Sarah's Key

The Cupboard and the Apartment

In Paris in July 1942, a Jewish girl of about ten, Sarah Starzynski, is woken in the night by knocking at her family's door. French police, not German soldiers, have come to arrest them. Hoping to protect her younger brother Michel, she locks him in a hidden cupboard, tells him to stay quiet and promises to return. She keeps the key, believing the arrest will be brief.

Sarah and her parents, Wladyslaw and Rivka, are taken to the Vélodrome d'Hiver with thousands of other Jewish families. The heat is intense, and there is almost no food, water or sanitation. Sarah clings to the key around her neck, tormented by the thought of Michel alone in the dark. Later the story follows her to the camp at Beaune-la-Rolande, where her mother falls apart and the families are separated.

In 2002, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist in Paris, is assigned by her editor Bamber to write about the sixtieth anniversary of the Vel' d'Hiv roundup. She is shocked to learn how little she knows, and that French police carried it out. Her French husband Bertrand and his family are uncomfortable with the subject and dismiss her growing involvement. She interviews survivors and reads testimonies.

Julia and Bertrand are about to renovate and move into the Tézac family apartment in the Marais. Julia begins to suspect the apartment once belonged to a Jewish family, and Bertrand's grandmother Mamé reacts with distress when it is mentioned. Julia also discovers she is pregnant, but Bertrand has made clear he does not want another child. Her research and her private life begin to converge.

Tracing the Starzynski Family

Julia's research narrows to the Starzynski family. She learns that Sarah locked her brother Michel in a cupboard before the arrest, and that the family was held at the Vel' d'Hiv and then at Beaune-la-Rolande, where parents and children were separated. Julia becomes determined to learn what became of Sarah, whether she survived and whether anyone ever freed Michel. The story stops feeling like ordinary journalism.

Julia's marriage grows more strained. Bertrand remains dismissive of her obsession and focused on the renovation, while she keeps her pregnancy secret and undecided. She comes to see that the Tézac apartment on the rue de Saintonge was the Starzynskis' home, and that Bertrand's family took it over after the family was deported. She senses that her in-laws may know more than they admit, and Mamé stays guarded and fragile.

Julia's inquiries bring her into contact with Bamber, her editor Alessandra and Franck Lévy, who works with a Holocaust remembrance organization. She learns that Sarah escaped from Beaune-la-Rolande with a gendarme's help and was taken in by a farming family, the Dufaures. Sarah returned to Paris to free Michel and found him dead in the cupboard. Julia is haunted by this and feels morally bound to see the story through.

Following Sarah's Trail

Julia's investigation deepens. She is now trying to trace Sarah's life beyond the camp and the Paris apartment, and the line between her journalism and her personal quest has disappeared. She presses on even though Bertrand grows more impatient and his family resists what she is uncovering. The apartment on the rue de Saintonge has become, for her, a symbol of silence and inherited guilt.

Julia reaches Gaspard Dufaure, who was a boy when Sarah arrived at his family's farmhouse. He recalls a traumatized girl who barely spoke and was consumed by guilt over Michel. His mother tried to care for her, but Sarah's grief never lifted. Eventually Sarah left the family, and the Dufaures lost contact with her. This gap in the record becomes the problem Julia is determined to solve.

Julia's private pressures grow alongside her search. Her pregnancy is still unresolved, and Bertrand wants her to end it. Her isolation within her own family sharpens as she confronts the Tézacs' connection to the apartment. The notes leave open what finally becomes of Sarah, of the pregnancy and of the marriage, and end with Julia still searching and committed to remembering the truth whatever it costs her.