the unpublished testimony of the last survivors

Published

FRANCE 3

Article written by

N. Boubetra, M. Birden, L. Marquès, B. Gerin, P. Brame – France 3

France Televisions

80 years ago, 13,000 Jews, mostly women and children, were arrested by the French police and transferred to the velodrome d’hiver, before being taken to the death camps. The Shoah Memorial has launched a national campaign to collect the testimony of the last survivors of the Vel d’Hiv roundup.

Light on Tatiana Wajnberg, who is about to unveil the film of her life, a document for history. Dive into the memory of a survivor of the Vel d’Hiv, saved in extremis by a gendarme. “My mother and I were separated from my grandmother, I was a cute little girl, it seems, I think I was sick, I had a cold. And a policeman said to my mother: ‘Madam, the toilets are over there’. And my mother immediately understood that the toilet was in fact the exit“, she recalls.

Tatiana Wajnberg was three months old. On July 16 and 17, 1942, more than 13,000 Jews, a third of them children, were arrested by the French police. Transferred to the winter velodrome, they will be detained, before being transported to Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis), in particular. Today, Tatiana Wajnberg at the age of the roundup, 80 years old. She wanted to testify for the first time. “I want people to know that it existed, that it concerned not only a whole section of the population, but also all those who (…) voluntarily participated in this roundup, she said. To prevent this from happening again, and so that everyone can keep a bit of humanity in themselves that allows them to resist when the orders are too difficult, or too contrary to their morals.

His testimony will be kept at the Shoah Memorial in Paris, which has launched an appeal to find the last survivors of the tragedy.


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