French President Apologizes for Nation’s Role in WWII
French President François Hollande on Sunday made an emotional mea culpa on behalf of his country for its part in the World War II roundup and deportation of more than 13,000 Jews from Paris.
At the 70th anniversary of what is known as the Vel d’Hiv Raids, Hollande admitted the operation carried out by Paris police in 1942 was a “crime committed in France, by France.”
Hollande also praised former president and political rival Jacques Chirac who in 1995 became the first French leader to admit the roundup had been “France’s fault.”
Until then, French presidents including Hollande’s Socialist mentor François Mitterrand had contended that the wartime collaborationist Vichy government led by Marshall Philippe Petain did not represent the French Republic.
On July 16 and 17, 1942, French police rounded up 13,152 Jews from Paris and its suburbs as part of what they code-named Operation Spring Breeze. It was the first case in which women and children were included in the French arrests.
Entire families were ordered from their homes in dawn raids and taken to the Velodrome d’Hiver (the Winter Velodrome) in the French capital where they were kept for days without food and water before being deported to German concentration camps. These raids accounted for more than a quarter of the estimated 42,000 Jews sent from France to the Auschwitz camp in 1942. Jewish organizations say only 811 of them returned.
On Sunday, after laying a wreath at the site of the velodrome, demolished in 1959, Hollande spoke of “the dark hours of the collaboration, of our history and therefore of France’s responsibility.”
“The hard and cruel truth is that not one German soldier, not a single one, was mobilized for any of this operation. The truth is that this crime was committed in France, by France,” Hollande said.