Visit to the Shoah Memorial and wandering in the Marais

The heat wave finally broke on Sunday May 31. It was still a bit muggy, but the high had dropped from 33C to 24C. We decided to go to an exhibit at the Mémorial de La Shoah which we had read about in The New York Times. The Shoah Memorial opened to the public in January 2005 and has a permanent exhibition that focuses on the story of French Jews during the war, a documentation centre, and a wall of the names of the over 75,000 Jews, including 11, 400 children who were deported from France between 1942-44.

The temporary exhibit was entitled: Images de la Rafle du 'Billet Vert' (Images of the Green Ticket Roundup). It dealt with the discovery of an exceptional set of 98 images that documents the first mass arrest of Jews in France, called "billet vert" (green ticket), on May 14, 1941, ordered by the Nazis and organized by the French authorities. The exhibit was put together by Jean-Marc Dreyfus, a Holocaust historian at the University of Manchester and Lior Lalieu, the director of photo collections at the Shoah Memorial. Professor Dreyfus was the author of the recent New York Times article, which I refer to in my summary of the exhibit.

Poster for the Exhibit

At the entrance to the exhibit

The text to the exhibit was only in French and while we were able to understand quite a bit, there were some details that we did not catch. Google Translate was helpful but it is a bit onerous to manoeuvre the camera when there is small text.

In September 2020, two amateur collectors came upon five contact sheets of photographs on laminated large cardboard sheets at a flea market in Reims. They brought the contact sheets to Ms. Lalieu, the director of photo collections at the Shoah Memorial, who analysed the images to identify as many people as possible. Of the 98 photographs only ten are already known to specialists on the subject and had been published. They are marked with a cross on the original plates. The others are unpublished.

The contacts

From the contact sheets

The five contact sheets are part of a series of some 200 plates, most of them representing German soldiers and Nazi dignitaries in Paris between 1940 and 1941. It is known that the only photographers authorized to approach German soldiers in training and Nazi personalities are the photographers of the Propaganda Kompanie or PK, created by Joseph Goebbels in 1938. The PK was a combat unit composed of professional photographers and cameramen responsible not only for documenting the campaigns of the Wehrmacht, but also to follow certain repressive actions in occupied countries. Once photos passed censorship, they were given to the collaborationist press.

The 98 photos bring a different reality from the few photos released by the collaborationist press. The families of the victims are represented under the eyes of curious people and neighbours. The photos on the contact sheets follow the progress of the roundup, almost minute by minute. Both the perpetuators and well as the victims are clearly identified.

The operation was organized by Theordor Dannecker (1913-45), the envoy of Adolf Eichmann in Paris, responsible for 'Jewish affairs' in France and a member of the Gestapo. Also involved was François Bard (1899-1944) , the freshly appointed Prefect of Police in Paris. A photographer with the Nazi propaganda unit in the city was on hand to observe.

As Professor Dreyfus has noted, the photos function today not as propaganda, the purpose for which they were originally produced, but as fragments of truth that allow us to better understand the way the roundup was organized and conducted and also to get a glimpse of the victims' shock and fear. This group of photos was meant to document a Nazi success story.

Ms. Lalieu has identified the photographer as Harry Croner, a photographer, who was drafted into the German army and sent to occupied France. Croner had a stellar career in postwar West Berlin as a famous cinema and opera photographer. Ironically, he was half-Jewish himself and spent the end of the war in a labour camp.

The story begins with the trap: At the beginning of May 1941, on the basis of the previous year's census, about 6,494 foreign Jews, mostly Polish males between 18 to 60 years old living in the Paris region received a summons hand-delivered by a French policeman indicating that they needed to report on May 14, 1941 for a "status review" "examen de situation", accompanied by a relative or friend. That day, some 3,700 men obeyed the summons, which were printed on light green paper (it became known as the 'green ticket roundup') for what they believed would be a check of their immigration and identity papers. They were summoned to a number of locations in Paris- including some police offices, and a sports facility in the 11th arrondissement (the Gymnase Japy), where these photos were taken.

There had been discussions among the community as to whether the summons should be obeyed, but a number of the men had been in France for a while, often fleeing anti-Semitism in their native countries, and had enlisted in the French army at the beginning of the war and even fought for France. They were the family breadwinners and expected a simple status review.

The Japy Gymnasium was the main site requisitioned for the operation. 1,061 Jews had been summoned to appear at that location at 7:00 a.m. Eight hundred responded. Upon arrival, they went through a checkpoint and were arrested and detained inside the gymnasium. The new photos show that they were sent to the bleachers.

The person accompanying them (mostly women) were asked to go to the arrested person's home and return with a suitcase containing personal effects. When they returned, as the images now show, they were barred from reuniting with their male relatives. We can see the women's bewilderment. We see couples as they part.

The green ticket issued to Szmul Drut

Photo of Dannecker and another example of the green ticket summons (on the lower right)

The first stage of the roundup was nothing short of an ambush. The men were received by the police at the entrance of the gymnasium; they bade goodbye to their families, even as a line of women and children grew. The industrial neighbourhood had been entirely cordoned off. Neighbours looked on from the windows.

Line up outside the Japy gymnasium

Gathering in front of the Japy Gymnasium

Separation and a goodby kiss as the French police look on

Asking for explanations

Inside the Gymnase Japy. A German delegation with SS Theodor Dannecker and a French delegation led by the Prefect of Police, François Bard, came to inspect the system.

The arrested men are crowded into the bleachers

Returning with suitcases

Returning with a bundle of personal items

Concern mounting outside the gymnasium

Arrested men looking out from the bleacher area in the gymnasium-scene below.
Neighbours peering out of windows.

At around noon, the men left the gymnasium under the guard of the police officers and boarded requisitioned buses for their transfer to Austerliz station.

Loading the buses

The photos show almost a minute by minute detail of the operation

There were 3,700 men arrested in Paris at the various summoning places. They were transferred to the Gare d'Austerlitz to be sent to be interned in the camps of Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande.

At the train station

This picture shows Dannecker supervising the transfer of the Jews into the trains; a French policeman has his back to the photographer and the Jews are being loaded into the train. The comments on this photo in the exhibit was that the photo showed the hierarchy of the operation with the German officers in the foreground.

Clear picture of Dannecker

Four convoys of passenger wagons were formed, two convoys with 2,140 men went to Beaune-la-Rolande and two convoys with 1,570 men went to Pithiviers. They arrived on the afternoon of May 14.

Harry Croner took pictures at the camps a day after the roundup.

These photos were taken the day after the roundup. The men had to move into cold, unsanitary barracks under construction. The straw that will serve as mattresses is still outside the barracks.

At Pithiviers, in front of the barracks

At the camps- barbed wire fences

Some 700 of these Jewish men were later liberated, or escaped as they worked on nearby farms. About 3,000 of those taken that day were deported about a year later to Auschwitz-Birkenau; of that group, just a scant few returned.

One year after these photos were taken, in mid-July 1942, about 13,000 Jews-mostly women and children were rounded up, pulled out of Paris apartments and taken to an indoor sporting arena, the Vélodrome d'Hiver, in southwest Paris. They received little food or water and were subject to abject conditions. They were sent from the stadium to the internment camps of Drancy, Pithiviers and Beaune-la Rolande. Later, a majority were sent on to Auschwitz. Only a single photograph of that roundup is known to exist. With the discovery and exhibition of this new group of "billet vert" photographs, the understanding of the course of the Holocaust in France has been further revealed.

Since the new photographs were discovered, Ms. Lalieu asked for help in identifying the people in the photos. A few have been identified, and there were some examples in the exhibit:

Jean Touret recognised his grandfather Majer Schwarcz in a photo at Gare d'Austerlitz. Majer Schwartz

was born in 1897 in Czechoslovakia. He had lived in France since 1926 and was married with six children. He was a tailor and lived in the 18e. He was arrested on May 14, 1941, during the green ticket roundup and interned at Pithiviers before being deported to Auschwitz on July 17, 1942. He never knew that most of the rest of his family were part of the Val D'hiver roundup on July 16, 1942. They were deported from Pithiviers to Auschwitz in August 1942. Only two daughters were not deported.

The picture on the left of two sisters and a brother from the Rubenstein family outside the Japy Gymnasium was recognised by a neighbour of the family that lived in the same apartment building in the 11th. Only one of the sisters survived.

There was information about the photographer Harry Croner (1903-1992) and his postwar career. He was half-Jewish (through his father) and his status changed depending on the interpretation of the Nuremberg laws. In 1940, Croner was drafted and in 1941 was sent to Paris as a member of the PK photography unit. Shortly after the green ticket photos were taken he was kicked out of the German Army after it was discovered his father was Jewish. Between 1938 to 1943, he had a photography store called Foto Croner in Berlin. In May, 1943 he was forced to close his studio. In 1944, he was sent to a work camp and in March 1945 was taken prisoner by the Americans. On his release in April 1946, he returned to Berlin and reopened his photography studio. He photographed many stars of cinema and theatre and died in 1992 in Berlin.

Information about Harry Croner-picture of his photography store

A number of pictures from Berlin Film Festivals

The picture on the bottom left was Marlene Dietrich leaving concert hall in Berlin, May 3, 1960

There were some final pictures composed by Alexis Lecomte (urban historian) which showed the 1941 photographs placed in relationship to the Japy Gymnasium today.

In front of the Japy Gymnasium

The farewell kiss at the entrance to the building

It was a very interesting exhibition. The discovery of the photos, the research and identification of the 1941 green ticket protagonists and victims and the identity of the photographer was fascinating. While originally intended as propaganda to show the successful arrest of foreign Jews, the majority of the photographs that were not initially reprinted show a very different picture of heartbreak and anguish as well as the minute details of the operation. It also clearly shows the complicity of the French police with this initial series of arrests.

After the exhibition, we decided to wander in the Marais, which is one of the few areas in Paris where stores are allowed to be open on Sundays. Most of the streets are pedestrian and bikes only on Sundays.

Rue Vieille du Temple (we actually stayed in a tiny apartment on this street for three months in 2011).

Stopping for an espresso and pastel de nata at Comme à Lisbonne.

Then we stopped to pick up some treats at Sacha Finkelsztajn, located on Rue des Rossiers.

Outside of the yellow house. In business, since 1947

We got a piece of poppy seed cake and a piece of apple cake

We wandered over to Merci, the well-known concept store on Blvd. Beaumarchais. They always have the same Fiat parked in the front of the store. This time it was filled with tennis balls as the French Open is on.

We stopped to rest at Merci Noir (their coffee shop) and Alain had a noisette.

Then a bit of a hike back to the Canal Saint Martin area, where we planned to have dinner.

Playing boules

Paris est magique-- we agree

The Canal

Unfortunately, the restaurant where we had planned to have dinner at was full and there was going to be over an hour wait to be served. They only take reservations for groups of four or more.

We walked back along the canal and decided to have light dinner at La Cidrerie. Their patio on the canal was full, so we decided to eat inside.