Opération Sultan

A reminder of a little-known fact in the history of Marseille and France .Operation Sultan was the largest roundup ever organised by the French Vichy State under Nazi occupation after that of Vel d ’Hiv. It started on the evening of 22 January 1943, during the shabbat, the Jews ’day of rest. Some 6,000 people were arrested by the French police, who thoroughly searched all the apartment buildings near the Vieux Port (old harbour). The next day, helped by 4,000 German soldiers, they encircled 25,000 people in the area before evacuating them by force with no explanation. The decision to “purge ” the old areas of Marseille – which Hitler called “the scab on the face of Europe ”– was certainly taken in Berlin after anti--German attacks by the Resistance in Marseille. But the 12,000 policemen who took part in these roundups from 22 to 24 January 1943 were in fact made available to the Nazi occupants by the French State authorities based in Vichy, including René Bousquet, who was general secretary of the police at the time, as pointed out by many historians and eye-witnesses who are interviewed in this film