Macron should affirm that “the fight continues” against anti-Semitism, following “the path that President Chirac had traced”. After fifty years of silence from the French authorities, Jacques Chirac had recognized, in 1995, the responsibility of France in the Vel d’Hiv roundup, in a speech that remains in the memories. “France, that day, accomplished the irreparable,” he had launched. In July 2012, François Hollande had gone further by declaring that “this crime was committed in France, by France”. Then in 2017, Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed, for the 75th anniversary of the roundup, France’s responsibility and made a plea against anti-Semitism in the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But today “French society has not finished with anti-Semitism”, underlines the Elysée, also highlighting the “trivialization of debates” around the Vichy regime. The far-right candidate for the presidential election Eric Zemmour (Reconquest!) notably maintained that Marshal Pétain had “saved” French Jews during the Second World War. Elected officials from the National Rally were also invited to Pithiviers, by republican tradition, detailed the Elysée, without specifying whether they would be present. The Miracles of Vél’d’Hiv: Article reserved for our subscribers “The policeman said to my mother: ‘Don’t sleep at home, there will be a roundup tomorrow'” Le Monde with AFP