Sarah's Key characters

Appears from the start

A ten-year-old Jewish girl living with her family in Paris in 1942. When French police arrive to arrest them, she hides her little brother in a concealed cupboard and locks the door, believing she will soon return to release him.

Appears from the start

Sarah's four-year-old brother. Too young to understand the police raid, he trusts Sarah's promise that hiding in their secret cupboard will keep him safe until she comes back.

Appears from the start

Sarah and Michel's father, a Polish Jewish immigrant in Paris. He has already been hiding from arrest before the police take the family during the mass roundup.

Appears from the start

Sarah and Michel's mother, arrested with Sarah and her husband. Terror for both children shapes her response to the roundup, especially because the police do not know Michel remains locked in the apartment.

First appears in chapter 2

An American journalist who has lived in Paris for many years with her French husband and daughter. Assigned a feature on the sixtieth anniversary of the Vel d'Hiv roundup, she begins examining a history that is less distant from her own family than she realizes.

First appears in chapter 2

Julia's French husband, an architect from the Tézac family. Charming and self-assured, he often treats Julia as an outsider despite their long marriage and is preoccupied with the renovation of his family's old Paris apartment.

First appears in chapter 4

Julia and Bertrand's eleven-year-old daughter. Bilingual and perceptive, she is closely attached to Julia and notices strains within the family that the adults do not always explain to her.

First appears in chapter 18

Bertrand's elderly father. As a boy during the German occupation, he moved with his parents into the Paris apartment that Julia and Bertrand are now renovating.

Also known as Mamé

First appears in chapter 18

Bertrand's grandmother and the Tézac family matriarch. Her long connection to the rue de Saintonge apartment makes her part of Julia's effort to understand who lived there during the occupation.

First appears in chapter 31

A French farmer who encounters Sarah after her escape from the internment camp. He must decide whether to risk his household's safety by protecting a Jewish child pursued by the authorities.

First appears in chapter 31

Jules Dufaure's wife. She joins him in sheltering Sarah and offers the exhausted child practical care even though discovery would endanger the family.

First appears in chapter 60

Sarah's adult son, raised in the United States with little knowledge of his mother's childhood in occupied France. Julia seeks him out because he is the closest surviving person to the history she has uncovered.