Book Review of "Sarah's Key"

Sarah’s Key

By Tatiana de Rosnay

My wife finished the book Sarah’s Key and said, “You should read this.” She explained a bit about the book, I didn’t know if I was ready to read another book about the holocaust and the death camps. However, I did place my name on the reservation list at the city library. It took a couple of weeks before I was able to obtain it.

From the beginning of the book, I became captivated by Sarah’s tragic story and those of thousands of French Jews. I hadn’t felt this personally involved in a holocaust story since I read the diary of Anne Frank. While Anne’s is a true story, this fictional novel recreates the tragedy of what the French Vichy government tragically did on July 16th and 17th, 1942. With some of history’s most inhumane treatment over 13,000 Jewish men, women and children were rounded-up and stored in the Velodrome d’Hiver, an indoor cycle track. For days they had no toilet facilities, no food, no water, medical care or blankets before they arrived at their final destination, Auschwitz for adults and the children in camps elsewhere.

The story begins with the French police invading the homes of French Jews in the early morning hours of July 16th. The young girl, Sarah, is ten years old, frightened, she hides her four year old brother in their favorite hiding place. She expects that she will be able to come back and release him. As the families are taken from their apartments some neighbors try to plead for them while many make anti-Semitic comments or merely sneer at the victims as they are dragged from the safety of their homes.

This fictional novel is told from two sides, one being Sarah’s and the other being an American woman journalist, Julia Jarmond, married to a Frenchman. Her journalistic task is to obtain the facts of what happened so her Paris based American magazine can do a feature story for the 60th anniversary of the event.

The book is a heart-wrenching illustration of how a child in these circumstances must deal with survival and also the tremendous guilt she possessed for locking her brother in the storage space. She has no idea if he was rescued and fears the worst, to her, it is all her fault.

Meanwhile Julia is uncovering some of the deep sense of French guilt and why they choose not to admit how they were responsible for gathering over 13,000 people.

The plaques, in the area of the cycle track, spell out the round-up was by the Germans, negating any French responsibility.

This book is very compelling and a must read.