World War II · Film · 2010
The Round Up
La Rafle
In Montmartre in the summer of 1942 an eleven-year-old boy wears the yellow star to school, until the night French police come for his family and thousands of others.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 3 places.
Stop 1: Montmartre, Paris
Jo and his friends play on the steps of the Butte while neighbors split between those who help Jews and those who insult them.
Stop 2: Vélodrome d'Hiver, Paris
Key location
Arrested at dawn, the families are crammed into the stadium, where a nurse and a few firemen try to help them.
Stop 3: Beaune-la-Rolande camp
Torn from their parents, the children wait behind barbed wire, and Jo decides to try to escape.
What really happened
From June 1942 Jews in the occupied zone had to wear the yellow star. On 16 and 17 July about 13,000 foreign and stateless Jews in Paris were arrested by the French police in the Vel d'Hiv Roundup, organized with the German authorities, and families with children were locked in the Vélodrome d'Hiver for days in terrible conditions.
The film is built from survivors' testimonies, above all that of Joseph Weismann, who escaped from the Beaune-la-Rolande camp as a boy, and from the memories of Annette Monod, a Red Cross nurse who stayed with the children. Most of the others were deported to Auschwitz within weeks, and almost none of the children returned.
Where to watch
Checking streaming services…
Full details
- Original title
- La Rafle
- Directed by
- Roselyne Bosch
- Countries
- France, Germany, Hungary
- Languages
- French, German
- Released
- 2010
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Holocaust
- True story
