Sheldon Kirschner
The Times of Israel, Jan. 26, 2022
“Petain tells Laval that while Jewish citizens of France can’t be deported, stateless Jews can be.”
Shortly after Germany conquered France in 1940, the collaborationist Vichy regime of Henri Philippe Petain announced its first antisemitic law. It relegated Jews to second-class citizenship and paved the way for their deportation to Nazi extermination camps in Poland.
Two years later, the French police began rounding up Jews and sending them to internment camps, from which they were transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
The most notorious roundup in France took place in the summer of 1942, when thousands of Jews in Paris were herded into the Vel’ d’Hiv cycling stadium in the center of the city and left to stew there for several days in appalling conditions before they were taken to an internment camp en route to Poland.
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