Sarah guards the key with her life and has only one thing on her mind: going back to the family’s apartment in Paris to find her brother, locked in the cupboard. The book painstaking describes the horrendous conditions the victims endured in the stadium. They were held at the Vélodrome d’Hiver in extremely crowded conditions, almost without water, food and sanitary facilities, as well as the Drancy, Pithiviers, and Beaune-la-Rolande internment camps, then shipped by railway transports to Auschwitz for extermination. According to records of the Préfecture de Police, 13,152 victims were arrested, including more than 4,000 children. The roundup was one of several aimed at reducing the Jewish population in Occupied France. The name “Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup” is derived from the nickname of the Vélodrome d’Hiver (“Winter Velodrome”), a bicycle velodrome and stadium where most of the victims were temporarily confined. We learn that Sarah and her parents were part of the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup, which was a raid and mass arrest of Jews by French police, directed by Nazi authorities. There were tears running down his face, silent tears of helplessness and shame that she could not understand. She was coming back, they were all coming back. The music teacher raised his hand slowly in a gesture of farewell. The girl looked back at her building, at the silent faces in the windows, at the concierge cuddling little Suzanne. She locks Michel in and takes the key with her. Sarah departs with her parents, but not before she helps her younger brother, Michel, hide in a secret cupboard in their room. The novel opens in July of 1942 with policemen banging on the Starzynski’s door, demanding that the family pack their bags and leave their home. The heart of the novel is Sarah Starzynski, a 10-year-old girl of Polish-Jewish origin who was born and raised in Paris. Even the second time around, I couldn’t put it down and read it in less than a day! It’s kept its appeal as a complex, face-paced story: it’s quite a page-turner. And the books I’ve reviewed lately ( Fatelessness, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank) have been very enriching.Īnyway, I’ve read Sarah’s Key twice, once a few years ago and recently to review it for the blog. It’s a heavy topic, but an important one. I’ve read a lot of these lately, kind of accidentally. Warning: this is another book about the Holocaust. Hiro holds Sarah’s Key close to his heart.
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