Dilemme moral face au sort des juifs norvégiens

What does “se faire embarquer” mean in French?

“Embarquer” usually means to board a ship or plane. But in everyday French it also means being taken away by the police or other authorities — put into a vehicle and driven off. “Se faire embarquer” is what happens when it is done to you — you are the one taken away. In this clip, people are taken to labour camps. A quiet, ordinary word for something terrible.

In the clip: “Qu’ils les ont vus se faire embarquer vers des camps de travail et puis ensuite plus de nouvelles.” (That they saw them get carted off to labour camps, and then — nothing more was heard.) “Embarquer” comes from “barque” (a small boat) — the first sense is “to put on board.” Over time it picked up many informal meanings: load luggage into a car, bring someone along for a ride (“je t’embarque ?” = “want a lift?”, common in Quebec and informal metropolitan French), or get pulled into something you did not choose (“embarqué dans une histoire” = pulled into a mess). The police sense — “to take someone away in a vehicle” — is informal but widely understood across French-speaking regions: “La police l’a embarqué.” “Se faire + verb” is what makes this phrase work the way it does. It puts the focus on the person who receives the action, not the person doing it: “se faire arrêter” (to get arrested), “se faire voler” (to get robbed), “se faire virer” (to get fired). Something happened to you, often without your control. It is not a normal reflexive verb — it is closer to “to have something done to you.”