France on Sunday commemorated the 84th anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv roundup, the largest mass arrest of Jews carried out in the country during World War II, as authorities condemned the vandalism of a Paris plaque honoring a family that saved a Jewish child.

Vel d’Hiv refers to the July 1942 operation in which French police arrested thousands of Jews and confined many of them inside Paris’s Winter Velodrome before deportation to Nazi concentration and death camps. The damaged plaque honored a couple and their daughter who rescued a 13-year-old child and were later recognized by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations.

“To attack the Righteous is to desecrate the entire universe,” Deputy Defense Minister Alice Rufo said. “The plaque will be restored. Their memory remains undiminished. In the face of antisemitism, in all its forms, the Republic will not yield an inch.”

More than 4,500 French police officers were mobilized for the roundup on July 16 and 17, 1942, with arrests continuing until July 20. A total of 13,152 Jews were seized, including thousands of children, and sent through transit camps before deportation to Nazi camps.

The operation was carried out under the collaborationist Vichy government after Nazi Germany occupied France. France did not formally acknowledge the state’s responsibility until 1995, when President Jacques Chirac apologized for the role of French authorities.