Book 46 Sarah's Key **+ by Tatiana De Rosnay

This was an emotionally tough one, especially right after The D-Day Dodgers.   There are so many amazing stories that haven't been told yet from that war, that still haunt and compell us today. 

This book has two stories, one of Sarah, a 10 year Jewish girl, rounded up in Paris in the infamous Vel d'Hiv or Velodrome d'Hiver, and from there sent to a death camp.   She has hidden her brother in a secret attic, locked him in, and cannot get back to rescue him.   The other story is about Julia, a writer assigned to cover the 50th anniversary of the round up, and what she uncovers about Sarah.   The story of Sarah and Julia's unravelling of the mystery are very well told.   The writer is a great story teller, and you will not put this book down once you start.  

De Rosnay does a fair job of showing how the Nazis manipulated the French population and the Jews into cooperating with their diabolic schemes, a rather elaborate plan to keep people trusting, hoping and terrorized, by increments, starting with propaganda, and then suddenly  it's all too late.

I didn't like the romance novel writing style in which much of the story of Julia is written, e.g. pages written to explain and justify rather silly behaviour, and I don't like the two stories in one book approach.  I understood the characters' motives and actions most of the time, but they are a little too special, larger than life.  I wanted to strangle Julia for putting up with her husband and her pregnancy seemed too contrived to fit the theme of children.    

The story that is not told is that of the French police who did the horrible deed, including running the camps, how they were persuaded to, tricked and manipulated into, or eager to carry out the plan .  Some heroic and kindly French people who helped at huge personal risk play parts in the book.  France has now acknowledged its role in the death of 76,000 of its Jewish citizens and erected a monument listing all of their names. 

How can the population stand by and do nothing?  I have only to remember the poor ragged Indians who came to beg at our farm when I was a kid.   Why did we do so little?