Yesterday, June 25, I attended a day-long seminar about the Parisian children who were deported and/or saved during the Shoah (Holocaust). The event was hosted by the city government and held at the historic Hotel de Ville where today opens an exhibit on the subject http://www.paris.fr/accueil/accueil-paris-fr/que-sont-devenus-les-enfants-caches-pendant-la-guerre/rub_1_actu_116383_port_24329.
The title of the day's event was "Les rafles de juillet 1942" or The roundups (of Jews) of July 1942. There were scholars who talked about how the French government collaborated with the Nazis to roundup and deport the Jews of Paris, as well as the rest of France. Unlike many places where the Germans did the dirty work, here the French police actually arrested and sent their own neighbors and citizens to death. Beginning on May 14, 1941 the French police started rounding up foreign Jews, assuring the French nationals that they were only interested in deporting the immigrants. These raids continued sporadically until July 16-17, 1942 when some 4500 police arrested 3118 men, 5119 women, and 4115 Jewish children and imprisoned them at the huge stadium Vélodrome d'Hiver http://www.massviolence.org/the-vel-d-hiv-round-up?artpage=2-8 or http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafle_du_V%C3%A9lodrome_d%27Hiver , no longer in existence. That day when the police arrived at people's homes they gave them a few minutes to pack some things, telling them they would need a little food but wouldn't be gone long. Once at the Vél' d'Hiv' people were left without food, water, or sanitary facilities for days while they awaited transfer to concentration camps. The heat was suffocating and the scene was indescribably inhuman. After days, the children were separated from their mothers and most sent to either Pithiviers Camp or Beaune-la-Rolande Camp in France to await their final deportation to Birkenau. Most of the parents had already been sent to Auschwitz. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp
Amidst the horror of that historical event and among the monsters who perpetrated and prolonged it, there are the most incredible stories of courage, heroism, generosity and humanitarianism. Three of the speakers at the event had survived the Rafle and each story was unique and amazing in and of itself. The first survivor is the father of a friend, Marcel Weltman. He was 10 years old when his father, mother, sister and himself were taken to the Vélodrome. After three days, his mother, desperate to save her children, took them to the onsite doctor and told him the 2 children had the measles and needed to get to a hospital as soon as possible. This doctor was obviously trying to save as many as he could so he had the children sent out to a hospital where they were helped into safe places and eventually adopted, brother and sister together, by a Frenchman, M. Aron . The second survivor, a woman named Sarah Montard, had been 14 at the time she and her mother were taken to the VdH. The mother had told her to go behind the police to escape and had given her instructions to get to a friend's house who would help her. She managed to get to the subway and there met her mother on one of the metro platforms. The friend helped them to get fake ID papers and for 2 years they were able to escape capture until a person in their apartment building turned them in. Both mother and daughter ended up being deported to Auschwitz but she survived the camp situation and now regularly talks to groups, especially youth, about her experiences. The third survivor, a woman named Annette Muller, was sent to the Beaune-la-Rolande camp with another sibling but her father had a skill the Nazis needed so he didn't get deported. Evidently, he was able to pay their way out of the camp but it had been too late for their mother who died. These children were then taken in by some nuns at a convent who cared for and protected them until the end of the war.
I live in a neighborhood that was mentioned throughout the program because it is an old Jewish neighborhood. All our schools, several buildings and even Parc des Buttes Chaumont have markers reminding the contemporary world of the children, neighbors, fellow human beings who lost their lives to the wicked evils of hatred and racism. Hopefully, these markers will serve their purpose and all future generations will know and remember.
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