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deported. These will be children ages 2 to 16, whose
fate Premier Laval has said does not interest him. The minimum age for children
to be deported is set at two because the Special Commission has exempted from
arrest mothers with children under two and the children themselves. Dannecker
further requests an urgent response to a question posed in his July 6 telex:
whether beginning with convoy 15, he can
deport children under 16 whom Vichy will deliver from the Unoccupied Zone and
whom Laval had asked Knochen to deport with their parents.
July
16-17, 1942. The Vel d'Hiv roundup begins as planned before dawn, at 4 A.M.
on Thursday, July 16. By 8 A.M., the Paris police inform the prefect of police
that many Jewish men had left their homes the evening before. They doubtless
have been alerted by rumors of the roundup from individual policemen and
members of the Jewish Communist resistance organization, and apparently they
believe only men will be targeted, as was the case in the three prior roundups.
By 3 P.M., when the action is halted for the day, there are 11,363 prisoners
– 2,573 men, 5,165 women, and 3,625 children.
The operation is
resumed July 17 and goes on until 1 P.M., but with less success. By 5 P.M. the
tally of arrests for the two days totals 12,884 – 3,031 men, 5,802 women,
and 4,051 children. The Prefecture instructs local police to continue their
search for Jews not found at home during the raids; a police van will be sent
to each of Paris's six police divisions for several days to collect arrested
Jews. A total of 8,160 Jews are held in the Vel d'Hiv (1,129 men, 2,916 women,
4,115 children), and 4,992 single adults and couples without children or with
grown children (1,989 men and 3,003 women) are interned at Drancy.
According to a report of the Prefecture of Police, Parisians openly
express reproach "for these measures, which they consider inhumane."
Röthke reports that Darquier de Pellepoix thinks it will be
possible to place the 4,115 children in various institutions in Paris and its
suburbs. Röthke's aim is to prevent dispersal of the children in case
Berlin accepts Dannecker's proposal and it becomes possible to begin deporting
them, perhaps August 4 or 5. Darquier's solution is set aside in favor of
keeping the children and parents together and moving them to the Pithiviers and
Beaune-la-Rolande camps while awaiting Berlin's decision. Röthke notes
that "the representatives of the French police have expressed many times the
wish to see convoys toward Germany include children as well." Nevertheless, if
parents and children cannot be deported together because Berlin fails to make
an early decision or the children cannot immediately be accepted in the East,
it is understood that the parents will be deported first. A negative decision
on the children's deportation isn't even considered; in the margin of his
report Knochen notes: "in my opinion [they] can be deported all the same after
a decision of the RSHA," the Main Office for State Security, in Berlin.
The French police representatives, who insistently voice support for
deportation of the Jewish children with or without their parents, are led by
Leguay, the Vichy police delegate, and the two leading Paris Police Prefecture
officials on Jewish matters, François and Tulard.
Three
considerations weigh in the French police officials' demand that the children
be deported, with their parents or after them.
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FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld
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