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Sarahs Key Research Paper

In Sarahs Key by Tatiana de Rosnay, Sarah, a young Jewish girl living in
France, is arrested during the Vel dHiv round-up of 1942. The novel goes back and
forth between two story lines; Sarah and her familys arrest and the time they spent in
the work camps and Julia, an American reporter living in France who is investigating
Sarahs story. Julia is writing an article about the Vel dHiv round-up in honor of the 60
th

anniversary of the event. In her research, Julia realizes that her life is more involved
with Sarah than she could have ever imagined. Throughout the novel, numerous facts
about the Vel dHiv round-up are presented and Sarahs story is presented in such a
way that readers can experience what it was like for her. The truth about Sarahs story
can be solidified based on facts, personal accounts, and the aftermath of the round-up.
Sarahs Key gives a voice to a historical event that would have previously been covered
up.
Sarah and her parents are arrested during the Vel dHiv roundup, which took
place on July 16 and 17, 1942. According to Michel Laffitte, it was the greatest mass-
arrest of Jews ever carried out on French soil, (Laffitte 1). The United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum says that in the two days, about 13,000 Jews were arrested in Paris.
After their detainment, all Jews were sent to a stadium where they were kept before
being separated from their families and being sent to internment camps, then to
concentration camps. In the two months following the round-up, approximately 1000
Jews were deported to Auschwitz every two or three days. By 1945, only about 780 of
them remained alive (Holocaust in France). In Sarahs Key, Sarah is separated from her
father, then from her mother. In the initial roundup, children between the ages of two
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and 16 were arrested with their parents. The men were sent away from their families
almost immediately; the mothers stayed with their children and were sent to internment
camps. Once they arrived there, the mothers were separated from the children and sent
away. More than 3000 babies and children were left alone in the internment camps, and
they were eventually deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered (Holocaust in
France). Sarahs arrest and deportation story are very realistic. Every aspect of the
arrest, being kept in the stadium, and being sent to the internment camp is truthful.
In the book, Sarah, along with another girl she meets at the internment camp,
escapes due to the mercy of French police officer. During their travels, they come
across an older couple who agree to take them in and hide them from the Nazis. By
doing so, the couple risks their own lives, knowing if they were discovered, they would
be sent to a concentration camp. The story is certainly touching, but would it really have
happened? According to Cecile Widerman Kaufers story, it certainly did. Kaufer, an 82-
year-old French Holocaust survivor had an experience similar to Sarahs in the book.
Kaufer was 11 years old when the Nazis arrested her and her family during the VeldHiv
roundup. They were sent to the large stadium along with thousands of other Jews, just
like Sarahs family. After her family had been in the stadium for several days, two
French guards let Kaufer, her younger sister, and her tuberculosis-riddled mother go to
a hospital. That was the last time they ever saw their father and older sister. While at
the hospital, Kaufer persuaded a French guard to free her and her sister from the
hospital, a request from her dying mother. Like the French guard in the book, the guard
turned a blind eye and allowed the two girls to escape. They were taken into hiding by a
Catholic French woman from Normandy who was already hiding 5 Jewish children. After
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years of living in hiding, she wrote the French government to see what happened to her
parents. She learned in 1962 that her entire family had perished in Auschwitz (Kelly).
Kaufers story has many parallels with Sarahs story, as did many childrens stories.
Sarah wonders in the book about the French officers, thinking, Were they in fact
machines, not human beings? She looked closely at them. They seemed of flesh and
bone. They were men, (de Rosnay 187). Despite all the hateful officers, there were
some French officers with compassion who would look away and allow children to
escape, as was the case with Kaufer and Sarah. People all over Europe risked
themselves to hide these innocent children from the wrath of the Nazis. Kaufer says in
the article To this day I always feel guilty that I survived, (Kelly 8). Many survivors
experienced survivors guilt, knowing that they lived while their family and countless
others died. Sarah struggles with this in the book, and it eventually leads her to commit
suicide when she was 40 years old. Ceciles story and Sarahs story have different
endings, but their experiences are still very similar.
In Sarahs Key, the story jumps back and forth between 1942 and 2002, and the
two stories seemed completely unrelated at first. As the story progresses, it becomes
much more clear as to why the two stories are being told simultaneously and everything
starts to fall together. Julia, as an American, and Bertrand and his family, as Parisians,
have such different points of view about learning that their apartment had been lived in
by a Jewish family that was arrested. As an American living in Paris, she is disturbed
because even though the Vel dHiv was one of the largest roundups that occurred in
the Holocaust and it happened on French soil, no one knew about it. As soon as Julia
learns about that a Jewish family had lived in the apartment, she struggles with knowing
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she is to live in that house and starts to dig deeper. Bertrand, on the other hand, doesn't
see anything wrong with it. It shows the differences between American and French
education on the war and specifically the Holocaust. She knew so much about it
whereas Bertrand said that they didn't talk much about it, because it was such a dark
time in their history. Julia just has to know more about it, and Bertrand is very frustrated
that she wants to know more. Originally, all the research is so she can write an article
about the 60th anniversary of the Vel' d'Hiv roundup, but eventually it strays away from
that and becomes more personal, becomes something she has to know. After a while,
her father-in-law tells her the secret about the apartment: that he knew what happened
there. He tells about how when he was a child, Sarah had come to find her brother, only
to find him dead in the closet. Edouard and his father both know the secret but have to
keep it, and it tore both of them up inside. Eduoard and Julia grow very close as the
story progresses, knowing that they both need answers and conclusions. It wasnt until
1995 that the French finally acknowledged their role in the Holocaust. Since then, the
French government has been opening officially to the events that took place in France
during the Holocaust. In 2012, the French president spoke in Paris to commemorate the
70
th
anniversary of the Vel dHiv roundup. After his speech, he met with survivors of the
roundup. Also marking the 70
th
anniversary, French police released their archives on
the roundup and put them for display in Paris (Remembering).
Although it is historical fiction, Sarahs entire story, from beginning to end, is a
story that could have really happened. Tatiana de Rosnays Sarahs Key is a historically
accurate novel due to the copious amount of historically correct facts. The book unveils
a little known event that took place in the Holocaust. After reading Sarahs Key, a reader
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knows much more about the Vel dHiv roundup then they ever would have known
before.

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Works Cited
Kelly, Tara. "Cecile Widerman Kaufer, Holocaust Survivor, Recounts 1942 Vel D'Hiv
Roundup In Paris Stadium ." 17 July 2012. Huffington Post. Web. 19 November
2013.

Laffitte, Michel. "Case Study: The Velodrome d'hiver Round-up: July 16 and 17, 1942."
15 March 2012. Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence. Web. 19 November
2013.

"Remembering the Vel' D'Hiv Roundup." 1 August 2012. United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum. Web. 20 November 2013.

Rosnay, Tatiana De. Sarah's Key. New York: St. Martin's, 2007. Print.

"The Holocaust in France: The Vel' d'Hiv Roundup." n.d. Yad Vashem. Web. 20
November 2013.