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First, the number of Jews arrested is far short of
the German demands accepted by Bousquet and Laval. Between 20,000 and 22,000
arrests were anticipated, but the count of arrested adults in the agreed age
ranges yields 8,833 potential deportees. To increase the number, the raids
would have to be resumed, though they would be less effective because stateless
Jews who escaped arrest would be on their guard. The SS expect their schedule
for the dispatch of deportation trains to be respected; the French judge it
best to give them a suitable number of Jewish heads by adding the 4,000
children. The 13,000 total including the children will still be short of the
22,000 sought, but it will gain time and avert conflict with the Germans. It is
clear that if the French insist on deporting the children, the Gestapo will
report it and Berlin will know in advance that there will be no official French
opposition to the policy.
Second, failure to deport the children would
involve the police and the Vichy administration in the material problems of
their long-term lodging, care and feeding, education, and legal status.
(However, for several days, the abominable treatment of Jewish families in the
Vel d'Hiv is proof of the negligence and incompetence of the French officials
involved.)
For Leguay, François, and Tulard, it is absolutely
necessary that the children be deported. If they are not, a problem will be
created that will last for years. In addition, if one day the Germans are
defeated, these children become adults will ask what has happened to their
parents and will demand judgment of the French officials responsible for their
disappearance.
The children must be deported, and quickly, so that
French officials will be involved with them as briefly as possible. In the
Loiret camps where the children will be sent, Leguay, François, Tulard,
and the Orléans Prefecture all have failed to make preparations for
their arrival; nor, in a region that is one of France's granaries, have they
arranged sufficient food for them; nor do they concern themselves with proper
hygiene or health conditions, and many of these 4,000 children very quickly
will become ill. Some will find their deaths here in the Loiret within a few
weeks and will be buried in individual or common graves in local cemeteries.
Finally, these officials will deliberately plunge these thousands of children
into frightful emotional distress when they separate them from their mothers.
The third consideration that certainly must weigh in the French
decision is a fear of public knowledge of the coming separation of families.
Darquier's proposal to send the children to shelters in Paris and its suburbs
would make it necessary to separate children and parents at the Vel d'Hiv.
There are terrible scenes ahead, and it will be less disagreeable to have them
played out far away, hidden behind the barbed wire of the Loiret camps.
Parisians will have no knowledge of these events, and their compassion for
Jewish families will not be reinforced. On returning home in the evening, Paris
policemen will not be talking about the scenes of hysteria they provoked during
the day. (When the time comes to deport the mothers, French police at the
Loiret camps, more or less isolated from the local population, will use their
rifle butts to separate them from their children and pack them into sealed
boxcars. It would be three weeks before boxcars would be sent for the
children.)
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FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld
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