The Roundup Research Paper

With only thirteen thousand arrests, it could easily be argued that the Roundup was a failure and there are many reasons as to why there were so few arrests. Word spread that the arrests would occur several days before the Roundup, resulting in an exodus from Paris, some police called on the person and informed them they would return to make the arrest and thus allowing some to escape, but there were also over a hundred suicides. When analyzing these arrests, the accommodation camp could argue that the various warnings saved lives and because there could have been more arrests and that the French were the ones saving lives it shows French resistance to the Germans. It could be argued that these small acts of kindness or defiance were evidence

The Roundup was seen as their first attempt at undermining France’s anti-Semitic authorities. The message, however, appealed to emotions, mostly of the need to protect children, and provided no precise details other than the roundup would occur “shortly” and still in its planning phase, which was not accurate. Of the records available, however, many mention an awareness to the impending event. The journal of Hélène Berr, which is deemed a French treasure equal to the Diary of Anne Frank, began her July 15th, 1942 entry, “Something is brewing, something that will be a tragedy, maybe the tragedy. M. Simon came round this evening at 10:00 to warn us that he’d been told about a roundup for the day after tomorrow, twenty thousand people.” Another account by Israël Belchatowski rang of the same hopeless sentiment upon learning from the Jewish Resistance that the Roundup would take place the next day, “This news spread like lightning. Terrified, the Jews didn’t know how to escape this misfortune. Those who could, left their lodgings, but most of them had nowhere to