Sarah's Key

Sarah's Key is one of those books that just wrecks you, and somehow changes you. I was always curious and full of need of knowledge when it came to this war and the camps. I always wondered why we never talked about it that much either in school or elsewhere. I am French and I can tell you that this book is right about the fact that we bury things, prefer to forget than to own up. I am sick to my core about what happened back then.

This book is a true masterpiece in every way. I was so not ready about the twist around Sarah. This poignant and touching book is a must read. You get attached to the characters easily and find yourself clinging to Julia, knowing she will be the one to get the answers.

I was putting off reading this book for show more whatever reason and decided to just start it yesterday and could not put it down. I needed to know about Sarah. And thinking about all of those children that died, that saw their parents die. It was awful.

Zakhor al tichkah. show less

You might say SARAH'S KEY is not crime fiction, but it is certainly about murder if genocide is murder. The initial setting is the roundup of the Jews in Paris by the French police under the Vichy government in July 1942. Those arrested eventually are sent to concentration camps like Auschwitz despite the fact that many of them, the children in particular, were French citizens who happened to be Jews.

The book is also about guilt: the guilt that Sarah feels about leaving Marcel locked in the cupboard, promising she would be back. But then she didn't understand what was happening to them.

Then there is the guilt of those who stood by and saw it happen, and when it had, shut the memories out, or transferred the guilt to their German show more overlords. And then the guilt of those who "profited" by the roundup, in gaining apartments and jobs previously belonging to the Jews. The legacy of the roundup stretches into the 21st century.

This is a very powerful story, describing a piece of history that few of us have had first hand knowledge of. How many other stories like this one, we wonder, are buried in our past?

If I have one criticism of the story it is that Tatiana de Rosnay did not know when to bring the book to a close. What Julia Jarmond discovers has huge repercussions on her own life, the lives of both her immediate family, and those she contacts because of her discoveries. So it becomes Julia's story as well as Sarah's story. I was ready for the book to end before it did, but I understand the author's quandary. show less

On the morning of July 16, 1942 Sirka/Sarah Starzynsky was roughly woken and told that she must leave the only home she had ever known. Her brother, only four at the time, was terrified and refused to come out of their room. Thinking that she would be back, she locked him in hidden cupboard where they frequently played. How was she to know or understand the tragic events that were about unfold.

Julia Jarmond is an American journalist living in Paris. For the past ten years she has been married to Bertrand, a dynamic man whom everyone can't help but gravitate towards. When her boss assigns her an article about the 60th anniversary of the Vel d'Hiv, she is at a loss. She's never even heard of it. Yet the more she learns the more show more emotionally invested she becomes. Her husband tells her that no one cares and it's ancient history, but she can't forget the children. What she eventually learns has far-reaching consequences and forever changes her life.

A lot of people write books on the Holocaust. That's to be expected. The crimes committed under the Nazi regime are nothing short of horrific. The stories of those most impacted by them deserve to be told. No, they don't just deserve to be told. These haunting tales beg to retold over and over again, because no matter how many times you hear them, the horror never diminishes. They serve as memorials, lessons, and reminders of just what we as humans are capable of. Sometimes those who choose to put these stories down on paper are successful, sometimes they are not. Sarah's Key is not just successful. It's a vivid portrait of one of the most chilling crimes committed during the Nazi occupation of France, only this time it was the French committing the atrocity, leading to the deaths of nearly 10,000 Jews, most of them children.

Tatiana de Rosnay interweaves the stories of Sarah and Julia seamlessly. She writes the story in a straightforward manner, no flowery prose or metaphors to hide it behind. This simplicity really works for the novel. Being overly descriptive and wordy would have detracted from the story, made it easier to distance yourself from the brutality of what happened. If the author's goal was to horrify and numb you, she accomplished that brilliantly. If it was to educate you, share the story of an event that the French have tried for decades to forget, she accomplished that brilliantly as well. If it was to elicit a strong emotional response from her readers, again she was brilliant. I was crying by page nine and continued to cry as each new piece of the puzzle was revealed. There is nothing more that I can say other than to ask you to please, please read this incredibly moving, touching, and yes horrifying novel. You won't be disappointed. show less

Sarah's Key pulls no punches, which I admire in writing, as the author has complete authority to tie things up nicely. I do wish there was a greater emotional payoff for the character of Sarah, but the direction the author chose to go in does have more of the ring of realism than the bow-tied version. The author uses very short, compelling chapters, which made reading the book positively fly. I would recommend this novel to anyone who has no idea what happened at the Vélodrome d'Hiver in 1942.

Tatiana de Rosnay really painted herself into a corner when she decided on the structure of Sarah’s Key, her touching portrayal of one of the darkest incidents in French history, the July 16, 1942 roundup of Parisian Jews by the French police for their eventual transport to the Auschwitz death camp. De Rosnay chose to tell her tragic story by alternating the first person narrative of Sarah Starzynski, a little girl caught up in the roundup with her family, and Julia Jarmond a journalist assigned to do a story on the incident some sixty years later.

This structure worked well for the first half of the book, during which Julia researched what happened at the Vélodrome d'Hiver in alternating chapters with Sarah’s account of what she show more experienced and saw on the fateful day she was imprisoned in that indoor stadium with her mother and father. Then, at about the book’s midpoint, de Rosnay found it necessary to silence Sarah’s direct voice and to tell the rest of the story strictly through Julia and her efforts to determine Sarah’s ultimate fate.

This is the point at which the book loses its most dramatic and effective voice and its whole tone changes. The shock and horror that dominated the first part of the book soon evolve into a much less emotionally gripping tale of Julia’s determination to find out whether or not Sarah survived the war and, if so, what might have happened to her since.

That said, Sarah’s Key is a very good book and one that will be hard to forget, especially since it sheds light on an event that so many people themselves prefer to forget and would be happy enough that their children and grandchildren never learn about.

Sarah Starzynski was a typical Paris schoolgirl until the day that her mother sewed a yellow star on her school dress. Even then, things went along fairly normally until the morning when the family opened the door to French policemen who demanded that the family come with them. Sarah’s young brother, a spirited little boy, refused to go and managed to hide in a built-in wardrobe before the authorities saw him. Things took a horrible turn, however, when Sarah locked the hidden wardrobe and told her brother to remain there quietly until she could return for him in a few minutes. She slipped the key into her pocket and left the apartment with her parents, not for a moment thinking that she might never see the inside of her home again.

Sarah and her parents were taken to the Vélodrome d'Hiver where they and thousands of other French citizens, Jews all, were locked in with almost no food or water, hardly any place to sleep, and absolutely no toilet facilities. Old people died, babies died, newborns died or were born dead - and all of this happened without a German in sight; the French government was entirely in charge of the operation. Just when it seemed that things could get no worse, parents were separated from their children, no matter how young the children were, never to be seen again. Unimaginable as it is, the several thousand children were left on their own in the same conditions they had suffered with their parents.
Miraculously, Sarah managed to escape the camp to which the surviving children were sent, determined to get back to Paris to release her little brother from the hidden wardrobe before it was too late to save him.

Sixty years later, Julia Jarmond can hardly believe what she learns about the Vél d'Hiv and what some 450 French policemen did there for the Nazis at the instruction of the French government. She is even more shocked when she stumbles upon a link between her husband’s family and what happened that day, and dedicates herself to finding Sarah so that she can tell her that the family has not forgotten her, nor will they ever.

Sarah’s Key is about bigotry, collaboration, hatred, and looking the other way when evil presents itself. It is a horrible reminder of what supposedly good people are capable of in times of war - especially the willingness to turn on fellow citizens and neighbors of a different religion.

Sadly, it is also a reminder of how little has changed since July 16, 1942.

Rated at: 4.0 show less

This was amazing! I think the only reason I did not cry with this story is because I have read so many true horror stories of the Holocaust that nothing fictional can ever compare. However, it's really not about the Holocaust.

In 1942 the Vichy government in France fell prey to the ideals of the Nazis and Hitler and joined their cause to eradicate the Jews in their country. Sarah's Key tells the tale of a young girl who is taken by the French, with her parents, to the Vel d'Hiv, a tournament arena in Paris for several days before being transported to a camp outside of the city. There, she is separated from her parents, who are taken immediately to Auschwitz and gassed. She escapes with the help of a French policeman who knew her.

All is show more not happy, however. At the age of ten, Sarah was very close to her four year old brother, Michal. In their apartment, there was a small cupboard in the room they shared where they played--it was outfitted with a little bit of water, cushions to sit on, and storybooks that Sarah would read to him. They had grand adventures within this cupboard. When the police came to their house to arrest them, Sarah had thought to keep him safe and innocently locked him in the cupboard, thinking to free him within a few hours, if not a day.

Many years later, Sarah's story is discovered by Julia Jarmond, an American-born journalist living in Paris, while doing research on the events of the Vel d'Hiv. She becomes obsessed with Sarah's story, and eventually finds ties between her life and Sarah's, allowing the story to encompass her even in the wake of a failing marriage.

It's a love story, in a way. The love of a sister for her brother. The love of a mother for her children. Nothing in this world can compete with the emotions of these. And yet, there is the love for human life that comes across so vividly--the idea that we should never forget, that the love of life lives in us all, and that we have no right to take away a life because of perceived differences. show less

I tip my hat to Tatiana de Rosnay for picking a "hidden" historical fact and shedding light on it. In Sarah's Key, the hidden fact is actually an event - the round up of French Jews by French police on July 16, 1942. These French citizens were crammed into the Velodrome d'Hiver, an indoor bicycle arena, without food, water, sanitation or ventilation. Then, they were shuttled into cattle cars to concentration camps - first in France and then Poland. Of the 42,000 Jews rounded up that day, only 811 came home at the end of the war.

In Sarah's Key, the reader follows young Sarah Starzynski, a 10-year-old French Jewish girl, who was part of the Vel' d'Hiv roundup. As the police banged on her apartment door, she hid her little brother in a show more locked cabinet, assuming she would be back to rescue him. Unfortunately, Sarah didn't make it back, and we follow her journey through the Vel d'Hiv and her imprisonment.

The book rotates between Sarah's story and that of Julia, an American-born journalist living in Paris, who was researching the 60th anniversary of the Vel' d'Hiv roundup for work. Julia takes an interest in the roundup when she learns that her husband's grandmother's apartment was occupied by a Jewish family who was imprisoned that fateful day. Through Julia's research, the reader learns more about what the Jewish people faced and how French people ignored their participation in this horrendous event.

Where de Rosnay stumbled, though, is in her telling of Julia. Julia's personal life, in my opinion, detracted from the story. Julia's marriage to an egotistical French man, her unexpected pregnancy and predictable resolution to her situation did not enhance the story. I felt like I was watching Schindler's List mixed with The Young and the Restless. I couldn't reconcile the two themes.

So, I recommend the good parts of Sarah's Key to readers. It's a quick read, and if you skim through Julia's sections, you'll walk away with a solid understanding of another sad chapter in Jewish history. show less