Sarah’s Key

Back in the past, the girl’s father begs the police to take him back with the key to get her brother out of the cupboard. They refuse. The girl dreams she’s back at home and her mother is making dinner.

She then dreams that she is at school, and remembers that when her and others were forced to wear stars “most girls stopped speaking to the children with the stars” (47).

She thinks of her brother and knows that she must go back and save him.

In the future again, after dinner, Guillaume continues his grandmother’s story of the Vel’ d’Hiv’. He reveals that the code name was Operation Summer Breeze and that children were not supposed to be taken at first because “deporting children would have revealed the truth” (50).

Julia returns home. Bertrand tells her to forget the whole story and that no one will want to read about it. She gets upset with him. She remembers the difficulty they had having a child. While she used to return to him to make up, this time she does not. She takes a bath and goes to bed.