Sarah’s Key

In the future again, after dinner, Guillaume continues his grandmother’s story of the Vel’ d’Hiv’. He reveals that the code name was Operation Summer Breeze and that children were not supposed to be taken at first because “deporting children would have revealed the truth” (50).

Julia returns home. Bertrand tells her to forget the whole story and that no one will want to read about it. She gets upset with him. She remembers the difficulty they had having a child. While she used to return to him to make up, this time she does not. She takes a bath and goes to bed. 

The girl sees people dying: “She had seen women and men go mad in the stifling, stinking heat and be beaten down and tied to stretchers” (55).

Everyone inside is ordered outside. After talking to her father, the girl realizes that there’s no way to go back for her brother, and that he will likely die.

They board a train. She notices a clean family waiting to go on vacation and watches them. 

Julia and Bamber travel to the fifteenth arrondissement to take photos of the Vel’ d’Hiv’ area. They have a couple of old photos and find a sign marking the occasion of the police roundup.

They discuss the events and the idea of being French. They sit down for lunch. A waiter says that he knows someone who lived during the time of the arrests and might be able to help them. 

The girl and her parents enter into a camp. She and her mother separate from her father. The women shower: “[The girl] hated having to see their nudity” (65).

The girl has trouble sleeping. She longs for the mother she once knew. 

Julia and Bamber speak with the old woman about the events at Vel’ d’Hiv’. “You think I have forget, maybe?” the woman asks (67). The woman remembers the events clearly. She, like the others, thought that it was okay because it was French police doing the arrests.

When she saw the children leave Vel d’Hiv’, however, she knew it was bad. She says that she cannot forget the children and adds, “Shame on us for not having stopped it” (69). 

The girl wonders about her brother, and if he’s still alive. She overhears some rumors that the children will be separated from the parents and that the parents will be sent somewhere.

The rumors are true. The police take all valuables, but the girl manages to hold on to her key. The girl and her parents are separated: “Her mother’s face turned to her one last time. Then she was gone” (73). 

Julia visits Madame Tézac, Bertrand’s grandmother. She is in a nursing home and has Alzheimer’s disease. They discuss the apartment and the fact that Bertrand never comes to visit her.

Later in the conversation, it’s revealed that the grandmother moved into a suddenly vacated apartment in late July 1942, at the time of the big roundup: “There were lots of places that were suddenly vacant,” she explains (77).

Julia asks if she knew whether the people would return to the apartment. Madame Tézac says citizens knew nothing. 

The children, left to their own devices, fight and scream. They grow hungry. The girl toughens up and becomes like a mother: “She would tell [the other children] the stories she used to tell her brother, before his bedtime” (80). 

Rachel, another girl, says that she’s going to try to escape, that she doesn’t trust anything the police say. The policemen catch her. They order the children’s heads to be shaved.

The girl notices a friendly police officer watching: “She held his gaze, not glancing down once” (81). 

Julia wonders about the role of the concierges and Madame Royer, particularly, during the war. She wonders how they could be sure no one would return to the apartments.

She returns to Madame Tézac’s apartment, which is now her and Bertrand’s. She can’t get over the possibility that a Jewish family once lived here. Bertrand seems not to care and says that she is overreacting.

Julia wonders, however, “How could they not think about that family?” (86). 

The girl and Rachel make a plan to escape. Children are dying and “some children had already left the camp” (87). Sarah wonders if people on the outside will hate her for being a Jew.

The two girls make an escape. They cross the towers and reach a barbed wire fence. There’s a tiny opening that they try to wriggle through. A policeman catches them and stops them. It’s the “friendly” policeman that she used to know. He recognizes her.

The girl begs him to let her go so she can free her brother from the cupboard. Eventually, he gives in and lets her go. “Go, now! Fast” he says (91). He gives them some money and pushes them through the fence. 

Julia discovers that she is pregnant, and “A feeling of joy, of utter happiness, took over” her (94). She can’t wait to tell Bertrand, who has wanted another child. Her daughter, Zoë, comes home from school and reminds her about the children at Vel’ d’Hiv’. She overheard her speaking to someone about the apartment and the Jewish family that vacated it.

She tells her daughter that she is committed to finding out about the children.