page_title: Vélodrome d'Hiver
section_title: Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup
hierarchical_section_title: Vélodrome d'Hiver / Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Rafle du Vel d'Hiv, jardin du souvenir, plaque apposée au n° 8 du boulevard de Grenelle
context_page_description: The Vélodrome d'Hiver, colloquially Vel' d'Hiv', was an indoor bicycle racing cycle track and stadium on rue Nélaton, not far from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. As well as a cycling track, it was used for ice hockey, wrestling, boxing, roller-skating, circuses, bullfighting, spectaculars, and demonstrations. It was the first permanent indoor track in France and the name persisted for other indoor tracks built subsequently.
  In July 1942, French police, acting under orders from the German authorities in Occupied Paris, used the velodrome to hold thousands of Jews and others who were victims in a mass arrest. The Jews were held at the velodrome before they were moved to a concentration camp in the Parisian suburbs at Drancy and then to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. The incident became known as the "Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup".
context_section_description: The Vel' d'Hiv' was available for hire to whoever wanted it. Among those who booked was Jacques Doriot, who led France's largest fascist party, the PPF. It was at the Vel' d'Hiv', among other venues, that Doriot, with his Hitler-like salute, roused crowds to join his cause.
  In 1940, the Germans invaded France and occupied its northern half, including Paris. On 7 June 1942, they completed plans for Opération Vent printanier ("Operation Spring Breeze") to arrest 28,000 Jews using 9,000 French policemen. Arrests started early on 16 July and were complete by the next day. Among those who helped in the round-up were 3,400 young members of Doriot's PPF.
  Needing a place to hold the detainees, the Germans demanded the keys of the Vel' d'Hiv' from its owner, Jacques Goddet, who had taken over from his father Victor and from Henri Desgrange. The circumstances in which Goddet surrendered the keys remain a mystery, and the episode occupies only a few lines in his autobiography.
  The Vel' d'Hiv' had a glass roof, which had been painted dark blue to help avoid attracting bomber navigators. The dark glass roof, combined with windows screwed shut for security, raised the temperature inside the structure. The 13,152 people held there had no lavatories; of the 10 available, five were sealed because their windows offered a way out, and the others were blocked. The arrested Jews were kept there for five days with only water and food brought by Quakers, the Red Cross and the few doctors and nurses allowed to enter.
  Those arrested were sent to an internment camp in half-completed tower blocks at Drancy and then to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. Only 400 survived.
caption: Commemorative plaque to the victims held in the Vel' d'Hiv' after the 16–17 July 1942 roundup of Jews in Paris.
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