Vel' D'Hiv Roundup - Planning The Roundup

Planning The Roundup

The Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, part of a continent-wide plan to intern and exterminate Europe's Jewish population, was a joint operation between the Germans and French administrators (see below for clarification).

Until the German occupation of France in 1940, no roundup would have been possible because no census listing religions had been held in France since 1874. A German ordinance on 21 September 1940, however, forced Jewish people of the occupied zone to register at a police station or sub-prefectures (sous-préfectures). Nearly 150,000 registered in the department of the Seine, encompassing Paris and its immediate suburbs. Their names and addresses were kept by the French police in the fichier Tulard, a file named after its creator, André Tulard, head of "Jewish Questions" at the préfecture.

Theodor Dannecker, the SS captain who commanded the German police in France, said: "This filing system subdivided it into files alphabetically classed, Jews with French nationality and foreign Jews having files of different colours, and the files were also classed, according to profession, nationality and street." These files were then handed to section IV J of the Gestapo, in charge of the "Jewish problem."

The Vel' d'Hiv Roundup was not the first such roundup in World War II. Nearly 4,000 Jewish men were arrested on 14 May 1941 and taken to the Gare d'Austerlitz and then to camps at Pithiviers and Beaune-La-Rolande. Women and families followed in July 1942.

What became known as the "Vel' d'Hiv Roundup" was to be more important. To plan it, René Bousquet, secretary-general of the national police, and Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, head of the "Jewish Question", travelled on 4 July 1942 to Gestapo headquarters to meet Dannecker and Helmut Knochen of the SS. A further meeting took place in Dannecker's office in the avenue Foch on 7 July. Also present were Jean Leguay, Bousquet's deputy, a man called François who was director of the general police, Émile Hennequin, the head of Paris police, André Tulard, and others from the French police.

Dannecker met Adolf Eichmann on 10 July 1942, and another meeting took place the same day at the General Commission for the Jewish Question (CGQJ) attended by Dannecker, Heinz Röthke, Ernst Heinrichsohn, Jean Leguay, Gallien, deputy to Darquier de Pellepoix (head of the CGQJ), several police officials and representatives of the French railway service, the SNCF. The roundup was delayed because the Germans wanted to avoid holding it before Bastille Day on 14 July. The national holiday was not celebrated in the occupied zone but there was a wish to avoid civil uprisings.

Dannecker declared: "The French police, apart from a few considerations of pure form, have only to carry out orders!"

The roundup was aimed at Jews from Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and those whose origins couldn't be determined, all aged from 16 to 50. There were to be exceptions for women "in advanced state of pregnancy" or who were breast-feeding, but "to save time, the sorting will be made not at home but at the first assembly centre".

The Germans planned for the French police to arrest 22,000 Jews in Greater Paris. The Jews would then be taken to internment camps at Drancy, Compiègne, Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande. André Tulard "will obtain from the head of the municipal police the files of Jews to be arrested... Children of less than 15 or 16 years will be sent to the Union Générale des Israélites de France, which will place them in foundations. The sorting of children will be done in the first assembly centres."