Paris, 1942. Late one night in July, the family of a ten-year-old girl, Sarah, was suddenly arrested by the police.
She was still sleepy-eyed when she heard someone slamming the door violently. Perhaps the father hiding in the cellar had been discovered, and the girl was frightened, and the mother led her to the door, and what awaited them outside the door were the Frenchmen in gray-green uniforms, their compatriots.
He speaks fluent French so we were safe. The girl thought.
But the man rudely announced that he was going to take all the people in the house—men, women, children—with him.
Father was found, they pushed their parents to let them leave as soon as possible, in order to protect her brother, Sarah locked him in their usual hide-and-seek closet, which had a little water, food, and a flashlight, and the ten-year-old sister said to her brother with the key:
"I promise I'll come back to you later."
Sarah did not expect that this walk was a trick to say goodbye.
A few months later, sarah, who had been arrested, escaped from the front, waiting for her to be a new resident who had moved into their original home and her brother, who was already silently breathing in the cupboard.
The moment Sarah saw her brother's body, she cried out in pain, and the key in her hand opened the cabinet door, but she closed the door of her heart forever.
The little boy who died in the cupboard is the protagonist of the event that silenced the Parisian media collectively 77 years ago.
At last year's commemoration ceremony, French Prime Minister Philippe laid a wreath on the monument at the site of the "Winter Race" in Paris (Source: Agence France-Presse)
The full name of that event is "Winter Bike Racing Hall Arrest Incident", and today, 77 years later, the "Winter Racing Hall Incident" is an elephant in the Bourbon Parliament Hall in France, which always stings the heart of the French.
In June 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Paris and moved the seat of government to Vichy in central France, forming a puppet regime that cooperated with the German authorities in exchange for an Axis commitment not to divide France.
In response to the Nazi government's "Operation Spring Wind," a mass arrest of Jews in Europe, the Vichy government sent French police and civil servants to participate in the arrest of Jews.
In July 1942, more than 7,000 Paris police and gendarmes were ordered by the Nazis to hunt down Jews on lists, an unintended round-up that lasted day and night, and by July 17, 13,152 foreign Jews had been arrested and imprisoned in the winter arena, not even pregnant women or children under the age of two. They were sent to concentration camps in batches, with fewer than a hundred survivors, 4,115 children, all dead.
The entire operation, from the order to the entire arrest process, was not involved by a single German soldier.
We are accustomed to listening to the appalling actions of the Nazis in Germany during World War II, but we do not expect that people of the same civilized world can be so cruel to their compatriots who share a blue sky.
This was taboo in the French media for many years, and it was not until 1995 that the then president personally came forward to admit the incident, admitting that in that particular history, the French had acted as evil accomplices and cut butcher knives at their own compatriots.
But just like in movies and stories, where there are evil deeds, there are good deeds.
In the movie "Sarah's Key", the soldiers who quietly let go of the children and the farmer grandfather who helped Sarah's escape are all flashes of humanity in that dark history. On the day of the arrest, many French people spontaneously stepped forward to help the Jews go into hiding, and as many as 10,000 Jews survived, when the Nazi target was 25,000.
"Sarah's Key" fictionalizes a female journalist who is ordered by her job to recover the truth and details of that year, and this entry perspective gives the reader a breathing space to read this tragic story.
The author writes on the title page: "The characters in the book are all fictional, but the time described is by no means a fabrication... I have no intention of writing this down as a work of history, but to pay tribute to the children who never came back during the time of arrest and to those who survived to tell the world about everything."
Many of the survivors at that time were reluctant to recall that experience, and fear brought them the after-effects of a lifetime, and they blamed themselves, suffered, and even thought that their survival was a sin.
Sometimes, time can't heal all wounds, and the best way to heal is to remember them forever.
- END -
Sarah's Key
A top-secret incident in which the Paris media collectively silenced 77 years ago
A thorn in the heart of romantic French
A woman and a little girl
Life spanning 60 years is connected
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We sat for a long time
Until no more tears misty eyes
Editing, sorting out 丨 wave in the white bear Ξ figure | Internet
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