[custom_adv] Never-before-seen photos have emerged shining a light on France's role in rounding up Jews to send to Nazi death camps during World War II.Pictures set to go on display in Paris this week show some of the thousands of men who were tricked into turning up for a routine registration in the capital in May 1941 before they were arrested by French officials and eventually sent to Auschwitz. [custom_adv] Images of the infamous 'green ticket round-up' show couples hugging each other goodbye outside one of the registration halls, unaware they would never see each other again. [custom_adv] One black and white photo shows SS officer Theodor Dannecker, who was in charge of implementing the 'Final Solution' in France, alongside French police commissioner Francois Bard in a hall, as they schemed to deport the Jews. [custom_adv] In another image, Dannecker is seen watching on as Jews boarded a train destined for a French camp south of Paris where they were to remain until their eventual transferal to Auschwitz. [custom_adv] The 'green ticket round-up' was first carried out in Paris on May 14 and 15, 1941, with more than 6,000 foreign-born Jews summoned to town halls across the city for what was billed as a routine registration. [custom_adv] They received a summons on a green card which was hand-delivered by a French policeman, ordering them to go to police stations for a 'status review'. [custom_adv] The cards read: 'Mr X is invited to present himself in person, accompanied by one member of his family or by one friend, at 7:00 in the morning on May 14, 1941, for an examination of his situation.'He is asked to provide identification. Those who do not present themselves on the set day and hour are liable for the most severe sanctions.' [custom_adv] Instead, the 3,747 men who showed up were arrested by the French authorities and shipped to camps south of Paris. Thousands more were rounded up in the following months. [custom_adv] They were held there for a year before being deported to the Auschwitz death camp.By chance, a stash of 98 photos from the first green ticket round-up, taken by a German soldier on propaganda duty, were recently discovered by the Memorial de la Shoah, the Holocaust Museum of Paris. [custom_adv] Most were taken at the Japy sports hall in the city's 11th arrondissement, where close to 1,000 were arrested, and where the photos are being put on display from Friday, exactly 80 years on. [custom_adv] 'These photos are important because we see the opposite of Nazi propaganda that tried to depict these people as sub-human "parasites",' said Lior Lalieu-Smadja, who heads the museum's photography department. [custom_adv] The photographer has been identified as Harry Croner, who was soon after kicked out of the German army after it was discovered that his father was Jewish.
