Paris, 1942: An Extraordinary Witness to the Deportation of Jews

A new book by Frédéric Anquetil tells the story of Annette Monod Leiris, a Quaker who was practically the only person able to help the thousands of Jews who were rounded up by the French Vichy authorities in July 1942, and detained in horrific conditions in a Parisian cycling stadium before being deported to the death camps.

Annette, whose role during the infamous “Vél d’Hiv” round-up is also shown in the 2010 French film “La Rafle“, went on after the war to work tirelessly for prisoners, and also helped set up the Association of Christians for the Abolition of Torture, or ACAT, which is still going strong today.

Frédéric Anquetil will be at the International Quaker Centre in Paris at 2:00 pm on Sunday, February 3, 2019 to give a talk about his book, “L’ange du Vél d’Hiv” (The Angel of the Vel d’Hiv round-up).

A poem for Armistice Day

The Dead

In the wind that blows
The veils of widows
All float on one side

And the mingled tears
Of a thousand sorrows
In one stream glide.

Pressing each other close the dead
Who own no hatred and no flag,
Their hair veneered with clotted blood,
The dead are all on the same side.

In the one clay where endlessly
Beginnings blend with the world that dies
The bothered dead lain cheek to cheek
Today atone for the same defeat.

Divided sons, fight on, fight on,
You lacerate humanity
And tear the earth apart in vain,
The dead are all on the same side;

Under the earth no more than one
One field, one single hope abide,
As for the universe can only be
One combat and one victory.

René Arcos, translated from the French