Eighty years ago, some 13,000 Jews were arrested from their homes in Paris and the inner suburbs by French officials. Some of them were interned at the Vélodrome d’Hiver, at the Quai de Grenelle, in the capital’s 15th arrondissement, before being evacuated to the Drancy, Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande camps. Of the 8,160 deportees from Vel d’Hiv, only a few dozen survived.
To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv raid, Emmanuel Macron will deliver this Sunday afternoon an “offensive speech” of about twenty minutes against anti-Semitism and “historical revisionism” from the site of the old Pithiviers station ( Loiret), where he will inaugurate a memorial. After Drancy, Pithiviers was the second place of deportation in France, near Paris.
“A new type of historical revisionism has appeared”
“Anti-Semitism is still lurking and sometimes it is insidious and it is very worrying,” an Elysee adviser told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “A new kind of historical revisionism has appeared,” in particular over the role of Marshal Pétain, he noted, adding that the “combat” must “be waged again.”
The Head of State will be accompanied by the Ministers of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, of Education Pap Ndiaye, of Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti, as well as Patricia Mirallès, Secretary of State for Veterans and Memory. In his speech, Emmanuel Macron wants to warn against the appearance of “a new type of revisionism”, indicates the Elysee, after a presidential campaign marked in particular by statements by far-right candidate Éric Zemmour, who argued that Marshal Pétain “saved” French Jews during World War II.
As explained by the president’s entourage, “the trivialization of the debates” around the Vichy regime and the increase in anti-Semitic acts will push Emmanuel Macron to remember that “French society has not finished with anti-Semitism”.
Acknowledgment of France’s responsibility with Chirac
After fifty years of silence from the French authorities, President Jacques Chirac acknowledged France’s responsibility for the Vel d’Hiv raid in 1995, in a speech that has remained etched in our memories. “France, that day, accomplished the irreparable,” he had launched.
In July 2012, President François Hollande goes further: “The truth is that this crime was committed in France, by France.” He drew criticism from officials on the right (Henri Guaino) and left (Jean-Pierre Chevènement), while the National Front called for “stop making the French feel guilty.”
The Vel d’Hiv roundup alone accounts for more than a quarter of the 42,000 Jews deported from France to Auschwitz in 1942, of whom only 811 returned home after the end of the war.
Source: BFM TV
