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The Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup: the story revealed

PRODUCTION : LA FAMIGLIA

BROADCAST : RMC DÉCOUVERTE

DIRECTOR : FABRICE BUYSSCHAERT

GENRE : DOCUMENTARY

DURATION : 52'

YEAR : 2020

The Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup: the story revealed

On 16 and 17 July 1942, 13,152 Jews were arrested in their homes by French police officers before being handed over to the Nazis by the French state… with the result that they were exterminated en masse. This crime against humanity, born in the minds of the Nazis but executed under the authority of Marshal Pétain, Pierre Laval and René Bousquet, will forever stain history. It was nicknamed the Vel d’Hiv round-up, after the former Paris winter velodrome where 8,160 Jews, including 4,115 children, were parked. This was the beginning of a long ordeal that took them from the winter velodrome to the camps in the Loiret region and then from Drancy to Auschwitz Birkenau. With the testimony of the last survivors, based on the research of historians Serge Klarsfeld and the American Robert Paxton, and thanks to the precious archives and computer-generated images that will restore the disappeared velodrome, this film will narrate, in the manner of an autopsy, the events that led France to write one of the darkest pages in its history.

La Famiglia