Emmanuel Macron honours French sent to death in Holocaust, vows ‘Never again’

French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday decried Nazi-collaborator predecessors and rising antisemitism, vigorously vowing to stamp out Holocaust denial as he paid homage to thousands of French children sent to death camps 80 years ago.

Family by family, house by house, French police rounded up 13,000 people on two terrifying days in July 1942, wresting children from their mothers' arms and dispatching everyone to Nazi camps.

For the dwindling number of survivors of France's wartime crimes, a series of commemoration ceremonies on Sunday were especially important.

At a time of rising antisemitism and far-right discourse sugarcoating France's role in the Holocaust, they worry that history's lessons are being forgotten.

A week of ceremonies marking 80 years since the Vel d'Hiv police roundup on July 16-17, 1942, culminated Sunday with an event led by Macron.

"We will continue to teach against ignorance. We will continue to cry against indifference," Macron said. "And we will fight, I promise you, at every dawn, because France's story is written by a combat of resistance and justice that will never be extinguished."

He denounced French leaders for their role in the Holocaust and the Vel d'Hiv raids, among the most shameful acts undertaken by France during World War II, and among the darkest moments in its history.

Over those two days, police herded 13,152 people — including 4,115 children — into the Winter Velodrome of Paris, known as the Vel d'Hiv, before they were sent on to Nazi camps.

It was the biggest such roundup in western Europe. The children were separated from their families; very few survived.

On Sunday, Macron visited a site in Pithiviers south of Paris where police sent families after the Vel d'Hiv roundup, before sending them on to camps.

A new memorial site honoring the deportees was inaugurated, including a plaque that reads: "Let us never forget."

The president urged vigilance. "We are not finished with antisemitism, and we must lucidly face that fact."

Jewish communities are increasingly worried about rising antisemitism in Europe.

France's Interior Ministry has reported a rise in antisemitic acts in France over recent years, and said that while racist and anti-religious acts overall are increasing, Jews are disproportionately targeted.

Anxiety has worsened for some since the far-right National Rally party made a surprising electoral breakthrough last month, winning a record 89 seats in France's National Assembly.

Party co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen has been convicted of racism and downplaying the Holocaust.

His daughter Marine, who now leads the party, has distanced herself from her father's positions, but the party's past still raises concerns for many Jews.

During the campaign for this year's French presidential election, far-right candidate and pundit Eric Zemmour propagated the false claim that Adolf Hitler's Vichy collaborators safeguarded France's Jews.

It took France's leadership 50 years after World War II to officially acknowledge the state's involvement in the Holocaust, when then-President Jacques Chirac apologized for the French authorities' role in the Vel d'Hiv raids.

Macron spelled it out clearly Sunday: "Let us repeat here with force, whether self-styled revisionist commentators like it or not."

None of France's Vichy wartime leaders, he said, "wanted to save Jews."

(IMAGE: AP)