The Glass Ceiling

 The other day, French President Emanuel Macron talked about something that happened in a velodrome.  The thing is, that velodrome hasn't stood in about 60 years, and the event wasn't a bike race.

 

Six-day race at the Velodrome d;Hiver,  Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Eighty years earlier--on 16 and 17 July 1942--French police rounded up thousands of Parisian Jews (at that time, Paris was said to have the fourth-largest Jewish community in the world) in "Veldeev"--slang for le Velodrome d'hiver.  

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The track racing venue, which also hosted other sporting events, was so named because it was covered with a glass ceiling, which allowed races and other events to be held during the winter (hiver) and made the velodrome the first with that capability.  That glass ceiling (as a feminist, those words trouble me, even when they aren't a metaphor!) was painted dark blue to make it less visible to bomber navigators.  

"The glass ceiling" has become a metaphor for the ways in which women are not allowed to reach their potential in various professions and careers.  For Parisian Jews, however, it became a literal trap:  It kept the heat of one of Paris' hottest summers in a space where there wasn't enough room for them to lie down, let alone move around.  Not surprisingly, many suffered from heat exhaustion and other illnesses; it is not known how many perished there.  What is known is that 13,152--some really more dead than alive---were herded into buses that took them to the trains that delivered them to death camps, mainly Auschwitz.  Only 400 captives survived.

I first learned of "Veldeev," like so much else, by accident:  I heard someone mention it during my first European bike tour.  I went in search of it only to find out that such a search was like a quest to see the prison that stood on la Place de la Bastille.  

After the war, the Velodrome's was used less. Its condition deteriorated to the point that when the last six-day race was held there, in November 1958, the glass ceiling leaked and electrical cables hung from loops. (Jacques Anquetil, the first five-time winner of the Tour de France, participated in that race along with other top riders of that time.)  Those conditions may have contributed to a fire that destroyed part of the building, which led to it being razed the following year.

Although there is a plaque commemorating the Velodrome and "Rafle"(roundup), few people seem to remember much, if anything, about them.  The few who still can recall that terrible time were very young when they were detained--or witnessed the arrest of their friends and neighbors.  One of them is Jeannine Bouhana (nee Sebanne), who received letters from her friend, Rachel Polakiewicz. How those letters reached Mademoiselle Sebanne is not exactly known:  Anyone's best guess is that Rachel tossed those letters out the Velodrome and someone picked them up.

Hearing Jeannine talk about that time, and reading Rachel's letters, it's hard not to be struck by a couple of terrible ironies.  One is, of course, that in a velodrome--a place where motion is celebrated,--people were confined.  Another, related, is that in a place where athletes made or heightened their reputations, thousands of everyday people, in essence, had their lives taken away from them. Finally,  events the "Vel" hosted its  most celebrated events during the winter, while its most infamous episode unfolded during a heat wave.

Motion and confinement, celebration and defamation, life and death:  all of them, under a glass ceiling.

 

The "Veldeev"

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably noticed that I'm very much interested in history.  It was my minor as an undergraduate; it was my love of writing--and my desire to "become a writer"--that steered me into an English Literature major.  I don't regret that choice because--as you've probably noticed--I love literature, too.  

Sometimes I think another reason I didn't major in history and pursue further formal study in it was that I sensed, somehow, that I would have to learn it on my own.  I knew that even with the best of instructors, so much would be omitted or edited out.  Sometimes, I would learn, the instructors don't even know what was omitted or censored.

Now, of course, the same can be said for literature. The difference, though, is that literature or writing classes cannot, by definition, be all-inclusive.  There are simply too many writers, works, genres and other factors to consider. 

 Also, when we edit or omit a reading list for a literature course, it doesn't have the same consequences as it does with a history class. That is not to say there are no consequences:  As someone who earned her undergraduate degree at a time when "the canon" consisted entirely of DWMs--Dead White Males--I know, at least somewhat, what it's like to be left out of what's considered "culture" or "education".  

Still, my assigning Macbeth instead of Othello or Hamlet in an intro to literature class does not shortchange my students in the same way as, say, teaching students that Hawai'i became our 50th state the year before, ahem, Obama was born in it while failing to tell them something about the Islands' pre-American history.   Or mentioning the times we came to the aid of allies during times of war while failing to point out, say, the US occupation of Haiti (which I learned about from one of my students during my second year of teaching).

OK, so why am I talking about all of this on a bike blog?  Well, it relates to something in my cycling life.  

During my first European bike tour, I passed through Paris before returning to it two months later.  During that first sojourn, I stayed in a hostel just outside the city.  There, I heard someone mention something about "Veldeev". 

A six-day race at the "Veldeev".  By Henri Cartier-Bresson

At first I thought that person was using some sort of slang they don't teach in American French classes.  Indeed it was: the expression was short for "Velodrome d'Hiver".  (The "h" is silent, and the "i" is pronounced like a long "e" in English.)  So I asked that person where I might find it.

"La rue Nelaton, pres de la Tour Eiffel.  La metro Bir-Hakim."

On the rue Nelaton, near the Eiffel Tower.  (She wasn't lying about that!)  And, as people in Paris often do, she gave me the nearest subway station:  Bir-Hakim.  But of course, I didn't take the Metro.  I could see the Tower, about seven or eight kilometers away, from the hostel, so I just pedaled in the direction of it. And, when I got there, a gendarme gave me a clear response to my "Ou est la rue Nelaton?" It must have been clear: At that time, I don't know whether my French or navigational skills were worse, but I still got to the site.

One problem, though:  there was no Velodrome there.  The young woman I met in the hostel, who was from Belgium, probably thought I was on some sort of Holocaust pilgrimage. Perhaps I was, subconsciously.

At one time, "Veldeev" was one of the world's most important bicycle racing tracks.  It had a glass ceiling (How would I have felt about that if I'd had more of a feminist consciousness at the time?) , making it one of the first such facilities capable of hosting events year-round:  hence the name. ("Hiver" means "winter".)  At that time, there was just a non-descript plaque on an even more non-descript building commemorating a non-cycling event that took place there.



I am referring to "La Rafle du Velodrome d'Hiver", or "The Velodrome d'Hiver roundup".  It had been scheduled for 14 July 1942, but apparently someone realized that it would be terrible public relations to hold such an event on Bastille Day.  So, it was postponed by two days, but that re-scheduling did not blunt the horror of what happened there.

For two terrible days, thousands of Parisian Jews were taken from their homes and workplaces and brought--in French buses driven by French drivers and guarded by French police officers, in an attempt to keep up the fiction that these workers, and therefore the nation, was not under the control of the Nazis--to the race track.

It was bad enough that there wasn't enough room for the internees to lie down.  But, as the name indicates, the track, with its glass ceiling, was intended for winter racing.  The captives were held there on some of the hottest days of what was one of the hottest summers in Paris history.  And the glass had been painted dark blue to avoid attracting the attention of bomber navigators.

 As if that weren't bad enough, exits and other facilities (including bathrooms)that could have provided ventilation--in their captors' eyes, a means of escape-- were sealed off.  So, people were getting sick from heat exhaustion, combined with the lack of sanitary facilities and food:  Only food brought by the Quakers and other groups, as well as a few doctors and nurses from the Red Cross, were allowed in.

After their confinement in a facility where motion--in the form of racing--had been celebrated, 13,152 people were herded--in some cases, more dead than alive--onto buses to the Pithiviers internment camp, about 100 km southeast of Paris, then packed into trains, mainly to Auschwitz.  Only 400 survived.

Even that first time I saw the "Veldeev" plaque, I couldn't photograph it or the site.  On subsequent visits, as I came to know more about the event, it became even less possible for me to make an image of it, or the memorial that was built to it on the nearby Quai de Grenelle:  any photo I could have taken would have seemed banal in comparison to the suffering that took place.

As for the Vel d'Hiv itself: Events, cycling and otherwise (There had been everything from circuses to boxing matches to theatre performances inside the track's oval.) were less frequent after the war, and it fell into disrepair.  During the last six-day race (featuring Jacques Anquetil and other top riders) held there, in November 1958, electrical cables hung from loops.  And, before that race, the roof had leaked when rain fell.

The following year, fire destroyed part of the "Vel" and the rest of it was razed.  There has not been a velodrome in Paris proper since then.