Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

December 2009

Having just read Shadow of the Wind, I moved to this book next as it was loaned to me by my future mother-in-law Charlene. My close friend Laura had read it over the summer and said it was fantastic and meanwhile with my Jewish background, she asked me a ton of questions about the Holocaust in France. I was ashamed to admit that I knew very little of what had happened in France. So, here I was in December addicted to the two stories within de Rosnay's book of 10-year-old Sarah Starzynski and 45-year-old Julia Jarmond, as my work schedule had become hectic and I had to pre-plan assigned reading times at night to get my chance to be lost within yet another book.

I read this book in under a week. The story within the pages was gripping, sad and also very upsetting. Having learned about the Holocaust at a young age in Religious School, I had never heard of the specifics of France and the Velodrome d’Hiver round-up. As Julia Jarmond, a reporter for a Paris magazine researches the events at the Vel D'Hiv for the 60th anniversary, I feared for young Sarah (age 10) as her and her parents, Wladyslaw and Rywka, spent the long week in the Vel D’Hiv before being sent off to a concentration camp.

I was saddened by the innocence Sarah displayed about the French police round-up as she locked her brother Michael (age 4) in their special hiding place, a cupboard, before she was taken away by the French police. Sarah promised him she would return later that night. Throughout the story, Sarah grips the key to this cupboard in her pocket and it was her determination to return home that kept me reading chapter after chapter.

This quote from Amazon.com sets the stage for de Rosnay's 10th novel (but first translated into English):

"A powerful novel... Tatiana de Rosnay has capture the insane world of the Holocaust and the efforts of the few good people who stood up against it in this work of fiction more effectively than has been done in many scholarly studies. It is a book that makes us sensitive to how much evil occurred and also to how much willingness to do good also existed in that world." -Rabbi Jack Riemer, South Florida Jewish Journal

This book gets an automatic 5 out of 5 stars on my book rating scale!