Review: While Paris Slept by Ruth Druart
A young woman’s future is torn away in a heartbeat. Herded on to a train bound for Auschwitz, in an act of desperation she entrusts her most precious possession to a stranger. All she has left now is hope.
Author Ruth Druart moved to Paris in 1993. While walking around the city when she first moved there, she was moved by the plaques and monuments to those killed during World War II. Outside a school in Le Marais, she noticed a simple plaque telling of the 260 pupils who were detained by the Nazis during the war. This inspired her to learn more about the German occupation of France.
Paris was governed by the German military from June 1940 until August 1944. Parisians were subjected to a strict curfew and rationing, with their press and radio taken over by German propaganda. Jewish people in Paris were persecuted harshly, forced to wear the yellow Star of David badge and barred from certain professions and public places.
This persecution escalated with the Vél d’Hiv roundup in 1942, when over 13,000 Jews were detained in Paris in just two days and deported to concentration camps. The title of the novel may inadvertently suggest that such atrocities were ignored or overlooked by the French, however the French police were very much complicit in these mass arrests. Their complicity was acknowledged by France when French President Jacques Chirac made an official apology in 1995.
‘It always starts with insignificant measures, you know, things you can live with, like not being allowed to own a bike or a radio. It makes you feel uneasy – alienated, but life goes on. Then further restrictions make it much more awkward: limiting the places you can go, where you’re allowed to shop. You can no longer mix with nonJews.’ […] ‘And finally they take away your livelihood. Then it becomes almost impossible to support your family; your children go hungry, and you begin to think to yourself: they’re trying to kill us. But by then, it’s too late. You no longer have the money or the connections to get out.’
In this debut novel Druart focuses on French railroad worker Jean-Luc, who is forced to work for the Germans at the Drancy internment camp. Thousands of Jews were transported from Drancy by rail to Auschwitz. Jean-Luc notices people’s belongings strewn by the train tracks, including those of babies and small children, and gradually comes to realise the horror of the camp’s true purpose. The story’s action really begins when he is entrusted with the baby boy of a desperate woman about to be transported. From then on he does everything he can to keep the boy safe.
It’s a thoroughly researched novel, giving an insight into the lives of Parisians under occupation – how they lived and how they might have felt about the situation. Many novels have chronicled the horrors of Auschwitz already and while this is touched on here, it’s not the main focus. Druart shows us the pain of those who did manage to survive after their families were torn apart, and how their lives could never be the same again. I found myself wondering how the author would manage to come to a satisfying conclusion after such a harrowing story, but the ending paid off. I had tears in my eyes as I turned the last page.
While Paris Slept by Ruth Druart will be published by Headline Publishing Group on March 4, 2021
