It was in the spring of 1967 that the newspaper The new Candide calls on Cabu to illustrate the good pages of the book The great Vel d’Hiv roundup, by Claude Lévy and Paul Tillard. On July 16 and 17, 1942, 12,884 Jews were arrested by the French police and handed over to the Germans. A book that brings together testimonies on this tragic episode of the Second World War. “It marked him. Moreover, he will write a few years later that he had nightmares while illustrating it“, underlines his wife Véronique Cabut to franceinfo. The famous cartoonist, assassinated in January 2015 during the attack against Charlie Hebdo, was only 29 years old when he made them.
The designer is overwhelmed by what he discovers: a strong emotion that he translates into his drawings: “What strikes me is the strength of his graphic talent. It makes us pass all the emotions, it makes us pass the written word, it makes us pass the tears, it makes us pass the tragedy. These children who are alone in the Vel’d’Hiv, who no longer know where to go… They have lost their parents. He tells us a story. I think that’s why he had to be there, at the Shoah Memorial.” she points out. This is where these illustrations are exhibited during the exhibition “Cabu, drawings from the Vel d’Hiv roundup, from 1er July to November 7, 2022.
#Inauguration of the exhibition event of the -very moving- drawings by Cabu on the roundup of the Vél d’Hiv, never seen since their publication in 1967.
In the presence of his wife and Laurent Joly.
Shoah Memorial Paris 4th
From July 1 to November 7https://t.co/291TWTZGQJ pic.twitter.com/MYQzz2KjlV— Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah (@Fondation_Shoah) July 1, 2022
There is only one photo of the roundup: that of the arrival at Vel d’Hiv of the buses carrying the arrested Jews. Cabu’s drawings are therefore very precious: they give visual force to the testimonies.
“He will try to translate into sketches the testimonies he has read about people who go crazy, who have to be put on stretchers, about a woman who escapesdetails the historian Laurent Joly is the curator of this exhibition. It is extremely faithful to what is told in the testimony, this woman who turns around, who casts a frightened look. The drawing shows exactly that. Indeed, some drawings which are strictly faithful to reality, and others which are there to strike the imagination, which are there to make us understand the immensity of the crime which took place in Paris on July 16, 1942.”
Among the most striking drawings: that of the little girl. Cabu was inspired by the story of Liza, aged 6 and a half in July 1942. “It’s upsetting. If you look at her eyes, she is completely sad. She is lost, she has her little yellow star and her doll. What will become of her? Meanwhile, his father and mother are arrested by the French police. Also, there is the depth of the drawing and an angle with the little girl. And then behind, there’s all the decor beyond the door“, analyzes Véronique Cabut.
These sixteen drawings had never been seen since their publication in 1967. As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv roundup in a few days, they appear to be a formidable tool for transmitting memory.
The exhibition Cabu – Drawings of the Rafle du Vel d’Hiv is on view in Paris at the Shoah Memorial until November 7.
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