The Roundup
Émile Hennequin, director of the city police, ordered on 12 July 1942 that "the operations must be effected with the maximum speed, without pointless speaking and without comment."
Beginning at 4:00 a.m. on 16 July 1942, 13,152 Jews were arrested according to records of the Préfecture de police, of which 5,802 (44%) were women and 4,051 (31%) were children. An unknown number of people, warned by the French Resistance or hidden by neighbors or benefiting from a lack of zeal, deliberate or accidental, of some policemen, escaped being rounded up. Conditions for the arrested were harsh: they could take only a blanket, a sweater, a pair of shoes and two shirts with them. Most families were split up and never reunited.
After arrest, some Jews were taken by bus to an internment camp in an incomplete complex of apartments and apartment towers in the northern suburb of Drancy. Others were taken to the Vélodrome d'hiver in the 15th arrondissement, which had already been used as a prison in a roundup in the summer of 1941.
Read more about this topic: Vel' D'Hiv Roundup