Vel' D'Hiv Roundup - Significance

Significance

The primary significance of the roundup was the killing of innocent people because of their religion. But there is a political and social significance because the Vel' d'Hiv has remained a symbol of national guilt and of national outrage.

The wartime history of France differed from that of other occupied nations in that the country was socially and politically divided, until it was all finally occupied by the Germans after being divided into an occupied and non-occupied zone. The pre-war Republic disintegrated after the invasion and France looked for, and in the first-war hero Philippe Pétain found, a figurehead to give it hope.

Pétain established a government at Vichy – because it had more hotels and better telephones than elsewhere – and he nominally ran the new French State in both the occupied and unoccupied zones. France became a neutral nation in fact however flimsy that status was in practice.

As the historian Julian Jackson points out, Pétain tried to maintain the independence of France and to stop its police force, among other organs of state, from becoming auxiliaries of the Germans. But if he did not agree to what the Germans demanded, as with the Vel' d'Hiv, the Germans would either do it themselves or take away command of the police. Pétain was left in the position of having the police do whatever the Germans wanted of them as a way of preserving their own supposed independence.

The guilt comes not only through this co-operation, if not outright collaboration, but through the zeal with which parts of the police force worked with the Germans. While some policemen tipped off Jews so they could escape, others were tried – if they didn't flee first – for their brutality. French policemen ensured their neighbours stayed behind bars, ready to be taken to their death, only because they were of a different religion.

The Vel' d'Hiv has remained a symbol of a wider disquiet, at the broadest level because of the Pétain government which France at first welcomed and then saw deteriorate into an organ of the occupation – often enthusiastically – and on a narrower level by individuals who profited from the occupation and furthered its cause or didn't raise what in retrospect seemed enough objection.

There were heroes of the Occupation and there were those who faced death through dishonour. In between were the millions who got on with their lives without the benefit of knowing how the war would turn out. It is they, examining their consciences and wondering whether they could have done more, who find the Vel' d'Hiv a disturbing symbol of what Julian Jackson calls The Dark Years.