François Picard is pleased to welcome Dr. Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Historian, Professor of Modern History at the University of Manchester, Chief Editor of 'La Revue d'Histoire de la Shoah' and one of the curators of the Shoah Memorial in Paris photography exhibit highlighting the discovery of 98 previously unknown photographs documenting the May 14, 1941 roundup of foreign Jews in Paris. It represents one of the most significant visual revelations in Holocaust historiography in recent years, the images capturing what Dr. Dreyfus calls "a real discovery for history, for our memory," offering an almost minute-by-minute account of a largely forgotten precursor to the infamous Vel' d'Hiv roundup of July 1942.
The photographs were taken by Harry Croner, a half-German, half-Jewish photographer employed by the German Wehrmacht's propaganda apparatus. Yet the images transcend propaganda. Rather than celebrating state power, they reveal vulnerability, sorrow, confusion, and human dignity in the face of persecution. "You have a human grace. You have a human empathy," Dreyfus observes, noting the profound irony that "none of the photos, the 98 photos, had been used at the time of the occupation."
