|
|
 |
| |
family, on convoy
68 of February 10, 1944.
December 20, 1943. German security
police carry out raids in Bordeaux, a city in which an old French-Jewish
community has felt relatively safe. The arrests total 108, among them 79 Jews
with French citizenship. Together with 28 other Jews already held, they are
transferred to Drancy ten days later. The Bordeaux roundup and others carried
out in December make it clear that the Germans are now taking direct and
aggressive anti-Jewish actions regardless of the Jews' citizenship and with or
without cooperation by French police.
December 22, 1943. Staff
members of the Marseilles UGIF center are arrested by Gestapo agents and the
organization's offices are closed. UGIF operations are transferred to Lyons.
Later the same day in Marseilles, Grand Rabbi Hirschler of Strasbourg and his
wife are arrested by the Gestapo. They will be deported and murdered.
December 31, 1943. By the end of 1943, 17,069 more Jews have
been deported from France in convoys to the death camps at Auschwitz and
Sobibor. Most of the deportees are gassed and cremated on arrival in the camps,
and of those selected for work in 1943, 340 men and 126 women survive the war.
|
1944
January 1944. Intensified police
hunts for Jews of all ages, whether French citizens or not, are launched
throughout France at the start of 1944, and they are more effective than
before. Joseph Darnand, head of the Milice (the Vichy political police), had
replaced René Bousquet as Secretary General of the National Police at
the end of 1943, and Darnand is a dedicated and ferocious anti-Semite. With
Premier Laval's assent, French police often join with the Germans to arrest
French and foreign Jews, using census and residence information provided by
prefects. The raids are unusually successful because they are often unexpected
and targeted on precise addresses; they bring many children into the Nazi net.
Roundups against French Jews are carried out January 4 in Laon, Amiens,
and Saint Quentin. On January 5 and 6 the raids are extended to rural areas of
the Ardennes.
January 10-11, 1944. Anti-Jewish raids strike
again in Bordeaux. This time, the use of French police and the information on
Jews in their files leads to a dramatic increase in the percentages and numbers
of people arrested; of the 473 French Jews sought, 228 are arrested.
These and the December 1943 Bordeaux roundups each mark important steps
in the development of the Jewish persecutions in France. In December, the
Gestapo and German security police had acted directly against French Jews
without any protest from Premier Laval or other high Vichy officials. In
January, the French police cooperate fully in the arrests of French Jews, this
time after the Bordeaux regional prefect, Maurice Sabatier, demands that the
operation be delayed unless sanctioned by Laval. In the end, Laval lets it
proceed because, he says, though the question of arresting French Jews is
important, it "already had happened elsewhere." Thus, Laval, who had abandoned
foreign and stateless Jewish children and adults in July 1942,abandons French
Jewish children and adults in January 1944.
|
|
| |
| |
| |
FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld
 |
Back |
Page 79 |
Forward |
 |
|
