The mass arrest started a day after French Police delivered a green card (billet vert) to 6694 foreign Jews living in Paris, instructing them to report for a "status check".

[b] France fell in World War II to the German invasion which began in May 1940 and ended with the occupation of Paris on 14 June and capitulation to Germany eight days later.

On 10 July parliament dissolved itself, ending the Third Republic and creating the "French State" (État français; more commonly known as the "Vichy regime") in its place with Petain holding supreme power.

[8] On 22 July 1940, Vichy set up a special commission to examine and revoke the citizenship of Jews who had been naturalised after the 1927 reform of the nationality law, with the aim of removing "foreigners" from French society.

SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker, representative of Adolf Eichmann in Paris, wished to speed up the exclusion of Jews, not only by registering them and plundering their goods, but also by interning them.

He counted on Karl Theo Zeitschel at the German embassy in Paris, who shared the same objectives, and who was in charge of relations with the Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs, which was created on 29 March 1941.

"[11] By 1941, the camps at Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Roland, Compiegne, and Drancy were in operation, chiefly for the purpose of interning foreign Jews from Paris.

Those who do not present themselves on the set day and hour are liable for the most severe sanctions.Assuming that it was only an administrative formality, 3,700 men obeyed the summons (3,430 Polish, 157 Czech and 123 stateless Jews).

The prisoners were transferred by bus to the Gare d'Austerlitz and deported the same day by four special trains to two transit and internment camps in the Loiret: 1,700 to Pithiviers and 2,000 to Beaune-la-Rolande.

[17][d] On 8 May 1942, 289 Jewish prisoners were transferred to the Frontstalag of Royallieu, in Compiègne, where they left in rail cattle cars on 5 June on Convoy 2 for Auschwitz concentration camp.

The photographer may have been Harry Croner [de], a member of the Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops who accompanied Theodor Dannecker and other German officials present during these opérations.