Zakhor. Al Tichkar. Remember. Never Forget.

I recently read an article in SLJ by Diantha McBride. Titled Tough Love: an open letter to kids' book publishers. You can read the full article here. One of her points that made me smile was "Thanks, but no tanks" - encouraging a moratorium on publishing more books about WWII. It started me thinking about how many titles my library owns (both historical fiction and non-fiction) about this time period. A LOT.

As I was pondering this article, I began reading (totally unrelated) the book Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay. This book was published in 2007, but just recently came to my attention. It had been in my "to read" stack for some time.

It is the fictional recounting of Vel' d'Hiv'. In July of 1942, thousands of Jewish families living in Paris were rounded up by the French police, locked for days in an indoor stadium in horrific conditions and eventually sent on to Auschwitz. To be gassed.

The story begins with Sarah, a ten-year old girl who is arrested with her family in the middle of the night. Thinking they will soon be able to return to their apartment, she quickly locks her four year old brother in a secret cabinet, promising to come back for him. The narrative then fast forwards to modern day and begins to intertwine with a journalist who is researching Vel'd'Hiv' for an article on its sixtieth anniversary. This is a gripping, haunting tale of a terrible time in our global history. As I read the story, I kept picturing my own nearly 10-year old daughter. I wondered what it was like to have your daughter ripped from your arms as you were loaded into a cattle car. I wondered how the children who managed to survive the holocaust even functioned as adults. I wondered how we as humans get to a point where it is okay to treat another race, religion, or group with such intense cruelty. Unfortunately, I know this is a story that has been repeated in other places like Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

So, I agree with Ms. McBride that we need a broader historical perspective in most of our collections. Yet, personally, I realized that I am drawn to this time period because I feel an almost desperate commitment to "Zakhor. Al Tichkar. Remember. Never Forget."