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• France quietly ends visas for El Al flight security guards in Paris amid Gaza war tensions
• The E1 battle: Why Israel can’t bow to Macron’s Palestinian fantasy
• Israel Shows Some Diplomatic Spine

• Emmanuel Macron President Second French Vichy government
• The Holocaust in France

France quietly ends visas for El Al flight security guards in Paris amid Gaza war tensions

Amid tensions over Gaza war, France stops renewing work visas for El Al flight security guards, forcing them to stay without visas or return to Israel; guard says no renewals issued in 6 months; Israeli embassy in contact with French authorities over matter

Itamar Eichner | 11August2025 | 22:11 https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bjw8x3wdxl

Over the past six months, French authorities have quietly stopped renewing work visas for El Al flight security personnel employed in Paris as ITAN workers (Israeli citizens supporting diplomatic missions) through the Israeli embassy, sources familiar with the situation told Ynet on Monday, explaining that the decision stems from rising tensions between Israel and France over the Gaza war and attributing it to anti-Israel motives within Parisian authorities.

The work visas previously granted to the Israeli security staff allowed them to live and work legally in France. Now, with the visa renewals halted, some of these workers find themselves residing in the country illegally. While some remain in France without valid permits, others have been forced to obtain diplomatic visas through the Israeli embassy, granting them temporary status to continue their stay.

“In the past six months, none of the employees whose work visas expired have received renewals,” according to an El Al flight security guard stationed in Paris. “This has never happened before, and no one has been granted new approvals. It seems they are trying to end the employment of El Al security personnel in France.”
The security guard further noted that El Al management is “distancing themselves from the employees” and referring them to the Foreign Ministry, with some unable to secure new visas and forced to return to Israel.

In response to a Ynet inquiry, the Foreign Ministry said that “the matter is being handled by the embassy in coordination with the French Foreign Ministry.” The French embassy in Israel declined to comment, referring inquiries to the Israeli embassy. El Al also directed questions to the Foreign Ministry and the Shin Bet internal security agency, which did not provide a response.

Tensions between Paris and Jerusalem have deepened following a series of incidents involving the French authorities and pro-Palestinian activists. Last week, pro-Palestinian demonstrators vandalized El Al’s offices in Paris, splattering them with red paint and labeling the airline a “genocide airline.” In June, the Israeli pavilion at the Paris Air Show arms fair was unexpectedly blocked by organizers and covered with black cloth

El Al offices in Paris were vandalized

In June, the Israeli pavilion at the Paris Air Show arms fair was unexpectedly blocked by organizers and covered with black cloth

Speaking at a press conference Sunday night, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned plans presented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take over the Gaza Strip, calling it a “disaster waiting to happen, and a step toward an endless war.” Speaking to reporters during a briefing from his office, he warned, “The Israeli hostages and the people of Gaza will be the first victims of this strategy. The government in Israel needs to stop the war now with a permanent ceasefire.”

Macron also proposed the formation of an international coalition under the United Nations aimed at combating terrorism in Gaza and stabilizing the region.

Last month, Macron announced on his X account that France would officially recognize a Palestinian state. He said he plans to make a “ceremonial declaration” to this effect at the UN General Assembly in September. His announcement sparked a wave of similar moves, with several countries expressing readiness to recognize Palestinian statehood. Australia announced Sunday night it would move in a similar direction, while New Zealand stated it was “considering the move.”

In his declaration, Macron emphasized the urgency of ending the war in Gaza and delivering aid to civilians. “Peace is possible. There must be an immediate ceasefire that includes the release of all hostages and massive humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,” he wrote.

He also stressed the necessity of disarming Hamas, ensuring Gaza’s security and rebuilding the territory. “Finally, it is essential to establish the Palestinian state, guarantee its existence, and allow it, through receiving disarmament and full recognition by Israel, to contribute to security in the Middle East.”

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The E1 battle: Why Israel can’t bow to Macron’s Palestinian fantasy

The E1 corridor, connecting Jerusalem to Ma’ale Adumim, is a vital buffer against the encirclement of Israel’s capital by a hostile Palestinian entity.

https://www.jns.org/the-e1-battle-why-israel-cant-bow-to-macrons-palestinian-fantasy/

Fiamma Nirenstein

Dr. Fiamma Nirenstein is an Italian-Israeli journalist, author and senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. An adviser on antisemitism to Israel’s Foreign Minister, she served in the Italian Parliament (2008–2013) as Vice President of the Foreign Affairs Committee. A founding member of the Friends of Israel Initiative, she has written 13 books, including Israel Is Us (2009), and is a leading voice on Israel, the Middle East, Europe and the fight against antisemitism.

(20August2025 / JNS) Israel’s recent approval of 3,401 housing units in the strategic E1 corridor has unleashed the usual chorus of outrage from world leaders and Palestinian statehood advocates. Chief among them is French President Emmanuel Macron, who is pushing to force a United Nations General Assembly vote on Palestinian statehood in September.

For Macron, it’s a grand gesture—a pacifist fantasy that pretends a Palestinian state is the antidote to war. But for Israel, it’s an existential threat.

The E1 corridor, connecting Jerusalem to the city of Ma’ale Adumim, is a vital buffer against the encirclement of Israel’s capital by a hostile Palestinian entity stretching from Ramallah to Bethlehem. Without it, Jerusalem risks becoming isolated and vulnerable, as it was between 1948 and 1967, when Jews were barred from the Western Wall.

This is why Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich pushed the plan forward. Detractors dismiss him as a hardline minority voice. Yet the truth is that his stance reflects a sober reality: Israel cannot trade its survival for international applause.

The Palestinian leadership has never renounced its jihadist vision. It never condemned the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. It continues its “pay-for-slay” policy that rewards terrorism. And now it proudly declares that thanks to Oct. 7, it is winning the war of opinion.

Macron and his allies—Australia, Canada and others—are effectively rewarding Hamas by pressing for Palestinian statehood at the U.N.

Israel has been here before. The Arab League’s “three no’s” after the Six-Day War left no room for compromise. Every Israeli offer of peace has been met with terrorism, from Arafat’s rejectionism to Abbas’s intransigence. The so-called “Green Line” was never a border, merely an armistice line, and today it is being used as a weapon against Israel’s legitimacy.

E1 is more than a housing plan. It is a shield for Jerusalem and a message to Israel’s enemies: this nation will not be divided or surrounded again.

Whatever the U.N. decides, Israel will chart its own course. Macron may dream of playing Europe’s anti-American visionary, but Israel has a far more urgent role—to eliminate Hamas, protect its citizens and partner with moderate Arab states to build a safer, more stable Middle East.

The alternative—handing jihadists the victory they seek—is unthinkable.

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Commentary Magazine-logo https://www.commentarymagazine.com/

Israel Shows Some Diplomatic Spine

by Seth Mandel 28August2025  https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/israel-shows-some-diplomatic-spine/

Israel is responding aggressively and appropriately to two recent public relations challenges, suggesting Jerusalem understands the gravity of its situation as well as the fact that it is in the right on both.

The first is the “famine” libel. Israel is asking the IPC, the multinational monitor, to retract its debunked report on Gaza City. According to Reuters, the Israeli Foreign Ministry is warning that “if a new report were not presented within two weeks, Israel would continue to challenge the assessment and would ask the IPC’s donors to halt their financial support.”

Good. Israel can no longer afford to simply be correct on the merits. If corrupt global agencies are going to insert themselves as partisans into this war then they’ll learn to take a (metaphorical) punch.

As a reminder, Israel first meticulously proved the report false based on the IPC’s own data, which suggests the agency is not merely incompetent but corrupt and compromised.

Indeed, it’s clear the report was released as a preemptive attack on Israel’s new operation in Gaza City. The IPC simply declared famine in the one place in Gaza that the IDF was looking to enter, which was also the one place in Gaza relatively untouched by the war. Still, it’s important to have the numbers on your side, and Israel did (all emphasis in the original):

“The report relied on only half of the data actually collected in July — five sub-samples covering 7,519 children, described on pages 49–50 of the FRC report, with a combined average of roughly 16% — just above the threshold.

“By contrast, a Nutrition Cluster presentation released on August 8 — a week before the August 15 cut-off date — reported the full July sample of 15,749 children. Those results showed unweighted and weighted GAM rates of 13.5% and 12.2%, respectively — both well below the famine threshold.”

So the data were clear: no famine. That the IPC chose to manipulate the data for political purposes suggests the agency has forfeited its legitimacy. Additionally:

“The IPC itself acknowledged that available data on non-trauma mortality were nowhere near the famine threshold of 2 deaths per 10,000 people per day. Based on its own population estimate for Gaza Governorate — about 937,600 people — this threshold would correspond to roughly 188 non-trauma deaths per day. By contrast, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health reported that as of 15 August the five-day moving average across all of Gaza was just six ‘malnutrition-related deaths’ per day.

“Even if every one of these had occurred in Gaza City and were actual malnutrition-related excess deaths, the non-trauma death rate would still be an order of magnitude lower than the famine threshold.”

It didn’t have the numbers on its side, so the IPC made them up, claiming that the difference was made up of unreported (imaginary) cases.

Again, Israel seems to understand the gravity of the IPC’s corrupt interference on behalf of a terrorist organization. There is no reason for Israel to let up on the agency, and so far, it isn’t.

Then there is the lingering question of how to respond to the impending recognition of a Palestinian state by France and others joining the bandwagon. As I argued previously, this is a unilateral move by the Palestinians and their supporters, and so it must be parried with a unilateral move by Israel.

As France continues to up the ante, so must Israel. France suggested—then claimed it was an error when Yigal Carmon caught it—that it would support a Palestinian “right of return,” a euphemism for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. So Israeli leaders know France is at least considering such a move. Paris is also contemplating opening an embassy in Ramallah.

What to do? Amit Segal points to an interesting piece by Yoram Ettinger (in Hebrew) on a meeting of Benjamin Netanyahu’s inner circle about whether, how, and where to apply sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria. Certainly this is under consideration apart from the French declaration of Palestinian statehood, but apparently the Israeli government is considering making such action a direct response to unilateral measures by European states, France included.

This makes sense: Unilateral moves that chip away at Israeli sovereignty will be met with unilateral moves that reclaim Israeli sovereignty. At the same time, it’s a highly controversial step that will no doubt earn passionate denunciations and maybe more. Israel has to decide whether the reward is worth the risk, and will likely at least wait to see what happens at the UN General Assembly next month.

But here’s a key quote Ettinger supplies from an unnamed participant in the meeting with Netanyahu: “It is not enough to close a French consulate in the face of recognition of a Palestinian state.” The logic is clear: recognition of a Palestinian state on disputed land would contravene the Oslo Accords and all that followed directly from that track. If France—or anybody else—is going to take a lighter to three decades of diplomacy and compromise, they’re going to get burned.

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Emmanuel Macron President Second French Vichy government

.@EmmanuelMacron
– affirme que @Tsahal_IDF tue des enfants intentionnellement
– n’a pas marché contre l’antisémitisme
– n’a rien fait contre l’antisémitisme
– n’a pas condamné le Hezbollah au Liban
– se réunit avec les mollahs
– Souhaite l’arrêt des livraisons d’armes#trahison

— Mad.Jo (@MadJo_fr) October 5, 2024

Dr. Eli David-tweet-5October2024-Emmanuel Macron President Second French Vichy government
.@EmmanuelMacron will be known as the president of the second Vichy government in France 🇫🇷
MadJo_fr-tweet-5October2024-
.@EmmanuelMacron
– affirme que @Tsahal_IDF
tue des enfants intentionnellement
– n’a pas marché contre l’antisémitisme
– n’a rien fait contre l’antisémitisme
– n’a pas condamné le Hezbollah au Liban
– se réunit avec les mollahs
– Souhaite l’arrêt des livraisons d’armes
#trahison
Translated from French by Grok
.@EmmanuelMacron
– claims that @Tsahal_IDF kills children intentionally
– did not march against antisemitism
– has done nothing against antisemitism
– has not condemned Hezbollah in Lebanon
– meets with the mullahs
– wishes for a halt to arms deliveries
#trahison

Dr. Eli David-tweet-5October2024-Emmanuel Macron President Second French Vichy government

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The Holocaust in France

https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/france.html

• Jewish Immigration from Eastern Europe to France
• The German Occupation of France
• The First Wave of Arrests in France: May 1941
• Concentration Camps in France
• The Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup
• The Deportation of the Jews from France

Paris, 12 June 1928. David and Renee-Rivka Ehrlich and their children.

Jewish Immigration from Eastern Europe to France

https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/france/jewish-immigration-from-eastern-europe-to-france.html

On the eve of the Second World War there were between 300,000 and 330,000 Jews in France. About two thirds of them were immigrants from Eastern Europe. Half of the immigrants arrived in France during the decade before the war. Many of them had first emigrated from Poland to Germany, which they left for France after the Nazi’s rise to power.

The Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe wanted to become integrated into French society, which they considered their adoptive country. Approximately one third of them received French citizenship. Most of their children attended the state-sponsored, secular, French school system. The Ort network of vocational schools initiated professional training for Jews, primarily in industry and agriculture. Most of the students in these schools were Jews who had immigrated to France from Eastern Europe. Many of the immigrants were employed in manual labor, but some of them obtained a higher education, studied French, pursued liberal professions and even acquired financial, social, political and intellectual status within French society, some volunteered to serve in the Foreign Legion of the French army. Prominent examples of the “upward mobility” of Eastern European immigrants to France include Helena Rubinstein and the Marxist thinker Charles Rappoport.

Former Polish Jews who had emigrated to France set up Jewish newspapers, which worked alongside the established French Jewish press. Organizations of Jewish immigrants cooperated with French Jewish organizations to produce significant cultural events, such as ceremonies held in 1939 in honor of the 150th anniversary of the French Revolution. Despite such cultural co-operations, many of the immigrants from Poland preferred to pray in synagogues of Jews from Eastern Europe. Some of the French Jews had reservations about the Eastern European Jewish immigrants and so created additional, exclusive, organizations.

During the 1930s many French Jews had reservations about the immigrants, claiming that they constituted an additional increase to the workforce in an economy that was already suffering from unemployment. Another argument was that the new immigrants would seek retribution against Nazi Germany for its actions against Jews, thereby entangling France in another war. In 1936 the Jewish Socialist Léon Blum was elected as Prime Minister. The result was a sharp increase in French antisemitism.

Most Jewish immigrants who successfully obtained French citizenship had immigrated to France from Eastern Europe before the First World War. The majority of the immigrants did not receive French citizenship, even after years of living in France. The importance of this status became very clear during the years of deportation (1942-1944), as the “stateless” Jews were the first to be deported.

A German military unit, marching down the Champs-Élysées; Paris, 4 July 1940

The German Occupation of France

https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/france/german-occupation.html

In May 1940 France was invaded by German forces. Within a month France was defeated. An armistice was signed ​on June 22, 1940 and following it France was divided into a German occupied zone in the North, a French governed zone in the South, also known as Vichy, which collaborated with the Germans and had certain authority also in the German-occupied zone, and a small demilitarized Italian occupied zone in the Southeast.

In July 1940, a special commission (commission de revision des naturialsation) was set up to review naturalizations issued after 1927. Trials to denaturalize French citizens went on throughout the war. About circa 15,000 persons were de-naturalized. Of the 15,000 persons denaturalized during the war about 6,500 were Jews.

Anti-Jewish measures were placed in both zones ​the cornerstone being the Statut des Juifs (anti-Jewish law), promulgated by the Vichy Government, on October 3, 1940​; this Statute was later amended with additional anti-Jewish measures. The First Jewish Statute called for the drastic decrease of Jewish involvement within French society. It announced who in France was considered a Jew, a definition stricter than determined in Nazi Germany. It removed Jews from the army, civil service and closed off top public offices while putting a quota on Jews working in various professions. A law passed on October 4, 1940 allowed for the detainment of Jews of foreign nationality. By February of 1941, 40,000 foreign Jews were detained in camps of the Unoccupied Zone alone. Three arrest operations in the occupied zone throughout 1941 led to the detainment of close to 9,000 Jews in camps of the occupied zone, most of foreign nationality. Over time, these camps would claim the lives of some 3,000 Jews, the first victims of the Holocaust in France.

A Second Statut des Juifs was issued on June 2, 1941, ​in which the definition of who was a Jew became more rigid. It used the term religion, which was poignant on account of France’s liberal tradition. The new Statute called for the removal of Jews from industry, business, and liberal professions. The Statutes were enacted in both zones and​ in France’s overseas territories.

From June 1942, Jews in the Northern Occupied Zone had to wear the yellow star on their clothing. It was not required in the Southern Zone. ​A first deportation to Auschwitz – the first one from Western Europe – left France on March 27 1942. The July 16-17, 1942 “Vel d’Hiv” roundup of Jews in Paris instigated the ​systematic mass deportations from France which included three transports per week, through the summer and fall of 1942. In November 1942, the Germans occupied the Southern Zone and continued the ongoing actions to arrest Jews and deport them to their extermination. Thousands of Jews fled to the now expanded Italian Zone to escape persecution. On September 8, 1943, the Germans entered and occupied the now former-Italian Zone.

On June 6, 1944, the Allies invaded the coast of Normandy in Northern France. In August 1944 Paris was liberated, and by the later part of the year France was free. Franco-German collaboration facilitated the arrests and deportations of approximately 78,000 ​Jews, about a quarter of French Jewry, to extermination camps.

May 1941, the flea market in the Jewish quarter in Paris.

The First Wave of Arrests in France: May 1941

https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/france/first-arrest-wave-may-1941.html

On the 14th of May, 1941, Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 40 were called to present themselves to the Paris police. They were summoned using a green postcard, for which this wave of arrests became known as the “billet vert”. More than 5,000 Paris Jews were taken into custody in this wave of arrests, almost all of them of Polish extraction. A few Jews of Czech and Austrian origin were also arrested. After their arrest, the prisoners were sent to the detention camps of Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande.

“They wake them from their sleep at six o’clock in the morning, and at seven o’clock they get a kind of unsweetened coffee and no bread,” wrote the Jewish journalist Jacques Bielinky in his diary, “These people, who have committed no crime and will not stand trial, suffer from a well-organized hunger.”

The Jews of Paris were gripped with crippling anxiety. Many were afraid to sleep in their own homes, while others avoided going out. Entire synagogues, particularly those catering to émigrés from Poland, now stood vacant. A Jewish aid organization, formed after the wave of arrests, collected large sums of money for the families of the detainees.

In the beginning of June, 1941, a new and more severe Jewish statute was passed, and the propaganda against the Jews became even more acerbic. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, many Jews with Soviet citizenship were arrested in France. On the 20th of August some 3,000 Jews were arrested in a sudden operation, undertaken with joint French-German collaboration. These arrests were assisted by detailed lists prepared by French police officers. “In Drancy a Jew is walking in the street, carrying a doll. He went out to buy a doll for his little girl, but on the way home he was arrested and interned in Drancy,” wrote Bielinky in his diary.

In Autumn 1941, during the High Holidays, the turnout in French synagogues was even more meager than usual, primarily due to fear of further arrests during the holidays. However, by November 1941 many of the detainees had been released. There was widespread relief in light of this event, and many Jews considered the worst to be behind them. But in December 1941 the arrests resumed. This time they were conducted by the Germans. While the arrests were being carried out, the Germans sought to assuage Jewish fears by encouraging them to volunteer to help the war effort; pamphlets were circulated, advertising the need for thousands of Jewish volunteers in the Ardennes region in Northeastern France. Hundreds of Jewish men were arrested and sent to the Compiègne internment camp, north-east of Paris, yet in the months that followed they were released. Thus, before the arrests resumed in March 1942 – deportation to the East began in July of that year – there were less than 10,000 Jews interned in the concentration camps in France.

Deportation of Jews to the Gurs concentration camp in France

Concentration Camps in France

https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/france/camps-in-france.html

When, in May 1940, the Germans invaded France, thousands of immigrants who held German citizenship or were of German descent were concentrated in the “Winter Stadium” (Vel’ d’Hiv) in Paris. These immigrants were considered enemy aliens. Among those detained were thousands of Jewish men, as well as Jewish women who had no children. The detainees were deported to the Gurs concentration camp near the French-Spanish border.

After the anti-Jewish legislation of October 1940, the Vichy regime broadened its actions to arrest and detain Jews in its territory. They were incarcerated in 15 concentration camps which included the camps of Gurs, Le Milles, Rivesaltes and St. Cyprien. By the beginning of 1941 some 40,000 Jews had already been arrested. In addition to those arrested, some 35,000 Jewish men were conscripted by force into the “Labor Corps”, or Compagnies de Travail. Almost all the foreign Jewish men, more than a third of the population of foreign Jews in France, were either conscripted into the Labor Corps or incarcerated in concentration camps.

The concentration camps provided only meager nutrition and faulty sanitary facilities. The prisoners had no possibility of appealing their internment or of trying to alleviate their conditions. The food provided was not enough to sustain even a bare minimum of existence. Hundreds of prisoners died due to disease, cold and starvation; thousands of prisoners reached a state of malnourishment.

Dozens of Jewish and Christian aid organizations, both French and international, tried to infiltrate the camps in order to aid the prisoners, primarily by supplying them with food and care for the children. These organizations succeeded in smuggling children out of the concentration camps and transferring them to orphanages which were under their control, to Christian foster homes and abroad.

During the period of German occupation 26 concentration camps operated in the Occupied Zone. The central concentration camp in France was Drancy, not far from Paris. Following the German occupation in 1940, Drancy was initially used as a camp for French and British prisoners of war. Beginning in the summer of 1941, when the roundup of Paris Jews began, Drancy was used to imprison Jewish detainees. From March 1942 Drancy became a transit camp for Jews who were being deported to the East.

In the vicinity of Paris and in Northeastern France there were additional concentration camps run by the Vichy regime. Among these were Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande, Besançon, Compiègne and others. Of the 54,000 Jews who passed through the camp of Compiègne, 50,000 were deported to their extermination. The Jews who had been arrested in the big waves of arrests, in May 1941 and July 1942, were interned in Pithiviers. Just as in the case of Drancy and Compiègne, beginning in July 1942, thousands of Jews were deported from Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande to Auschwitz.

The concentration camps in France continued operating during the summer of 1944, which marked the height of the battle for Paris and the Allied campaign to liberate France.

Entrance to the Vel’ d’Hiv (the Winter Stadium, or Velodrome d’Hiver), where Jews were detained en-masse in preparation for their deportation to concentration camps in France.

The Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup

https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/france/vel-dhiv-roundup.html

In May and June, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich (head of the SS Sicherheitsdienst, or SD), Fritz Sauckel (who organized the employment of forced labor for the German armament factories) and Adolf Eichmann (the SS official in charge of Jewish Policy), visited Paris. In June and July 1942 the French administration in charge of the Jewish question in France was replaced by a German one. As a result, French anti-Jewish policies were exacerbated. At dawn on the 16th of July, 1942, some 4,500 French policemen began a mass arrest of foreign Jews living in Paris, at the behest of the German authorities.

Over 11,000 Jews were arrested on the same day, and confined to the Winter Stadium, or Velodrome d’Hiver, known as the Vel’ d’Hiv, in Paris. The detainees were kept in extremely crowded conditions, almost without water, food and sanitary facilities. Within a week the number of Jews held in the Vel’ d’Hiv had reached 13,000, among them more than 4,000 children. Children between the ages of two and 16 were arrested together with their parents. Among those detained were Jews from Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. Though many Jews had been forewarned of the danger, they had assumed the deportation would only target men, as they had in the past; consequently, women and children did not go into hiding. In the week following the arrests, the Jews were taken from the Winter Stadium to the concentration camps of Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande in the Loiret region south of Paris, and to Drancy, near Paris. At the end of July and the beginning of August, the Jews who were being detained in these camps were separated from their children and deported. Before deportation, each prisoner’s head was shaved, and his or her body was subjected to a violent search. Most of the deportees were sent to Auschwitz and murdered. More than 3,000 babies and children were left alone in Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande. At the end of August and during the month of September these children were deported alone, among adult strangers, in sealed railway wagons, to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.

In the two months that followed the Vel’ d’Hiv arrests some 1,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz every two or three days. By the end of September 1942 almost 38,000 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz from France. In 1945 only some 780 of them remained alive.

The French reactions to the arrest and deportation of Jews varied between active collaboration with the Germans, indifference, and empathy toward the persecuted Jews. Most of the civil administration and the French policemen who had been allocated to conduct the arrest collaborated with the authorities. A minority, however, tried to aid Jews in escaping, either by turning a blind eye toward escapees, or by actively aiding such escapes and providing Jews with hiding places. Many elements within French society – leading figures in the Church, the press and the underground – expressed revulsion at the events and protested against them. Public condemnation of the arrest and deportation of Jews was primarily sparked by the difficult sight of women arrested along with their babies. This negative public sentiment found its way into the official reports of governmental authorities and even the police.

The Vel’ d’Hiv round ups, organized by the French authorities and carried out by French policemen, became engraved in French national memory as a symbol of the responsibility of the regime and the French nation for the Holocaust of the Jews of France.

Paris, 20 August 1941: Jews on the street before deportation.

The Deportation of the Jews from France

https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/france/deportation-from-france.html

The Jews in France were deported to the East at the height of a two year process of persecution and aggressive legislation. The laws passed included statutes defining who was to be considered a Jew, isolating Jews from French society, divesting them of their livelihood, incarcerating many of them, and registering their names with the police.

From winter 1940-1941 French Jews began to be imprisoned in concentration camps. Thousands of Jews were imprisoned in camps in the vicinity of Paris and Southwestern France. In May 1941 many more thousands of Jews were arrested.

In March 1942 some 1,000 Jews were arrested and sent to the Compiègne detention camp, from where they were deported to Auschwitz. The transports took two days to arrive at their destination. Most of those who were still alive at the end of the jouney were murdered.

In July 1942 some 23,000 Jews were arrested in Paris and in the remainder of the Occupied Zone. At the initiative of Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister of the Vichy regime, most of the Jewish children were deported to the East together with their parents. The arrests and deportations were conducted in a very violent manner, often enforcing the separation of couples, parents and children, and brothers and sisters. “A cruel destruction of Jewish families,” wrote the Parisian Jewish reporter, Jacques Bielinky. In August 1942 the arrest of thousands of additional Jews began in the territories of the Vichy regime. The arrested Jews were imprisoned in concentration camps and deported to their destruction in the East. “The deportations are creating tremendous pressures in the concentration camps and wreaking havoc within the Jewish families,” wrote Bielinky on the 18th of August 1942. “To date,” he continues, “nothing is known about the fate of those who have been deported.”

In September, Paris policemen arrested some 1,000 Jewish immigrants from Romania, and sent them to the concentration camp of Drancy. Almost all of them were murdered in the extermination camps in the East within three days of their arrest. In November another wave of mass-arrests was carried out in Paris. More than a thousand Jews of Greek origin were arrested and deported to the East.

The Jews reacted to the deportations by ceasing to cooperate with the German and French authorities, and the Jewish aid organizations which they had founded. Many Jews went into hiding in some 6,000 villages and small towns across France. The German and French authorities responded by organizing raids in rural areas, including the territories of the Vichy regime.

Activists in the Jewish aid organization “Amelot” sent packages to the arrested Jews, helped maintain contact with the deportees, and procured permits which helped Jews escape deportation. Furthermore, they saved Jews from deportation by hiding children and distributing forged documents.  The UGIF (l’Union Generale des Israelites de France), a forced representative organization for French Jews set up by the French and German authorities, succeeded in saving more than 1,400 Jewish children with French citizenship from deportation. Their parents, however, were deported.

Jewish organizations helped the children by providing social welfare, opening shelters and sending the children to the villages. Jews joined the Jewish Resistance in France, as well as the French Resistance. A few Jews tried to escape the deportations by converting to Catholicism. Thousands of Frenchmen tried to help the Jews hiden from the deportations. Many of them paid for this with their lives. “Let  us thank those who threaten us,” reads an editorial in a French Socialist newspaper, “for it is thanks to them that we must think dangerously, and thereby restore our own dignity.” Since 1962 a total of 3,925 French men and women have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among The Nations (as of January 2016).

A total of some 76,000 Jews from France, most of them from Paris, among them 11,000 children, were deported by train to the East. Most of the deportees were murdered in Auschwitz. Most of the deportations left France from the concentration camp of Drancy. The deportations continued even as the Allies had begun to liberate France. The last transport left France in August 1944, while the battle for Paris was being fought. Of all the Jews deported from France to the extermination camps in the East, a total of some 2,500 survived.

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