On this day July 16, 1942

The Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv, from the French abbreviation for Vélodrome d’hiver, or winter velodrome) is the name of the July 16, 1942 raid – Operation Spring Breeze – during the occupation of France by the Germans. The round-up, in Paris, was one of several aimed at reducing the Jewish population. The victims were sent to a concentration camp and then to Auschwitz. Few survived. The French president apologised much later for the part taken by French policemen and civil servants.

Pétain and the Vichy regime willfully collaborated with the German occupation to a high degree. The French police and the state Milice (militia) organized raids to capture Jews and others considered “undesirables” by the Germans in both the northern and southern zones.

On 16 July 1995, the President, Jacques Chirac, ruled it was time that France faced up to its past and he acknowledged the role that the state had played in the persecution of Jews and other victims of the German occupation.