Holocaust: Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv): The government of Vichy France orders the mass arrest of 13,152 Jews who are held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver in Paris before deportation to Auschwitz.
The Holocaust
The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were committed primarily through mass shootings across Eastern Europe and poison gas chambers in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland. Separate Nazi persecutions killed millions of other non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term Holocaust is sometimes used to include the murder and persecution of non-Jewish groups.
Vel' d'Hiv Roundup
The Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup was a mass arrest of Jews in Paris on 16–17 July 1942 by Vichy French police at the behest of the German occupational authorities. Occurring during World War II, Jews arrested during the roundup were deported to Nazi Germany and targeted for extermination as part of the Holocaust. It was one of several measures aimed at eradicating French Jews in both the area of France under direct German occupation and the so-called "zone libre" that took place in 1942 as part of Opération Vent printanier. Planned by René Bousquet, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Theodor Dannecker and Helmut Knochen, the roundup was the largest deportation of Jews from France.
Vichy France
Vichy France, officially the French State, was a French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II, established as a result of the French capitulation after the defeat against Germany. It was named after its seat of government, the city of Vichy.
Mass arrest
A mass arrest occurs when police apprehend large numbers of suspects at once. This sometimes occurs at protests. Some mass arrests are also used in an effort to combat gang activity. This is sometimes controversial, and lawsuits sometimes result. In police science, it is deemed to be good practice to plan for the identification of those arrested during mass arrests, since it is unlikely that the officers will remember everyone they arrested.