Macron was even more specific than Chirac had been in stating that the Government during the War was certainly that of France. He constructed a stage set, acquired two sick camels abandoned by a circus at Maisons-Alfort, hired fire-eaters and employed 20 actors to dress as African explorers—all to stage a spectacle called The Lion Hunt. The organizers withdrew the animals and moved to the next act of the show. [4] As well as track cycling, the new building was used for ice hockey, wrestling, boxing, roller-skating, circuses, spectacles and demonstrations. ... La France, patrie des Lumières et des Droits de l'Homme, terre d'accueil et d'asile, la France, ce jour-là, accomplissait l'irréparable. In 1902, the Salle des Machines was inspected by Henri Desgrange, who the following year inaugurated the Tour de France on behalf of the newspaper that he edited, L'Auto. According to records of the Préfecture de Police, 13,152 Jews were arrested,[1] including more than 4,000 children.[2]. His most spectacular venture was his greatest and most expensive flop. Their names and addresses were kept by the French police in the fichier Tulard, a file named after its creator, André Tulard, of the Commissariat général aux questions juives (CGQJ) or Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs. Cette nuit, nous nous sommes allongés par terre, mais il y avait un va-et-vient continuel, quelqu'un m'a marché sur les pieds et il m'a bien arrangée. The race began at 6 pm and by 9 pm all 20,000 seats were sold. As well as a cycling track, it was used for ice hockey, basketball, wrestling, boxing, roller-skating, circuses, bullfighting, spectaculars, and demonstrations. A ceremony is held at the monument every year in July. Récit de la tristement célèbre rafle du Vélodrome d'Hiver (16 et 17 juillet 1942) pendant la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale. For decades the French government declined to apologize for the role of French policemen in the roundup or for any other state complicity. A further meeting took place in Dannecker's office on the avenue Foch on 7 July. The first meeting there, on 20 December 1903, had an audience of 20,000. The Vel' d'Hiv' had a glass roof, which had been painted dark blue to avoid attracting bomber navigators. Those who survived the passage died in the gas chambers. Nearly 150,000 registered in the department of the Seine that encompasses Paris and its immediate suburbs. In reality, "Vichy shed no tears over the fate of the foreign Jews in France, who were seen as a nuisance, 'déchets ("dregs")' in Laval's words. André Tulard "will obtain from the head of the municipal police the files of Jews to be arrested. Breaking its word, it handed those who were under its protection over to their executioners"). Among those who had booked it was Jacques Doriot, who led France's largest fascist party, the Parti Populaire Français. He acknowledged the role that "the French State" played in the persecution of Jews and others during the War. A commemorative ceremony is held here every year in July. A plaque marking the Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv' was placed on the track building after the War and moved to 8 boulevard de Grenelle in 1959. Dickson bought the animals the same day, along with their cages and trailers, for 80,000 Fr. The animals were finally sent to a zoo near Hamburg. [36][32][37], On 16 July 2017, also in commemoration of the victims of the roundup, President Emmanuel Macron denounced his country's role in the Holocaust and the historical revisionism that denied France's responsibility for 1942 roundup and subsequent deportation of 13,000 Jews. As well as a cycling track, it was used for ice hockey, basketball, wrestling, boxing, roller-skating, circuses, bullfighting, spectaculars, and demonstrations. It provides details of the persecution of the Jews in France and many personal mementos of inmates before their deportation to Auschwitz and their death. A year later they were reprieved. An investigation began into 15 gendarmes, of whom 10 were accused at the Cour de justice de la Seine of conduct threatening the safety of the state. There were mounted police all round the block, barriers were erected some way from the building, and if you did not have a ticket or a pass to show, you were not allowed anywhere near the place. Bousquet succeeded in a compromise that the police would round up only foreign Jews. La plupart sont déportés au … [11], The Germans planned for the French police to arrest 22,000 Jews in Greater Paris. The roundup was delayed because the French asked to avoid holding it a couple of days before Bastille Day on 14 July. Uproar broke out in the court, with supposedly neutral jurors shouting abuse at Laval, threatening "a dozen bullets in his hide". Immediate control of the camp was under Heinz Röthke. President François Mitterrand reiterated this position in a September 1994 speech. [1] A fire destroyed part of the Vélodrome d'Hiver in 1959 and the rest of the structure was demolished. In July 1942, French police, acting under orders from the German authorities in Occupied Paris, used the velodrome to hold thousands of Jews and others who were victims in a mass arrest. Paris le 17 Chers tous, Encore quelques mots pour vous dire que nous sommes toujours au Vel d'Hiv. Paris – 16 juillet 1942. The Vel' d'Hiv' was a landmark in the city centre. The glass raised the heat when combined with windows screwed shut for security. The main match pitted Milou Pladner against Frankie Genaro, bringing in 920,110 Fr. He was extradited to France in 1954 and again sentenced to death. [6], The Vel' d'Hiv' was available for hire to whoever wanted it. A plaque marking the Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup was placed on the track building after the War and moved to 8 boulevard de Grenelle in 1959. As far as sports complexes go, the Paris Velodrome built in 1909 within blocks of the Eiffel Tower was a marvel. [38] Macron was even more specific in this respect: "It is convenient to see the Vichy regime as born of nothingness, returned to nothingness. The venture ended with the loss of 700,000 Fr by the Vel' d'Hiv'. The seating was primitive and there was no heating. In 1986, as accusations cast on Bousquet grew more credible, particularly after he was named by Louis Darquier,[29] he and Mitterrand stopped seeing each other. There they were found by the police. It was argued (by de Gaulle and others) that the French Republic had been dismantled when Philippe Pétain instituted a new French State during the war and that the Republic had been re-established when the war was over. La Grande Rafle du Vel d'Hiv (16 juillet 1942), Nouvelle édition. The Jews were held at the velodrome before they were moved to a concentration camp in the Parisian suburbs at Drancy and then to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. Il y a cinquante-trois ans, le 16 juillet 1942, 450 policiers et gendarmes français, sous l'autorité de leurs chefs, répondaient aux exigences des nazis. By now he was also being pursued by the Société protectrice des animaux [Wikidata] for cruelty in abandoning the camels. Dickson ordered his "explorers" to fire into the air to wake them up. Most families were split up and never reunited. This too was a fiction given that the parents of these children had already been deported; documents of the period have revealed that the anti-Semitic Laval's principal concern was what to do with Jewish children once their parents had been deported. [14] It was, said the historians Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper, "a cross between an auto-da-fé and a tribunal during the Paris Terror". And their attendants, who were unemployed black people recruited from the streets, stumbled in the sand under their unaccustomed stage clothing. It was indeed France that organized the round-up, the deportation, and thus, for almost all, death."[22][23]. On l'appelait familièrement le « Vél’ d’Hiv’ ». Émile Hennequin, head of Paris police, was condemned to eight years' penal labour in June 1947. A German ordinance on 21 September 1940, however, forced Jewish people in the occupied zone to register at police stations or sous-préfectures ("sub-prefectures"). It was part of an operation codenamed Opération Vent printanier [fr] ("Operation Spring Breeze"). “It is convenient to see the Vichy regime as born of nothingness, returned to nothingness. The air became bitter with cordite fumes but the lions did little more than stroll about and urinate on the scenery. The French authorities did not acknowledge their role in the arrest and deportation of the Jews until 1995, when then-French president, Jacques Chirac, gave a speech claiming France’s responsibility in events. Only one rider—Cissac—managed to complete the 16 km (10 mi), the others having crashed on the unaccustomed steepness of the track banking. [3], For the 1924 Summer Olympics, the velodrome hosted boxing, fencing, weightlifting, and wrestling events.[5]. It is the work of the sculptor Walter Spitzer and the architect Mario Azagury. The little teams fought back on certain days but, generally, the law belonged to the cracks, better equipped physically and often better organised. [14] Those responsible for the round-up, according to Chirac, were "450 policiers et gendarmes français, sous l'autorité de leurs chefs, répondaient aux exigences des nazis" ("450 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders [who] obeyed the demands of the Nazis"). It involved 13 000 victims from and its suburbs. 16 juillet 1972, trente ans après il ne reste que cette plaque de la grande rafle du Vel’d’Hiv’ Le célèbre vélodrome d’hiver où se retrouvait le Paris sportif a été détruit en 1959 comme pour effacer un cauchemar. Pierre Laval's trial opened on 3 October 1945. In 1974, Bousquet helped finance François Mitterrand's presidential campaign against Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. The circumstances in which Goddet surrendered the keys remain a mystery and the episode is given only a few lines in his autobiography.[19]. [14][15], On 16 July 1995, then President, Jacques Chirac, stated that 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. Only 400 survived. The investigator Serge Klarsfeld found minutes in German archives of meetings with senior Vichy officials and Bousquet's proposal that the roundup should cover non-French Jews throughout the country. Among them were Édith Piaf, Annie Cordy and the accordionist Yvette Horner, who also played from the roof of a car while preceding the Tour de France. In what is known as the green ticket roundup (French: rafle du billet vert), 3,747 Jewish men were arrested on 14 May 1941, after having received a summons in the mail (delivered on a green ticket) to 6,694 foreign Jews living in France for a status review (French: examen de situation). [14] From 6 October, Laval refused to take part in the proceedings, hoping that the jurors' interventions would lead to a new trial. During this period of renewed interest in cycling, Washington got its first and only velodrome when the Marymoor Velodrome opened in 1975. [6] In 1939 Jewish refugees were interned there before being sent to camps in the Paris region and in 1940 it was used as a internment center for foreign women, an event that served as a precedent for the location to be chosen. These files were then handed to the Gestapo, in charge of the "Jewish problem.". It was built by Henri Desgrange, editor of L'Auto, who later organised the Tour de France, as a velodrome (cycle track) when his original track in the nearby Salle des Machines was listed for demolition in 1909 to improve the view of the Eiffel Tower. Breaking its word, it delivered those it protected to their executioners. Created at Madison Square Garden (after New York prohibited . Two other blocks represent the gates of death. [17], The first official admission that the French State had been complicit in the deportation of 76,000 Jews during WW II was made in 1995 by then President Jacques Chirac, at the site of the Vélodrome d'Hiver where 13,000 Jews had been rounded up for deportation to death camps in July 1942.