Expert: Michel Cahier - 3/27/2009

Question
Did the Polish police round up Jews for the Nazis to take to the death camps? Is is true that close to 3 million Jewish Poles were killed by the Nazis?  

Answer
yes the police of every country occupied by the Nazis rounded  up Jews for the Nazis to the exception of the Norwegians and the Dutch who made life so difficult in their supposed collaboration that the Nazis had problems to round up as many Jews as they wanted.  The French, the Poles were very efficient in the round  up. In Ukraine, the  population itself helped the Nazis to find the Jews and took part in the killing.
In Poland, a few German-inspired massacres were carried out  with the help of, or even active participation by, non-Jewish Poles. In the most infamous massacre in Jedwabne, between 300 (Institute of National Remembrance's Final Findings)and 1,600 (Jan T. Gross)Jews were beaten and burned alive in a barn by some of Jedwabne's citizens in the presence of German gendarmerie. The full extent of Polish participation in the massacres of the Polish Jewish community remains a controversial subject, but the Polish Institute for National Remembrance identified 22 other towns or villages that had pogroms similar to Jedwabne. Every time the Polish police was either active or turned a blind-eye.
In France in July 1942 there was a massive round  up in Paris. On 7 June 1942 they completed plans for Operation Spring Wind, to arrest 28,000 foreign and stateless Jews using 9,000 French policemen. Arrests started early on July 16 and were complete by 11 am.  Needing a place to hold the detainees, the Germans demanded the keys of the Velodrome d'Hiver (a park for sport events)  from its owner, Jacques Goddet, who had taken over from his father Victor and from Henri Desgrange.  

The Vel' d'Hiv' had a glass roof, which had been painted dark blue to help avoid attracting bomber navigators. The dark glass roof, combined with windows screwed shut for security, raised the temperature inside the structure. The 13,152 people held there  had no lavatories; of the 10 available, five were sealed because their windows offered a way out, and the others were blocked. The arrested Jews were kept there for eight days with only water and food brought by Quakers, the Red Cross and the few doctors and nurses allowed to enter.

Those arrested were sent to an internment camp in half-completed tower blocks at Drancy and then to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. Only 400 survived.