Sarah's Key

I picked up this book because I really enjoy reading stories from World War 2 and that whole time period. I was also really struck by the quote on the front "A shocking, profoundly moving, and morally challenging story." The blurb on the back talks about two stories, a young Jewish girl who is taken with her family in a round-up by the French police on behalf of the Gestapo and the other of a female journalist investigating the round-up sixty years later. What makes the story that much more heart-rending is the fact that this little girl, in an effort to save her little brother, locks him in a secret cupboard promising to release him when they return.

Knowing what we know now about Gestapo round-ups and the eventual fate of the European Jews, you can probably guess at the outcome for the young boy. But what really made this book so great for me was what happened after all of that. Julia, the journalist, finds connections between her life and that of Sarah, the young girl who left her brother behind and it begins to raise questions for her. Questions about responsibility and obligation to others, questions about morality of actions and consequence of choices. I think that was what really left such an impression on me.

Reading fiction about World War 2, I would like to think that I would have been numbered among those who were brave enough to stand up and oppose the madness going on around them. I would like to think that I would have the ability to recognize wrong, even when it is being portrayed as the right, and the fortitude to defend what I know to be true and good. But as I say that, I look at the risks that these people took and the consequences if they were found out and I really don't know if I would have it in me to make the choices they did. They raise that question in this book, "Even if you don't actively do anything wrong, is sitting by and watching it happen just as wrong?"