On the morning of August 20, 1941, Parisian municipal police officers, backed by German soldiers, swept through the streets of Paris’s 11th arrondissement. This operation was ordered in response to demonstrations organized by the Communist Party against the occupying forces, in which a large number of young Jews from the neighborhood had participated. Most of the metro stations were sealed off.
Jews who had been registered at the police station, in accordance with the German ordinance of September 27, 1940, were arrested directly at their homes. The same fate befell those who were not registered but were known to belong to Jewish families in the district. This roundup took the Jews by surprise and, unlike the so-called “green ticket” roundup of May 14, 1941, it was carried out under the pretext of a routine identity check at the Police Prefecture.
The 4,232 men arrested in the 11th arrondissement—both foreigners and French nationals—were transported by Parisian buses to the Drancy internment camp.
The roundup continued over the following days in other districts with large Jewish populations and in the nearby suburbs, lasting until August 25. It was part of Hitler’s campaign against Judeo-Bolshevism. It was believed that the Jews were intended to provide labor for the Nazis.
The actions of a zealous Pétainist police force, eager to please the occupying forces, led to the transfer of several thousand Jews to Drancy amid near-universal indifference.
This roundup was a prelude to the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup of July 1942, during which more than 13,000 Jews—children, the elderly, women, and men—were condemned to extermination by the French police and the Nazis.
References:
– Serge Klarsfeld, 1983, *Vichy-Auschwitz*, Fayard, Volume 1,
– Berlière, Jean-Marc, 2018 , *Police During the Dark Days: France, 1939–1945*, Perrin.
