Michel Jacquot Jews Murder in the Shadows

Poster of the Instiute of Jewish Questions c. 1942

The Persecution of Jews in Vichy France.

Part 2: From the “Vel’d’Hiv” to the Liberation of the Camps, 1942-1945

with Chris Boïcos

About 330 000 Jews, French and foreign, lived in France in 1940. 75 721 were arrested and deported to Poland between 1942 and 1944. Of these only 2 566 survived and made it back from the death camps. Close to 3000 died in various camps in France before they could be deported abroad. The rest fled, as best they could, abroad or into the “zone libre” in the south, or hid within France until the liberation of the country in 1944.

Our second lecture will follow the chronology of this Jewish history in France from the infamous round-up, the “Rafle du Vel’d’Hiv”, which took place in Paris on 16-17 July 1942 to the liberation of the camps in France in 1944 and in the east in the spring of 1945. We will see how Jews who had fled to the “zone libre” in the south of France were suddenly placed in greater danger after the occupation of the south by the Germans in November 1942. We will also discuss the aftermath of this Jewish history in the decades following the war. We will evoke the individual stories of some of the historical figures of the time, including Hannah Arendt, Walter Banjamin, Léon Blum, Marc Bloch, Simone Veil, Gertrude Stein, Max Jacob, Serge Klarsfeld and more.