Sarahs Key by Tatiana deRosnay

Seems I'm always recommending this book to people and every time they bring it back they tell me how good it was. I'm not very good at writing reviews so instead I'll borrow this from Amazon...

"From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. De Rosnay's U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. Already translated into 15 languages, the novel is De Rosnay's 10th (but her first written in English, her first language). It beautifully conveys Julia's conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah's trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing, that the book is hard to put down. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“This is a remarkable historical novel, a book which brings to light a disturbing and deliberately hidden aspect of French behavior towards Jews during World War II. Like Sophie's Choice, it's a book that impresses itself upon one's heart and soul forever.”
–Naomi Ragen, author of The Saturday Wife and The Covenant

“Sarah's Key unlocks the star crossed, heart thumping story of an American journalist in Paris and the 60-year-old secret that could destroy her marriage. This book will stay on your mind long after it's back on the shelf.”
–Risa Miller, author of Welcome to Heavenly Heights

A compelling and powerful book! July 1942, a very dark period in the history of France as thousands of Jewish families are rounded up and kept in Vel' d' Hiv' where they were locked up for days in appalling conditions. They were then sent to Auschwitz in cattle trains that carried them to their deaths.

These shameful events became a public secret in France because it was the French police who arrested the Jewish families, not the Nazis. It was like a secret buried in the past.

Sarah, a ten year old Jewish girl, hides her young brother in a secret cupboard in the house and locks the door telling him she will return when it is safe. She is then tranported to Vel' d' Hiv' with her family.

A heart wrenching story of hatred, horror and loss suffered by the Jewish people. The Jewish survivors lives were forever tainted by this dark and evil event in history.