“Round-up in Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, in March 1944.
“Round-up in Figeac in May 1944.”
The last paragraph, at the bottom of Page 11:
“Most Frenchmen who were rounded up in this way were in reality not used for work in Germany but were deported, to be interned in concentration camps.”
We might multiply the examples of these arbitrary arrests by delving into official documents which have been submitted by Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Belgium. These round-ups were never legally justified, they were never even represented as an action taken in accordance with the pseudo-law of hostages to which we have already referred. They were always arbitrary and carried out without any apparent reason, or at any rate, without its being possible for any act of a Frenchman having motivated them even as a reprisal. Other collective arrests were made for racial reasons. They were of the same odious nature as the arrests made for political reasons.
On Page 5 of the official document of the Ministry of Prisoners and Deportees, the Tribunal may read a few odious details connected with these racial arrests.
“Certain German policemen were especially entrusted to pick out Jewish persons, according to their physiognomy. They called this group ‘The Brigade of Physiognomists.’ This verification sometimes took place in public as far as men were concerned. (At the railway station at Nice, some were unclothed at the point of a revolver.)
“The Parisians remember these round-ups, quarter by quarter. Large police buses transported old men, women, and children pell-mell and crowded them into the Velodrome d’Hiver under dreadful sanitary conditions before taking them to Drancy, where deportation awaited them. The round-up of the month of August 1941 has gained sad renown. All the exits of the subway of the 11th Arrondissement were closed and all the Jews in that district were arrested and imprisoned. The round-up of December 1941 was particularly aimed at intellectual circles. Then there were the round-ups of July 1942.