On the 80th anniversary of the raids of July 16-18, 1942, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a determined fight against anti-Semitism and revisionism.

"Anti-Semitism is still there," Macron said.

"It is more urgent than ever to tell the story." More than 13,000 Jews had been arrested by the French police on the orders of the Vichy regime, which was loyal to Hitler, and corralled in the "Vel d'Hiv" cycling stadium near the Eiffel Tower.

Most were taken to camps and deported to Auschwitz by trains.

Michael Wiegel

Political correspondent based in Paris.

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Macron recalled the persecution of the Jews by the collaborationist regime under Philippe Pétain on Sunday in the former Pithiviers train station.

"Pithiviers was a pivot of the Shoah," he said.

The second largest internment and deportation camp in France was located in the small town 80 kilometers south of Paris.

In particular, mothers and children were brought to Pithiviers from the "Vel d'Hiv'".

The former train station has now been converted into a memorial.

Macron inaugurated the museum on Sunday.

The historian Laurent Joly reminded on the television channel BFM-TV that the French authorities did not try to refuse to help the French police with the raids.

“It was different in Belgium and Denmark.

In Paris, they wanted to please the German occupiers," said the historian from the "Mémorial de la Shoah".

A total of 16,000 people were deported from the train station in Pithiviers, Mémorial de la Shoah President Eric de Rothschild said on Sunday.

"No one can forget the mothers from whom the children were taken," said Rothschild.

"This train station is a testament to the deep-seated and inhumane anti-Semitism of the regime under Marshal Pétain," he said.

From the end of July 1942, the mothers were forcibly separated from their small children and deported with the young people.

The children were initially left to their own devices.

At the end of August they were deported to Auschwitz via Drancy at the request of the Vichy government.

There was silence for a long time

The involvement of the French police had been kept silent for a long time.

In 1995, Jacques Chirac was the first President to recognize France's responsibility for the persecution of the Jews.

"These dark hours forever sully our history and are an insult to our past and traditions," he said.

"Yes, the insane crime of the occupier was supported by the French, by the French state." Fourth-placed far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour (7.7 percent of the vote) has repeatedly denied French complicity, claiming that the Vichy regime protected French Jews .

In the book Zemmour Against History, 16 historians disproved many of his false claims.

"Not a single soldier from Germany was involved in the raids," Macron said on Sunday. "It was very much our laws.

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and our police,” said Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne at a memorial service in Paris on Sunday morning.

"We have to face our history," said Borne, whose father Joseph Borne was deported to Buchenwald.

The extreme left tried to instrumentalize the commemoration.

The parliamentary group leader of the Left Party LFI, Mathilde Panot, tweeted: "We must forget these crimes today less than ever, with a president who honors Pétain and 89 RN deputies".

She did not mention the Jewish victims.

In 2018, Macron acknowledged Pétain's role in World War I, but did not absolve him of responsibility for the persecution of the Jews.