In 1967, the news magazine The New Candid publishes the good leaves of the book by Claude Lévy and Paul Tillard The Great Roundup of Vel d’Hiv, and called on the young designer Cabu to illustrate them. Sixteen plates in pen and black ink that plunge us into the heart of the tragedy. Drawings exhibited for the first time at the Shoah Memorial in Paris, as part of the 80th anniversary of the roundup of July 16 and 17, 1942.
These are drawings without words, that’s Riss’s phrase. And I consider that we could not leave them in a cardboard box, they had to be seen by as many people as possible, to explain what the horror of this tragedy was.
Veronique CabutCabu’s wife
When the book by Claude Lévy and Paul Tillard appears, it is a shock for many French people. 25 years after the events, the authors retrace, thanks to documents and above all testimonies, the course of the roundup of Jews from Paris and its suburbs: more than 13,000 people, adults and children, of whom 8,000 will be crammed into the Vélodrome d’Hiver , before their transfer to the transit camps. The authors point to the role of the French police and the Vichy government in this disastrous enterprise of purification, which led most of the deportees to death.
A revelation for public opinion, which is discovering that we are a long way from official history, as Laurent Joly, historian and author of The Vel d’Hiv Roundup: Paris, July 1942 (Editions Grasset): “You will continue to see until the 80s, books for the general public, school manuals which tell you that the Vel d’Hiv roundup is the Gestapo, it is the German soldiers (…) Cabu really makes the choice, almost militant, to represent only French police officers, because it is the historical truth“.
From Vel d’Hiv, these thousands of people will be transferred to the stations of Drancy, Bobigny, Le Bourget or even Pithiviers in Loiret, before being deported to Auschwitz. Pithiviers, from where six convoys left from the old station to the death camps. A station now transformed into a museum to never forget the horror. A new place of remembrance that the Shoah Memorial will inaugurate this Sunday, July 17, in the presence of the President of the Republic. Emmanuel Macron should deliver an “offensive” speech there, it is said in his entourage, against anti-Semitism.
To go further, the documentary The Roundup of Vel d’Hiv, tears and shame David Korn-Brzoza broadcast a few days ago on France 3, is still available for free replay on france.tv until November 8, 2022.
Cabu, drawings from the Vel d’Hiv roundup – until November 7, 2022 – Shoah Memorial, 17 rue Geoffroy l’Asnier 75004 Paris – Sunday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday night until 10 p.m. – Free entry.
Pithiviers station, place of memory and education – permanent exhibition – Place de la Gare, 45300 Pithiviers – Wednesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. until August 31, then Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. – Free admission