France’s Jews have hailed President Francois Mitterrand’s move to inaugurate an annual day of remembrance to mourn those Jews who were persecuted or deported from France to Nazi death camps during the Holocaust.
Mitterrand caused an outcry in July when he said France could not apologize for the wartime actions of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.
But Wednesday, Mitterrand changed his stance and signed a decree declaring July 16 as a “National Commemoration Day of the Racist and Anti-Semitic Persecutions Perpetrated during the De Facto Authority of the So-Called ‘Government of the French State’ (1940-1944).”
The date was chosen to mark the day in 1942 of the first mass roundup of Jews in Paris by French police, known as the “Vel d’Hiv roundup.”
On July 16, 1942, the Jews were rounded up and taken to the winter cycling stadium called the Velodrome d’Hiver.
Jean Kahn, head of CRIF, an umbrella group representing French Jewish organizations, said Mitterrand “has taken into account the wish of the French people not to forget what has become the symbol of the arrest of French Jews, the Vel d’Hiv roundup. It is something we have been asking for many years.”
The decree says that a monument will be erected in Paris on the location of the Vel d’Hiv, where the rounded-up Jews were held prisoners before they were taken to the Drancy concentration camp in a northern suburb of Paris.
Some 13,000 Jews were arrested during those roundups. Almost all were deported to Auschwitz and gassed upon arrival.
The Vel d’Hiv was torn down in the 1960s, and an office building for the Ministry of Interior was built there instead.
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The French president’s decree also says that a plaque will be affixed in Izieu, near Lyon, where over 40 Jewish children stayed in hiding until they were discovered by SS officer Klaus Barbie. They were later deported and killed.
Mitterrand’s repeated refusal to officially acknowledge that France should take some responsibility for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews at the hands of the wartime Vichy regime has long been a bone of contention in the Jewish community.
The debate turned even more bitter last fall when Mitterrand laid a wreath on the grave of Marshal Philippe Petain on Nov. 11, the armistice day of World War I.
While Petain is celebrated as a war hero for his role in World War I, he is also vilified for collaborating with the Nazis in World War II.
In Mitterrand’s own ranks, many voiced their disapproval of the president’s attitude.
“One cannot dissociate the victor of Verdun from the traitor of Vichy,” said various political leaders, protesting against the tradition initiated by Mitterrand to lay a wreath on Petain’s tomb every year.
Mitterrand said at the time he would do something to correct the situation. Observers said the newly announced Commemoration Day appears to be Mitterrand’s answer to the critics.
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