I was a little disappointed in this book. I really didn’t like her writing style at all. There were many parts throughout the book that seemed poorly written. They didn’t make sense in my head and I’d have to reread them. The first couple times this happened, I figured it was just me not paying close attention to what I was reading. After a while I realized it’s not me; it’s her style. She worded things in ways that I never would, and most people wouldn’t.
The storyline was also disappointing for me. After a while it became really predictable. And much of the story had nothing to do with the events that took place in 1942 in France or Julia’s research on those events. A lot of it was about her marital and family problems and other personal issues. I would have preferred to have had more of the story focused in 1942 and on the research Julia did for the article she wrote. Julia’s boss tells her the story was nice, however he was curious as to what the French police would have said. She hadn’t thought to try to interview any of them or their families to see how they felt. Which, in my opinion, is poor journalism. As a journalist, you should look at all sides of a story, and she did not. And I think this says a lot about the author. It’s almost as if she was almost done with the book and realized she hadn’t thought to look into any of that, so she pinned it on Julia’s poor journalism. I think that reflects poor research on the author’s part. Hearing stories from the French police who either helped in conducting the roundup or worked at any of the camps would have been extremely interesting and it shouldn’t have been overlooked.
I did learn a lot from this book. There are a lot of dark secrets in France’s history that most people try very hard to hide, and they do a pretty darn good job of it. Most people, unless they were there or had relatives experience it don’t know anything about Velodrome d’Hiver. It isn’t something that is taught in your history classes, or in French classes. This book was a real eye-opener for me. I had no idea how involved the French police were in the Holocaust until I read this book, and then did some of my own research.
Every detail she used was fact in this book. Every place Julia visited for her research is a place that existed. There are monuments built in these places to honor those who were victims of the roundup. She gave several quotes throughout the book from those places, such as this one:
“To the 3,500 Jewish children torn from their parents, interned at Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers, deported and exterminated at Auschwitz. Victims of the Nazis, buried at the graveyard of Beaune-la-Rolande,” (153).
What was heartbreaking to learn was the total disregard of many of these camps. At Beaune-la-Rolande, a technical school was built over it. The only signs of the camp are the small monument with the words above written on it and the cemetery farther down from the school. At Drancy, there are people actually living in the buildings that were there at the camp. They had been built as a residential community and were then used for an internment camp. Not even ten years later, people began living in those buildings. Many of the monuments and memorials place the blame solely on the Nazis, even though the French police were the men who tore these families from their homes, locked them in the stadium, shipped them off to the camps, tore mothers away from their children, and sent them to their certain death at Auschwitz.
There is so much we still don’t know about the events that took place during the Holocaust, and there is so much we don’t know because it is not taught. People need to know what happened there. People need to be aware of the horrible events that took place. If we don’t teach our children these things, how can we prevent them from happening again? Zakhor. Al Tichkah. Remember. Never forget.
Okay, so like I’ve said, I wasn’t a huge fan of this book. I just wanted more and more information on the Velodrome d’Hiver and the roundups. It was informative though, and urged me to do more research to learn more, and I hope all of you will do the same, even if you just look it up on Google. I pretty much disliked everything else about this book. The plot could have been better. Her descriptions could have been better. Her characters could have been better. I just really didn’t like her writing in general. Overall, I’m still going to give this one a flavored coffee with sugar and cream (3) rating, primarily because I did learn a lot from this book. And any book you can learn something new from is worth reading.
As always, if you're interested in reading this book for yourself, you can find it on Amazon.com:
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