On July 16 and 17, 1942, the French police in occupied Paris arrested more than 13,000 Jews living in the city and turned them over to the Nazi concentration camp system. This was the largest of numerous mass arrests made by the French police. It was also the first to include women and children in significant numbers.
Paris now bears monuments, from small plaques to large statues and gardens, to these and other victims of Nazism and Vichy collaboration. We have visited several of them over our time in the city.
In this mini podcast episode about memory sites in the everyday streetscape, Abbie Coleman first discusses the Jardin mémorial des enfants du Vel d’Hiv (Memory Garden of the Vel d’Hiv Children), which commemorates the 4,000 children who were arrested and held in the Vélodrome d’Hiver indoor cycling stadium before being separated from their parents and deported to Auschwitz. She then evokes the statue of author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel in the Square du Temple and the experience of traces of history across Paris.
You can see the Jardin mémorial des enfants du Vel d’Hiv in this excerpt from the UTK History Club Instagram story featuring our trip, by Gracie Amburn.