Sarah"s Key | Imamother

bluesclues

Sat, Mar 13 2010, 4:40 pm

I read this book over shabbos
I was amazing I thought I knew alot about the holocaust but I did not know what happened in france the summer of 1942
I highly recommend this book.
lets never forget!

wifey

Sat, Mar 13 2010, 5:07 pm

I read it - it was an incredible book. Finished it in 1 day.

life'sgreat

Sat, Mar 13 2010, 5:36 pm

It's on my list.

mrsERK

Sat, Mar 13 2010, 6:21 pm

My MIL just read it and insists that I read it over pesach! Can't wait!

Aribenj

Sun, Mar 14 2010, 6:57 pm

I read it. DH read it. My whole family read it!
Actually, DH lived in France for a while and even went to school there and he says it's totally like that... The occupation is something that is just not discussed by anyone. He went to a Jewish day school, and they didn't learn about the velodrome in their history classes! It's just not in the curriculum! How shameful!!

But the book is incredible. I couldn't put it down! Amazing.

ValleyMom

Mon, Mar 15 2010, 5:37 am

I read it over a year ago and still find myself thinking about it...

Ruchel

Mon, Mar 15 2010, 6:22 am

Occupation not discussed? It's part of the curriculum every year from 10 yr old to hs graduation. In public schools and schools affiliated with the government at least. Sorry.

ValleyMom

Mon, Mar 15 2010, 6:36 am

Not in the USA---Thats a large gray area.
The DETAILS... The book was extremely explicit.
The author intimates it isnt taught in Parisian school system as the Parisians are ashamed and embarrassed of this dreadful day in Jewish history as that they stood silent as their Jewish neighbors were taken away.
I naively assumed the author was right.

Ruchel

Mon, Mar 15 2010, 6:39 am

There is no Parisian school system. It's French.

Yes, people are ashamed and embarrassed. Which is why they insist a LOT on Resistance. But not discussed? I know public schools discuss all this in details that give kids nightmares, and Jewish schools are said to be even worse and start even earlier.

justanothermother

Mon, Mar 15 2010, 7:51 am

Ruchel wrote:

Occupation not discussed? It's part of the curriculum every year from 10 yr old to hs graduation. In public schools and schools affiliated with the government at least. Sorry.

It is not about the occupation so much as focusing on the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup.

I was also unaware that such an event took place until I read this book.

This from Wiki:

Quote:

For decades the French government declined to apologise for the role of French policemen in the roundup or for any other state complicity. The argument rested on the legal problem that the French Republic had been declared finished when Philippe Pétain instituted a new French State during the war and that the Republic had been re-established only once the war was over. It was not for the Republic, therefore, to apologise for events that happened while it had not existed and which had been carried out by a state which it did not recognise.

On 16 July 1995, the President, Jacques Chirac, ruled it was time that France faced up to its past and he acknowledged the role that the state had played in the persecution of Jews and other victims of the German occupation. He said:

"These black hours will stain our history for ever and are an injury to our past and our traditions. Yes, the criminal madness of the occupant was assisted('secondée') by the French, by the French state. Fifty-three years ago, on 16 July 1942, 450 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders, obeyed the demands of the Nazis. That day, in the capital and the Paris region, nearly 10,000 Jewish men, women and children were arrested at home, in the early hours of the morning, and assembled at police stations... France, home of the Enlightenment and the Rights of Man, land of welcome and asylum, France committed that day the irreparable. Breaking its word, it delivered those it protected to their executioners."

chaylizi

Mon, Mar 15 2010, 8:06 am

publisher? author?

justanothermother

Mon, Mar 15 2010, 8:56 am

Here is all you need to know.

Quote:

By Tatiana de Rosnay - St. Martin's Press (2008) - Paperback - 320 pages - ISBN 0312370849

A "New York Times" bestseller. Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel' d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life. Tatiana de Rosnay offers a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround the painful episode in that country's history.

Ruchel

Mon, Mar 15 2010, 9:00 am

I am very surprised (and shocked) there are still Jews who didn't hear of the Vel d'Hiv events. But again, I've had an American Jew not aware that Nazis went into France at all, so yeah.

Mama Bear

Sun, Oct 03 2010, 12:59 pm

How funny that this book is being advertised on top of the imamother pages???

chocolate moose

Sun, Jan 30 2011, 10:19 am

I also read it.

shabbatiscoming

Sun, Jan 30 2011, 10:41 am

Ruchel wrote:

I am very surprised (and shocked) there are still Jews who didn't hear of the Vel d'Hiv events. But again, I've had an American Jew not aware that Nazis went into France at all, so yeah.

Ruchel, why are you surprised that there are jews that have never heard of this terribly tragic event?

I read this book and then looked up more about the Vel d'Hiv events and there was not that much on the internet either.

I thought that book was amazing.

the world's best mom

Sun, Jan 30 2011, 11:11 am

I never heard of Vel d'Hiv until I read the book. I knew that France was on Germany's side during the war, but that was all I knew. I borrowed the book from a friend who is Jewish, not Frum, and she thought the whole thing may have been made up because she never knew France had such a big part in deporting Jews.

Unfortunately, there is a lot people don't know about the holocaust.

sequoia

Sun, Jan 30 2011, 11:13 am

Wasn't France formally neutral?

bashinda

Sun, Jan 30 2011, 7:25 pm

France neutral? I never heard of that at all. Switzerland was the only country that was neutral and even they weren't that neutral over all.

MamaChips

Sun, Jan 30 2011, 7:31 pm

It is a wonderful, and wonderfully important book. I read it about a year ago and I still think about it quite a bit. I highly recommend it for all adults.