Sarah's Key

This novel was a great piece of historical fiction tying the events involving Sarah, a ten-year-old girl in 1942 Paris to the life of Julia Jarmond in 2002. Jarmond is an American journalist who is investigating the holocaust roundup that took place in Paris. The events and surprising connections will keep you spellbound. I have to warn you this mesmerizing book is hard to put down and is one of the best reads I've had all year.

My husband's family is Jewish. His grandfather's parents and siblings were killed in a concentration camp; his grandmother was French. So, I wondered if they had told my husband anything about this round-up of Jews by the French police. Unfortunately, my husband's grandparents are deceased now, so we can't ask them for details, but my hsuband said, "Yes. That was how my grandfather lost his family - that's why they died in a concentration camp."

Even though the characters are entirely fictitious, the story is based on a historical event. On July 16th, 1942, the French police rounded up Jewish families. Very few survived - most were sent on by train to be killed in the German camps.

My mother is British (her family are still in the U.K.), and I asked her if she had ever heard of it. I know she was taught a lot about the French, but even she does not remember this being mentioned. Apparently, everyone likes to think that it was all the fault of the Germans.

That is the basis of the story. A journalist, Julia Jarmond, is told to write about this round-up. While she is gathering details, she finds out that her French husband's family moved into the apartment of a Jewish family that was taken away by the French police. Her husband's family, particularly her father-in-law, tells her to leave the past alone. She soon realizes that something specific happened during the round-up, involving her in-laws.

The book actually begins with Sarah's story, from her point in time. (The author uses different type-setting for Sarah's and Julia's perspectives, so when you begin each chapter, you already know which point in time to expect.) When the police come for Sarah's family, she thinks they will be able to return - after all, it is the FRENCH police, not the Nazis themselves. Her brother chooses to hide in a hidden cupboard, so Sarah locks him in, and takes the key with her. While they are leaving, Sarah is trying to decide where she could leave the key for her father to find. Her father was already hiding because the Jews were under the impression that only the men had to fear being taken away to the camps. As we find out later, not only were the children taken as well, but they were torn from their parents, and were among the first to be killed in the camps.

Sarah escapes; she is obsessed with returning to her brother, even though a part of her thinks it may already be too late for him. This is where Julia's story takes over the rest of the book. Julia finds out that Sarah grew up, and had a son of her own; however, Julia wants to find out if Sarah ever made it back to her brother, for better or worse. Julia discovers that her own in-laws know the fate of the brother, and that of Sarah.

I thought this was one of the saddest stories I have ever read, but it was definitely one of the best. It was very well written - never any confusion with the two different timelines, and the author merges the two personal stories quite smoothly towards the last chapters. I was eager to find out more about the real historical event, and happily found a list of recommended books in the back, including:

Not the Germans Alone: A Son's Search for the Truth of Vichy (Memoir Holocaust Studies)
Betrayal at the Vel D'Hiv
Those Who Save Us

It isn't often that I find a book that I can recommend without reservation. This is one of those books. The story is fascinating, emotional, and pulls you in. You won't want to put it down but you will so you can think about what you have just read. You will have to remind yourself to take a breath. It will make you cry and cheer.

On July 16, 1942, the French police rounded up Jewish families in order to send them to Auschwitz for extermination. The Nazis wanted only the adults but the French took whole families and then tore them apart. The children were ultimately sent later and all (more than 4,000) were immediately killed as soon as they arrived at the death camp. Sarah is 10 years old when the Paris police knock on her door. Her 4 year old brother Michel is too terrified to go so Sarah locks him in a secret cabinet promising to come back to free him and then she is taken away.

Sixty years later, Julia, an American living in Paris, is given the assignment of writing an article for the sixtieth anniversary of what has become known as Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv, the roundup and murder of Parisian Jews in 1942. As she investigates the story she finds that few French know or care about those events. It is the past and most Parisians wish to leave it that way. During her research, Julia discovers the story of Sarah and finds that Sarah's story intermingles with her family's story as the apartment that her husband's family moved into in 1942 is the same apartment Sarah was torn from in 1942.

The first half of the book mixes these two stories in short chapters of only a couple of pages that keep the story moving quickly. The story of Sarah is what we wish to follow so the interludes with Julia as we learn about her family, her job, and the beginnings of her investigation of Sarah are kept short. The result is that the first half of the book is among some of the best writing I have encountered recently. We learn the story of Sarah, a character we wish we could wrap our arms around and protect, while being introduced to Julia, a character that we learn to like.

At the end of the first half of the book, Sarah's voice is gone and we count on Julia, who we have learned to like, to tell us the rest of the story. de Rosnay wraps Julia and Sarah's story together in the second half of the book so that we learn what happened to Sarah through Julia's investigation as we see how Sarah's story changes Julia. The second half of the story is not as strong as the first half but I still could not put the book down and had to race through the last chapters to find how it ends. This is an amazing story that reminds us that the Holocaust was about the murder of innocent people including little children whose only crime was being born Jewish. Strongly recommended.

The Vélodrome d'Hiver, once a stadium for bicycle races and concerts in Paris, no longer exists. Its grim significance in the most shameful part of France's WWII history is detailed on a sign that marks this spot:

"On July 16 and 17, 1942, 13,152 Jews were arrested in Paris and the suburbs, deported and assassinated at Auschwitz. In the Vélodrome d'Hiver that once stood on this spot, 1,129 men, 2,916 women, and 4,115 children were packed here in inhuman conditions by the government of the Vichy police, by order of the Nazi occupant. May those who tried to save them be thanked. Passerby, never forget!"

Sarah Starzynski, a 10-year-old little girl was one of those children, and along with her parents, Wladyslaw and Rywka, her world collapsed that fateful day in 1942 in Nazi-occupied France. Shortly before their arrest by the French police, she locked her little brother, Michel, in a closet that was their hiding place in order to protect him from the gendarme who ambushed their home. Thinking that it was all a mistake and that they'll be released soon, she promises Michel that she'll be back to get him and pockets the closet's brass key.

Sarah's story alternates with that of American journalist, Julia Tézac née Jarmond, in 2002. Julia has lived in Paris for twenty-five years and is married to a self-centered Bertrand, but she is adrift. Regarded as 'L'Americaine' who doesn't quite belong in the city she's lived in for so long, her marriage is starting to unravel, creating a marital chasm that widens as the story progresses. The Tézac family is polite but aloof, and only her smart daughter, Zöe, and her friends provide Julia the support and encouragement she sorely needs.

Julia's editor wants her to cover the story of Vélodrome d'Hiver and the roundup of Jews in time for the 60th commemoration of the tragedy. She throws herself into her assignment, and as she researches the shameful events of that summer in 1942, she becomes obsessed with Sarah's history and what has become of her and the little Michel. Not long after, she uncovers a startling link between her husband's family and Sarah, a secret kept in shame for six decades. Along the way, Julia discovers her true self--as a mother, and as a woman.

Tatiana De Rosnay has created a memorable story, made poignant by the reality of Vel' d'Hiv' and the camps in France, such as Pithiviers and Beaune-La-Rolande, that served as antechambers to Auschwitz. Her unwavering narrative underscores France's complicity in the murder and deportation of the Jews in Europe, a fact acknowledged by the Chirac government decades later. Called, ironically enough, Operation Spring Breeze, under the Vichy regime, France sent nearly 80,000 Jews to the death camps as fellow Frenchmen stood by and watched. A story of two families connected by deep sorrow and a tragic secret becomes even more affecting set against these true and contemptible events.

Holocaust fiction presents a unique challenge to a writer. One cannot diminish the suffering and murder of innocents, and there's an ethical imperative to be factual with the history. At the same time, the fictional characters must be sympathetic enough and their experiences meaningful and not merely gratuitous within the historical context. De Rosnay succeeds magnificently with an intense and captivating narrative, and the themes of heartbreaking loss, adversity, guilt and redemption come across with great sensitivity, intelligence and understanding. "Sarah's Key" was an enlightening and deeply satisfying novel, the reading of which was difficult to interrupt and its story equally difficult to forget.

I'm here in Paris for the summer for an NEH Seminar entitled Visions of the Dark Years: World War II and its legacy in France, and I'm doing a project on the "rafle du Vel d'Hiv"- the massive round-up of Jews that took place in Paris on July 16th, 1942. I purchased this book in French at the bookstore at Le Memorial de la Shoah, not knowing that it had been translated from English. The story is haunting, and interesting, as we follow it in flashbacks. I am doing an annotated bibliography of books on the subject for my seminar project. This story will appeal to my younger students, teaching them at the same time of this shameful episode of French collaboration with the German occupiers, under the Vichy government. France was the only occupied European country to pass its own laws regarding Jews, which were even stricter than those of the Third Reich. By looking the other way,and pretending not to know where the Jews were being transported after the local French camps at Drancy and Pithiviers (they were immediately transported to Auschwitz) some 9,000 French police catalogued and arrested over 13,000 French and foreign Jews residing in France, and sent them to the Velodrome d'Hiver, a large stadium in Paris. This is a shameful episode in French history, retold in a poignant and gripping fashion.