We Also Round Up the Children: Memoir of a Kidnapping Offense by the Vichy Government.
Cloé Korman’s The Almost Sisters Cover Image

On rafle aussi les enfants : Mémoire d’un délit de séquestre par le gouvernement de Vichy. Les Presque Sœurs de Cloé Korman
We Also Round Up the Children: Memoir of a Kidnapping Offense by the Vichy Government. Cloé Korman’s The Almost Sisters

Author(s): Ana Maria Alves
Subject(s): French Literature, Theory of Literature, Sociology of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Sklodowskiej
Keywords: Shoah; infamy; memory; witness; children; deportees; murdered;

Summary/Abstract: Our purpose is to show how much the contemporary novel can carry war stories in the form of a family investigation, but also a historical one. To do this, and without wanting to upset our readers, we have chosen Cloé Korman’s The Almost Sisters, which behind a backdrop that dates back to the Second World War, revisits the horrors that the Jewish children of France experienced between 1942 and 1944. Evoking the most despicable infamy of the 20th century committed by the Vichy government, the deportation to Auschwitz of 11,400 children, Korman proposes to return to the story of these little ones orphaned by the deportation of their parents. In this sense, it presents the story of six little girls who are tossed from one institution to another, from one camp to another. Three of them survive, and the other three take the road to Auschwitz in convoy 77.

  • Issue Year: 47/2023
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 73-82
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: French