Six weeks after the Vél d’Hiv roundup in Paris, the Vichy regime committed another unspeakable crime by arresting some 6,000 Jews in the non-occupied zone on August 26, 1942 – an event that remains little-known in France, 80 years on.
As a Resistance fighter in Lyon, rescuing Jews was at the core of René Nodot’s mission. But on August 26, 1942, he was powerless to prevent the roundup of the city’s Jews. “There weren’t any Germans in Lyon; the French police did everything – and that made it especially frightening,” Nodot recounted to the France 3 television station in 1992.
