Sixty-nine years ago this month, nearly 13,000 Jews were rounded up by French gendarmes and taken to the Velodrome d’hiver sports arena, not far from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. They were held there for days without food, water, or sanitation facilities, and then were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. French policemen, not Nazi soldiers, carried out the operation — and what is even more startling is that, for 50 years, most French felt no responsibility for the action.

The “Vel’ d’hiv’ roundup,” as it was called, became a symbol of national guilt and outrage. Twenty-five years after the liberation of Paris, in 1969, French Jewish filmmaker Marcel Ophuls took aim at the French nation in his provocative four-and-a-half-hour documentary “The Sorrow and The Pity,” where he dealt with the question of collaboration during World War II. The film was immediately banned by a government that was far from ready to tackle the question of its own culpability in the war.

If you find yourself in Manhattan on Sunday, June 5, finish your business, grab a bite, and head over to Symphony Space, on Broadway between 94th and 95th streets, where, at 4:30 p.m., the Jewish People’s Philharmonic Chorus is presenting a concert of Yiddish music that will make you want to sing along and tap your feet.

This year’s concert, “Love, Loss, Laughter: Favorite Yiddish Folk Songs” includes “Oyfn Pripetshik,” “Der Rebbe Elimelech,” “Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen, and “Zuntik Bulbes,” along with lesser-known songs that illustrate what life was like in Eastern Europe a century ago. The concert also includes newer Yiddish numbers, by Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman and the late Avrom Sutzkever, and one written by Josh Waletzky to commemorate 9/11. English translations and explanations are always provided, so the audience enjoys the concert and learns about the backgrounds and meanings of many great Yiddish songs.

For the last few decades, filmmakers have been dramatizing aspects of the Holocaust. Initially, there was strong reaction by some survivors and Holocaust historians, most notably Elie Wiesel, who claimed that these dramas were “trivializations” and that no narrative film could capture the horrors that were endured. The debate has softened these past years as there is realization and growing evidence across the globe that these television and film dramas have provided an incredible teaching tool and have effected a better understanding of the Shoah. In the Netherlands, filmmaker Paul Verhoeven rewrote his own film history when he made his 2006 film “Black Book.” It detailed Dutch collaboration with the Nazis three decades after his “Soldiers of Orange” glorified the work of the Dutch underground.