Remembrance and History Theme Analysis

The central event of Sarah’s Key is the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, which was a mass arrest of Parisian Jews conducted by the French police on July 16, 1942. The interwoven plots of the novel track the lives of Sarah Starzynski, a ten-tear-old arrested with her parents in that roundup, and Julia Jarmond, an American expat working as a journalist in Paris in 2002. Although many of the characters in the novel struggle with confronting the horrors of the past, de Rosnay shows the vital importance of remembering both private and public histories. While painful, remembering the past can ultimately allow for healing and establish a sense of meaning that comes from a deepened connection to the collective human experience.

When Julia is assigned to write an article on the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup for an American magazine, she finds herself having to directly confront the reluctance of French society to acknowledge France’s role in the Holocaust. As Julia discovers, the first time the French government openly acknowledged France’s role in the murder of its Jewish citizens was in 1995. This reluctance to come to terms with the past seems to pervade French society; Julia’s French husband, Bertrand, insists that no one will read an article on the Vel’ d’Hiv’ because “nobody cares anymore” and “nobody remembers. Write about something else,” he says. Julia struggles to find not only books about the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but also people who are willing to be interviewed about the subject.

Yet de Rosnay argues that, regardless of people’s willingness to remember it, history makes itself present in physical spaces. Julia finds that she can’t imagine living in the apartment once occupied by the Starzynskis, where Michel Starzynski, Sarah’s younger brother, died in a cupboard after Sarah hid him there on the night of the mass arrest. While other characters are not so sensitive to the past as Julia, de Rosnay shows that past traumas are nevertheless embedded in physical spaces. This can be seen when Julia and a colleague visit Drancy. Once the site of an internment camp from which Jews were deported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, Drancy now houses four hundred families in cheap apartments. Julia is struck by the new name of the apartment building: Cité de la Muette, City of the Mute. She interprets the name as a symbol of French people’s unwillingness to deal with their national past. She experiences this same frustration at Beaune-la-Rolande, the site of the camp where Sarah was held prisoner, and where a children’s daycare now stands.

Julia remains determined in her goal of uncovering the history of the Starzynskis and their connection to her in-laws, the Tézacs. She eventually succeeds in forcing the Tézac family to wrestle with their family’s past, and she also shares what she has learned with Sarah Starzynski’s son, William Rainsferd. But these acknowledgments of history come at a cost. While ultimately cathartic, Julia’s revelations strain her relationship with her husband’s family, and William also has a negative reaction to learning about his mother’s life as a Holocaust survivor, abruptly cutting off communication with Julia for months and ordering her not to contact him. William’s reaction reflects the advice of Julia’s older sister, Charla, who responds to Julia’s passionate declaration, “I want to make sure [William] knows nobody has forgotten what happened,” with the statement, “Maybe he doesn’t want to be reminded.”

Remembrance is thus a fraught act. De Rosnay is clear that history persists in physical spaces, and that ignoring history does a disservice to not only past generations, but also to the current one. After all, Julia ends up leading a much richer life as a result of learning Sarah Starzynski’s story. She leaves her toxic marriage, remains strong in her decision not to terminate her pregnancy, and possibly, the novel suggests, finds love with William Rainsferd. But her work and personal life are affected by the demanding task of remembrance, which becomes an obsession for Julia. The novel argues, then, that blind devotion to uncovering and remembering the past can be just as emotionally damaging as denying the past. The various characters struggle, in Sarah’s Key, to find balance: to be courageous enough to acknowledge past horrors, but not to allow these horrors to swallow one’s life in the present moment. None of the characters, even Julia, gets this balance quite right, but de Rosnay shows that striving for this balance is more worthwhile than ignoring historical traumas altogether.