François Hollande marks anniversary of wartime deportation of Jews Francois Hollande attends a ceremony to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Vel D'Hiv round-up in Paris. Photograph: Pool/Reuters The French president, François Hollande, admitted that the round-up and deportation of more than 13,000 Jews from Paris during the second world war was a "crime committed in France by France." At a moving commemoration to mark its 70th anniversary, Hollande praised former president and political rival Jacques Chirac, who in 1995 forced France to face up to its "dark hours" of Nazi collaboration. Until then, French leaders, including Hollande's Socialist mentor François Mitterrand, had argued the wartime collaborationist Vichy government did not represent the French Republic. The round-up, known as the "Vel d'Hiv Rafle" after the velodrome where most of the 13,152 Jews from Paris and its banlieues were taken, accounted for more than a quarter of the 42,000 Jews sent from France to Nazi concentration camps in 1942, of whom only 811 returned. The raids were codenamed Operation Spring Breeze by French police, who were said to have worked with an enthusiasm that surprised the German occupiers who had commanded them. On Sunday, after laying a wreath at the site of the velodrome, which was demolished in 1959, Hollande spoke of "the dark hours of the collaboration, of our history and therefore of France's responsibility." The truth is hard, cruel. The truth is that the French police arrested thousands of children and families. Not one German soldier was mobilised for this operation. The truth is, this was a crime committed in France, by France," Hollande said. On Saturday, the president had made a symbolic visit to Chirac's country home in the Corrèze region of central France, where aides said they had talked about Vel d'Hiv. In a booklet handed out to those attending the commemoration, Hollande wrote: "The recognition of this fault was expressed for the first time, with lucidity and courage, by Jacques Chirac on July 16, 1995. The truth is that this was also a crime against France, a betrayal of her values; the same values the Resistance, the Free French, the Just, embodied with honour. In Operation Spring Breeze, entire families, including for the first time women and children, were ordered from their homes in dawn raids by Paris police on 16-17 July 1942. Sarah Lichtsztein-Montard, 84, who was one of the few French deportees to return from Auschwitz, said at the time her mother refused to believe warnings from friends that the round-up was imminent. "She told me, 'Arresting women and children in France ... it's not possible," Lichtsztein-Montard told the newspaper Liberation. At 6am the following morning, the family was awoken by hammering on the door of its Paris apartment. Two French police inspectors were outside and ordered them to leave, ignoring her mother's pleas to let the children stay. "She was almost on her knees; I was ashamed," Lichtsztein-Montard said, describing scenes of "chaos" in the street outside, with Jewish families "surrounded by police as if they were criminals." Hollande said the country had a duty of remembrance. A survey last week showed nearly two-thirds of those under 35 in France knew about Vel d'Hiv. "There will be no forgetting in the Republic," Hollande said, adding that France would clamp down on anti-semitism "with the greatest determination." Wherever it is found, it must be uncovered and punished. All ideologies of exclusion, all forms of intolerance, all fanaticisms; the xenophobia that attempts to develop the logic of hatred, will find the Republic in its way," he said.