In January 1944, my Great Uncle was living in Couhé-Vérac — a small town in Western France. As a doctor in World War I he won the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre, France’s two highest medals. But now he wore a Star of David and no medals.
One day his neighbor’s mother died and the neighbor went to the town hall to report the death.
While there, he overheard Germans asking for my Great Uncle’s address as part of a roundup of Jews for deportation. The neighbor rushed to his house and my Great Uncle hid in the woods. Later, he escaped to a remote farmhouse owned by the neighbor’s father-in-law, and survived in hiding there until liberation.*
“Roundup” was a terrifying word for Jews in France and all over Europe in the 1940’s. The most notorious French roundup was the Vel d’Hiv Roundup. I’ll let the website of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, describe it.
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. . . . .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.
Now let’s look at some recent stories:
President Donald Trump said Monday that U.S. immigration officials will start raids after July 4 as part of a nationwide roundup of undocumented immigrants. Bloomberg, July 1, 2019.
Trump says immigration roundup will start next week. Reuters, June 18, 2019
Trump administration plans unprecedented roundup of 2,000 family members in deportation raids. ABC, June 22, 2019.
It looks like “roundups” is a perfectly acceptable way to describe Trump’s plans, as opposed to “concentration camps,” which was so hurtful to the likes of Liz Cheney. And yet, we hear no objections from the media and the administration or even Liz, to “roundups.”
Unlike “concentration camps,” “roundups” no longer has a direct association with the Holocaust. It could be its popular culture use as the iconic “Round up the usual suspects,” from Casablanca. And it could also be our lack of historical memory and inadequate history education.
So let’s see what Vel dHiv and its aftermath has in common with Trump policies in the border camps and planned roundups:
Planned raids rounding up children and families.
Crowded conditions
Unsanitary facilities
Separation of children from families
Targets are “illegal” immigrants
Are you beginning to understand why Jews and others with a sense of history are sickened by headlines using “roundups?” To us it’s as chilling and horrifying as “concentration camps.”
As with “concentration camps” many will rush to make distinctions — e.g.,
The Val d’Hiv roundup led to death camps. We’re merely deporting them.
The Border camps are not “death camps.”
I ask:
Aren’t the conditions bad enough already?
Shouldn’t we do something now, before our roundups and border camps evolve into something worse, even if not Auschwitz?
Must the roundups have the exact result of those in 1942 to be immoral and Un-American?
Do you have any empathy left if you aren’t moved by the terror of families anticipating arrest, deportation and perhaps worse?
Obviously, “roundups” “lacks the charge of “concentration camps.” That’s why it’s used in headlines and by the administration so casually. But it should be in the same category as concentration camps because it represents horrors inflicted on families and children whose common “crime” was seeking survival or a better life. And we should be disgusted by that.
Given the history above, shouldn’t you be horrified by seeing “roundup” in headlines?
Aren’t the perpetrators and those who look away today’s “usual suspects?”
*In 1998, the farmers were admitted to the Righteous Among Nations at my recommendation.