Round Up, The (ATOM Study Guide)

Rose Bosch's powerful new film, The Round Up, tells of the Rafle du Vel d'Hiv or the Great Raid of the Vel d'Hiv. This was one of the darkest episodes in France's history, the roundup of 13,000 Jews – including more than 4000 children – that took place on 16 and 17 July 1942. Those captured were herded into the Winter Velodrome, where they were kept for five miserable days without any food or medical care, except for that supplied by Quakers, the Red Cross and the few doctors and nurses allowed to enter. Conditions were barbaric: of the ten available toilets, five were sealed because their windows offered a way out and the others were blocked. There was only one tap. Those who tried to escape were shot on the spot. Five people took their own lives.

The Velodrome was a brief stop on the detainees' hellish journey. From there, the prisoners were taken to camps at Drancy, Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers. The children were separated from their parents by the French police immediately after their arrival in Drancy. The parents were transported to Auschwitz and gassed. The children stayed in Drancy, sometimes for weeks, without proper care or adequate food. Several babies and very young children died in Drancy due to the lack of care and the brutality of the French guards. Finally, they were all transported to Auschwitz and gassed upon their arrival.

It is estimated that 76,000 Jews were deported from France between 1940 and 1944. Only 2500 are believed to have survived the concentration camps. The Roundup depicted in this compelling and deeply moving film accounted for more than a quarter of the 42,000 Jews sent from France to Auschwitz in 1942, of whom only 811 came home at the end of the war. Of the 13,000 Jews seized on those two days, only twenty-five survived the War. 4051 children were among those slaughtered.

For decades the France refused to examine the implications of the Roundup. As director Rose Bosch says, 'The shame lies not just in the scale of the killing and collaboration, but also in France's subsequent failure to confront it'. In 1995 Jacques Chirac became the first French leader willing to admit that the French State had played an active role in the Holocaust. His powerful words resonate still: 'There can be no great nation, no national unity ... without a willingness to remember'.

The screenplay for the film is based closely on the experiences of Joseph Weisman, who was 11 at the time, and one of the very few to escape deportation. When interviewed about the film, the elderly Mr Weisman said: 'I have seen the film twice. But I actually did not see it the first time. From the very first scene, it was as if I was dragged right through the screen. I was back amid all that muddle of kids and old people, men, women, gendarmes, militamen. It was as if time had disappeared. Then on the second viewing, I forced myself to watch properly. No one could have told the story of the Rafle better. The cycle track, the way it looked, the way it felt, was just like in 1942'. This important story demands and deserves a broad audience. It is a symbol of French national guilt and outrage. It is a concrete manifestation of the Final Solution and the evil that was unleashed upon the world during those terrible years.

If one of the great joys of teaching arises from the opportunity to introduce young people to some of the greatest achievements of human civilisation – art, poetry, philosophy, literature – then a corollary of this must be that one of our greatest responsibilities as teachers is to confront the darkest excesses of human history. No student should be allowed to complete secondary college without having to ponder the atrocities of the Nazi regime. We must honour the dead by bearing witness to their terrible suffering. And we now stand on something of a tipping point in terms of World War Two history – soon, there will be no survivors left. This i