French authorities have officially recognized the mass roundups in Marseille in January 1943 as crimes against humanity, a long-sought acknowledgment by survivors and their descendants. This classification was announced on Wednesday, September 30, by the French judiciary. The judicial investigation, which began in 2019, did not identify any living individuals still involved in these operations, according to Olivier Christen, the national anti-terrorism prosecutor, who traveled to Marseille to present the findings of the investigation. The raids, conducted between January 22 and 24, 1943, were ordered by Nazi authorities with the active support of the Vichy regime, which governed France during World War II under German occupation. The targeted areas in Marseille’s historical center were described as "a pigsty" and a hub of resistance. These neighborhoods were later destroyed by explosives. In total, 20,000 people were impacted, with several thousand temporarily held in Fréjus (Var), and 1,600 deported. The recognition of these events as crimes against humanity was requested by survivors and their descendants, including Pascal Luongo, a lawyer whose paternal grandfather was among those rounded up. Luongo filed a complaint in 2019 against unnamed individuals for these crimes. Antoine Mignemi, a Sicilian-born survivor of the Saint-Jean neighborhood roundup, said during his first press interviews in 2019, "We are not heroes. Victims, perhaps, but not heroes." The raids, known as "Sultan," were conducted jointly by German and French authorities. Nearly 800 Jews, including those from the Opera district, were sent to Nazi extermination camps. Christen noted that these events are "relatively unknown to our fellow citizens" and described the raid as an event of "colossal scale," targeting a neighborhood predominantly inhabited by the poor and immigrants.