Vel' d'Hiv Roundup - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vel' d'Hiv Roundup - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I am reading a book called "Sarah's Key" which is about the roundup of Jews who were living in Vichy France during the Nazi occupation. On July 16, 1942, 13,000+ Jewish families where taken from their homes in Paris by French police and sent first Vel d'Hiv, a velodrome in Paris where they remained for several days with no food or water, forced to live like animals in unsanitary conditions. I had never known about this terrible piece of French history. The mothers, fathers and children were forced from their homes. Later they were taken to a camp outside of Paris where the families were separated from the fathers, the mothers and children were allowed to remain together briefly before being separated so that the parents could be shipped off to Auschwitz for extermination. The children were left, starving and without their parents in the camp until they too were relocated and sent to gas chambers. I am appalled by this awful, horrendous piece of French history. I cannot believe that the police would round up innocents at the behest of the Nazis and willingly starve them and sentence them to death like they were no better than animals. This is a part of history that we must never forget so as never to repeat it.