France’s prime minister was overcome by emotion Sunday as he presided over a ceremony commemorating the World War II-era deportation of Jews from Paris. In the largest roundup, on July 16 and 17, 1942, 12,884 Jewish men and women, including more than 4,000 children, were rounded up by French police and held in the Velodrome d’Hiver, an old bicycle stadium, before being sent on to containment camps, with Auschwitz their final destination. Reading from a letter scrawled on a train ticket and thrown from the window of one of the convoys by an 11-year-old boy, Prime Minister Dominique De Villepin was overcome by emotion and paused for a moment to regain his composure, before continuing to read in a trembling voice.
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