For the Dutchies the backside of the book:
De tienjarige Sarah wordt samen met haar ouders opgepakt en naar het wielerstadion in Parijs gebracht, waarvandaan duizenden joden worden gedeporteerd. Niemand heeft echter gezien dat Sarah haar kleine broertje Michel in een kledingkast opsloot, net voordat de politie het appartement binnendrong, en de sleutel bij zich stak. Zestig jaar later krijgt Julia Jarmond, een Amerikaanse journaliste in Parijs, de opdracht een artikel te schrijven over deze razzia. Ze gaat op zoek in de archieven en via het dossier van Sarah ontdekt zij het goed verborgen geheim van haar schoonfamilie.
For my International followers a summary I got from bol.com:
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old Jewish girl, is arrested by the French police in the middle of the night, along with her mother and father. Desperate to protect her younger brother, she locks him in a cupboard and promises to come back for him as soon as she can. Paris, May 2002: Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, is asked to write about the 60th anniversary of the Vel' d'Hiv'--the infamous day in 1942 when French police rounded up thousands of Jewish men, women and children, in order to send them to concentration camps. Sarah's Key is the poignant story of two families, forever linked and haunted by one of the darkest days in France's past. In this emotionally intense, page-turning novel, Tatiana de Rosnay reveals the guilt brought on by long-buried secrets and the damage that the truth can inflict when they finally come unravelled.
Tatiana deRosnay has given us one of the most beautifully constructed and heartfelt books I've ever had the pleasure (and pain) of reading. Told in alternating chapters by Sarah in 1942 and Julia in 2002, this remarkable story is based on facts surrounding the role of France and its citizens during the Holocaust. The country's unspeakable part in this tragedy is not a focal point for students, but this book should certainly be told and studied so that the horrible story of the Vel d'Hiv, the roundup of French citizens who were Jews, never has a chance to repeat itself.
ReplyDeleteHaunting and unforgettable, this is an intimate and totally captivating story of one of the darkest periods in French history, actually in World History. DeRosnay has put a very personal face on an appalling tragedy, and the result is stunning.