La rafle de la rue Sainte-Catherine, Lyon, février 1943
J.W. Goda, Norman
La rafle de la rue Sainte-Catherine, Lyon, février 1943 - 2022.
80
On February 9, 1943, in the occupied French city of Lyon, the Gestapo raided the second floor of a nondescript building in the alleyway of Rue Sainte-Catherine. Here, at the Lyon office of the Union générale des israélites de France (UGIF), they arrested 86 Jews. Most were sent to the extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor in nine different convoys in 1943. Three of the deportees survived the war.The Rue Sainte-Catherine raid, Lyon’s largest roundup of Jews, became a forgotten crime. It was only adjudicated in 1987, when Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo in Lyon from 1942 to 1944, was tried for crimes against humanity. Little has been written about the roundup. Even during Barbie’s trial, the event was overshadowed by other crimes, most notably the Gestapo’s abduction and deportation in April 1944 of 44 Jewish children hidden in the remote village of Izieu.By Nazi standards, the Rue Sainte-Catherine roundup was small. Nevertheless, it demonstrates how the Final Solution was improvised in areas where the Gestapo, understaffed and underinformed, was equally if not more concerned with eradicating local resistance. The representation of the roundup at Barbie’s trial is also critical. In Holocaust trials, the courtroom shapes history. For French Jewish leaders, the raid had to meet the criteria of a crime against humanity. Jews arrested solely as Jews fit the definition best and best represented the Holocaust in France. However, trial discourse also had to confront the narrative of UGIF’s “collaboration” with the Nazis, which remained prevalent in the 1980s and formed a major part of the defense offered by Barbie’s notorious attorney, Jacques Vergès.
La rafle de la rue Sainte-Catherine, Lyon, février 1943 - 2022.
80
On February 9, 1943, in the occupied French city of Lyon, the Gestapo raided the second floor of a nondescript building in the alleyway of Rue Sainte-Catherine. Here, at the Lyon office of the Union générale des israélites de France (UGIF), they arrested 86 Jews. Most were sent to the extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor in nine different convoys in 1943. Three of the deportees survived the war.The Rue Sainte-Catherine raid, Lyon’s largest roundup of Jews, became a forgotten crime. It was only adjudicated in 1987, when Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo in Lyon from 1942 to 1944, was tried for crimes against humanity. Little has been written about the roundup. Even during Barbie’s trial, the event was overshadowed by other crimes, most notably the Gestapo’s abduction and deportation in April 1944 of 44 Jewish children hidden in the remote village of Izieu.By Nazi standards, the Rue Sainte-Catherine roundup was small. Nevertheless, it demonstrates how the Final Solution was improvised in areas where the Gestapo, understaffed and underinformed, was equally if not more concerned with eradicating local resistance. The representation of the roundup at Barbie’s trial is also critical. In Holocaust trials, the courtroom shapes history. For French Jewish leaders, the raid had to meet the criteria of a crime against humanity. Jews arrested solely as Jews fit the definition best and best represented the Holocaust in France. However, trial discourse also had to confront the narrative of UGIF’s “collaboration” with the Nazis, which remained prevalent in the 1980s and formed a major part of the defense offered by Barbie’s notorious attorney, Jacques Vergès.
Réseaux sociaux