Paintings stolen by the Nazis and found in a museum in Berlin on the former GDR side, revelations on affairs that are shaking up political and economic circles… L’Express, 1980-1990 version, lines up the scoops. But there is one article that will make a lasting impression. More than a journalistic work, it reveals, in the manner of a historian, a terrible facet of the Vichy regime. On April 27, 1990, the front page was dark, a black and white photo of children and this headline: “Investigation into a forgotten crime”. The article is signed by the great reporter Eric Conan. He relates how, following the Vel d’Hiv roundup, the French authorities interned 3,500 Jewish children in the Loiret, in Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande, then separated them from their mothers before deported in turn to Auschwitz.
At the time, the story was known only to a few. At the end of 1989, during a discussion on how to treat the anniversary of the Occupation, Eric Conan suggested digging into the trail of these few weeks in 1942, between mid-July and mid-September, spent by the families Jews in the Loiret. He searches the archives, finds one, then two surviving witnesses, finally a hospital doctor. He settles in place. In April, he is ready to tell. Through the voices of the survivors, he recounts the roundup, the relief upon arrival in the Loiret after the promiscuity of Vel d’Hiv, then the deterioration of living conditions and the separation from the mothers. He recounts the cruelty of the gendarmes: “they had thought about reinforcing the barbed wire so that the babies could not get through, but nothing had been organized to give them food” and the indifference of the inhabitants. Above all, he points to the responsibility of the French state which chooses to deport children when the Germans “only” demand Jews over 16 years old. The article is accompanied by personal photos, a sketch by the internee Georges Horan, made when the children arrived in Drancy.
The eleven pages arouse great emotion. As far as Australia where the Sydney Morning Herald mentioned the investigation in July 1990. Eric Conan was invited by Bernard Pivot to talk about it, it earned him one of the Mumm Foundation prizes in 1991. Following the publication, the author receives unpublished documents and testimonies which he will include in a book published the following year by Grasset, Without forgetting the children.