The Vél d'Hiv raid

Maurice Rajsfus

"Beginning in the early morning hours of July 16, 1942, and lasting for two days, the French police went beyond Nazi ordinances and took it upon themselves to arrest and imprison more than 13,000 Jews at a Paris sporting arena, the Vélodrome d'Hiver. For most of the Jews, this detention without water, food, or sleep was the first horrific step toward death in the concentration camps. This uniquely detailed study of the roundup offers the only contemporary analysis of both the precursors and the aftermath of the events of those two days. Using recently opened police files, Maurice Rajsfus details the internal organization of the police, showing the mechanisms of this raid in particular and of raids in general, making the book an indispensable micro-history of the Holocaust. A companion piece to Rajsfus's Operation Yellow Star / Black Thursday (DoppelHouse Press, 2017), The Vél d'Hiv...