German soldiers in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, after May 1940. After the invasion of France by the German Reich, the country was divided into an occupied and an unoccupied zone. Paris became the seat of the German military commander for the occupied zone. Even before the invasion of the Wehrmacht, the French government had ordered the internment of Sinti and Roma in detention camps. This order was only cancelled in 1946. Deportations to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp mainly affected Sinti and Roma in the departments of Nord and Pas de Calais. In 1940, these departments had been placed under the jurisdiction of the German Military Commander for Belgium and northern France.
The photograph comes from the album of a German soldier.
