Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day (officially Holocaust Martyrs’ & Heroes’ Remembrance Day) occurs on the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar and will be observed this year from sundown April 23 to sundown April 24. The date is a time of reflection to honor the over six million Jews killed in the Holocaust as well as survivors who endured its horrors. The day also honors the Jewish Resistance who fought Nazi oppression. There are two Holocaust Remembrance Days, one established by the United Nations and observed in Europe on January 27, reflecting the date of the liberation of the concentration/death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. In the United States we more strongly observe the date that the State of Israel established in 1951, one acknowledging memory of the April 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The first national Holocaust Remembrance event in the United States was held on April 28-29, 1979, in Washington, D.C. This year the local Holocaust Commission of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater will honor Yom HaShoah the evening of April 23 from 6:45-8:45 p.m. at Ohef Sholom Temple while the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond has a commemoration scheduled for April 27 from 2:00-5:00 p.m. It is common practice to memorialize victims with a recitation of names on Yom HaShoah, a ceremony meant to restore dignity to those killed during the Holocaust.
In addressing remembrance, recognition of Nazi crimes against humanity are evoked, beginning with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and continuing through the end of the war in 1945 and immediately thereafter. This year, in fact, marks 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany. As attention is given to honor victims and survivors, however, perpetrators who acted in collaboration with the Nazis are often overlooked as contributors to genocide.
I am a French historian and so my focus is strongly on what happened to Jews living in France during the Holocaust, a time when the French officially voted to end their democratic republic and collaborate with Hitler. This period in French history is known as “Vichy France,” a particularly infamous time when many French leaders and people betrayed their national ideals of “liberty, equality, and fraternity.”
French betrayal included collaborating with the Germans in the Holocaust, deporting around 77,000 Jews to camps in the east from which only around 2500 survived. One of the most notorious events in French history occurred on July 16-17, 1942, when 4500 French police rounded up 13,152 Jews in Paris and the suburbs, holding 8160 of them in a bicycle stadium near the Eiffel Tower known as the Vélodrome d’Hiver. The German orders to the Vichy government called for the arrest of adult men, but French leaders decided to include women and children in the roundup, and as a result, 4115 of the 8160 detained in the Vél d’Hiv were under 16 years of age. Held for 4-5 days in the stadium, people suffered terribly from fear, but also from lack of food, water, medicine, and sanitation facilities. The summer heat inside the stadium was also unbearable and many people died as a result; some committed suicide. Once the stadium was cleared, the captured Jews were deported on French train cars, again reflecting Vichy collaboration.
While not all French people were Nazi collaborators and many hid Jews and worked to save them and/or defeat Nazi Germany, the story of the Vél d’Hiv reminds us how easy it is for nations to lose their way and forget their responsibilities to humanity. In fact, in France today, the National Day of Remembrance commemorating the atrocity of the Vél d’Hiv follows just two days after the French national holiday of Bastille Day celebrating the glory of the French Revolution. Thus, every year the country acknowledges its democratic ideals on July 14 and confronts the history of its betrayal of those ideals on July 16.
Each Yom HaShoah I honor the memory of the Fersztenfeld family, Solomon, Dvorah, and their 15-year-old daughter, Esther, arrested in the early morning hours of July 16 at their home in Paris. Held in the Vél d’Hiv, they were first deported to a camp in France called Pithiviers and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau where they perished. The family was also separated; Dvorah was deported first in August of 1942 while Solomon and Esther followed later in September. By the time the latter two arrived at Birkenau on September 20, 1942, Dvorah was already deceased. Solomon was gassed on arrival while Esther lived for nearly six weeks and died on October 28, 1942.
I take students to France and Poland to study the Holocaust in a course called “Paris-Auschwitz.” In Paris, beneath the shadow of the magnificent Eiffel Tower, I lead students to the Vél d’Hiv memorial garden. We observe the wall of names identifying all the children who died because of the Vél d’Hiv roundup. We honor Esther and find her name on the wall.
I believe personally that there are many lessons to learn from this episode in French history, now perhaps more than ever. Consider taking a few moments on April 23-24 to remember the victims of the Holocaust and reflect on the atrocious outcomes of racism and antisemitism.