THAT AUTUMN THE MOON WAS ORANGE.

The countryside was redolent of wild thyme and sage, and glowed in wine reds and rusty yellows. Leaves swirled in lazy circles through the air and fluttered to the ground, carpeting the lawns and the terrace and riding the waves made by children’s hands in the fountain. The last of the milkweed drifted slowly across the river, while the shadows along the rocky mountainsides were choked and violet.

The youngest of the children were beginning to forget what their parents looked like and how their voices sounded, and so they were free to make up what had been forgotten.

The postman faithfully came and went, and one day Max jumped for joy and ran into the arms of Sabine. “I got a letter,” he crowed. “Me too, this time. My very own letter from Marcelle.”

“And what does she say?” Sabine smiled.

“She says she misses me. She says I must work at my sums so that I don’t grow up as a dimwit. And she says she will write to me every week so I never have to be sad again on mail days. And there’s a P.S. If I’m very, very good, she’s going to send a parcel.”

“Lucky Max. You can start being very good by helping to pick apples. It’s harvesting time.”

“We didn’t have to harvest in Mannheim. We lived in the city.”

“Well, do you know the story of the grasshopper and the ant? The ants work all summer and fall to store away food for the winter so that when the snow comes, they’ll have lots to eat. But the grasshopper only plays and realizes too late that he’ll be hungry all winter. Would you rather be an ant or a grasshopper?”

“Oh, I’d rather be a grasshopper, but I’ll be a smart one.”

Max ran off to help and Sabine watched him fondly. It was so kind of Marcelle to remember him. She’d had a golden touch with all the children who missed her lightness of heart and, not incidentally, her inexperience in the classroom. The day of her leaving had been full of tears, and her popularity had complicated the day of the new teacher’s arrival, for of course Pierre-Marcel had kept his promise and had sent along a fully qualified and experienced schoolmistress.

Gabrielle Perrier had a serious face, with a nose and chin that were a little too sharp, and an inclination to make rules she expected to be obeyed. Her dark eyes glistened like Spanish olives, the eyes of someone who can spot mischief before it even happens. There would be no paper planes in her classroom and no notes passed from desk to desk. The thought of swimming in the Rhône made her shudder.

But Mademoiselle Perrier, never just Gabrielle to the children, was not unkind. When she entered the classroom that first day, she was greeted by a rush of whispers, like a wave rippling across a pebbled shore. She didn’t take offence during art class when the youngest students all drew pictures of Marcelle, painstakingly explaining how pretty she was. She refused to play tag with the boys after lessons, but thanked them politely for their invitation. Nor was she particularly discouraged when she came upon Martha, reading a tattered copy of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

“Are you enjoying your book?” she asked.

“It’s for school, isn’t it?” Martha replied, as if that fact settled the question once and for all.

Mademoiselle Perrier smiled a little tightly, but she persisted. She knew the children had had too many goodbyes in their short lives. She gave praise lavishly where it was warranted, and drew upon great reserves of patience when it was needed. She had no desire to win their hearts, but every intention of improving their minds.

GABRIELLE PERRIER, SCHOOLMISTRESS

I REMEMBER THE GHOSTS of the House of Izieu. Oh, I don’t mean spooky shapes drifting like fog in the hallways, or spectres hovering inches below the ceiling sending chills down your spine. I mean the melancholy ghosts of lost families. All the children have these kinds of ghosts, lost loves that had once taken a specific shape, or had a certain smile, or a particular tone of voice.

I can always tell when a ghost is visiting. A way of looking without seeing will come into a child’s eyes. A way of walking will bend a child’s neck, or slow a child’s steps. There is often a whiff of lavender in the air, the scent of nostalgia and melancholy.

It’s not that the children aren’t happy. They are. They are giggly and spontaneous, full of curiosity and adventure, and sometimes saucy, like children everywhere. The atmosphere of the House is cheerful and relaxed.

But there is an undercurrent. I call it a haunting. I think it is the presence of the ghosts that helps forge the close bonds among all the people who live here. Sabine and Miron are brother and sister to Léa, and they have adopted Mina who seems to be everywhere, willing to do everything, from helping me in the classroom, to mucking out the barn, to harvesting the garden. And the children adore gruff Philippe and his sweet old mother who always seems to have a white kerchief around her head and a child on her lap and a story on her lips about naughty Paris in the days before the war.

But it is the children who surprise me most. There is something heart-stopping about them. I never see a fight. Oh, a childish spat maybe, or a flare of temper, but never a fight. And no bullying, either. They’ve had enough of that. Whether alone, or with brothers or sisters or cousins, they are attuned to each other’s moods and needs. If they go for a hike, Arnold is there to pick up any stragglers. If they choose teams for a game, they choose in groups of three or four so that no single child is ever picked last. If tears are shed, you soon hear Barouk singing some merry tune, or see Théo pulling funny faces or standing on his head, anything to turn the tears into laughter.

When lessons are over, I stand in the doorway and watch them burst from the house, running down to the edge of the river across the sloping lawns, calling out to each other, laughing, sweaters flapping, without slowing down or perhaps even noticing their terrible vulnerability.

SIGMUND SPRINGER, EIGHT YEARS OLD

I REMEMBER WHEN the new teacher came, and we were cross because she wasn’t at all like Marcelle. On the very first day of lessons, she told Jacob Benassayag and me we couldn’t sit beside each other any longer because we talked too much. So I had to move and sit beside a girl. At recess I complained to Marie, who always made me feel better, but that day she told me that if I stuck out my bottom lip any further, a chicken would nest on it. “Stop pouting,” she said. “Give the new teacher a chance.”

I guess we were kind of mean to Mademoiselle Perrier that first week. There was a lot of eye-rolling and heavy sighing when she asked us to do anything. Gilles took out his slingshot and pretended he was going to shoot at her when her back was turned, but we started to laugh and somehow she guessed what he was up to and took the slingshot away. Mina whispered to me that the teacher had eyes in the back of her head.

At recess, she won’t play with us. She’ll just go for a little walk, or maybe stay inside and mark our compositions.

But one day when I couldn’t solve my division problem, she knelt by my desk and showed me how to do long division and carry the numbers forward, and I feel pretty good that I can do it on my own now. When she hands me back my composition on my favourite animal, I see she’s drawn a little star on the top. We kind of warmed up to her, I guess. And I think she is relieved that we’ve stopped talking about Marcelle, all except for Max who has such a crush on her because she writes him letters.

We’re all pretty involved with Philippe and Marie’s rush to harvest anything we can eat in the winter. Harvesting, they call it, even though I grew up in Vienna and the closest I ever got to harvesting was watching my mother make jam. Mademoiselle Perrier gives us whole afternoons off to help in the kitchen and we help make jars of applesauce, some of us peeling, some chopping, some stirring, and some scooping the sauce into jars. Claudine is only five and she can’t do much except steal slices of apple. We’ve nicknamed her Little Squirrel because her plump cheeks make it seem she’s hiding apples in her mouth. Pretty soon I notice Mademoiselle Perrier is up to her elbows in applesauce without a word of complaint, and when she sees me watching her, she smiles.

After that, she was just part of the House, and I overheard Jacob tell her he was sorry for saying her face was like the Jura rock cliffs.

HENRI GOLDBERG, THIRTEEN YEARS OLD

HARVESTING TIME at the House of Izieu is the best time, because I love working on the farm and watching all of spring and summer’s labour finally bearing fruit. We rake the sweet-smelling hay into stacks and laugh when bits of it stick in our hair and all over our bare skin. We pick the fodder corn that will keep the horses and cows fed in the winter. Madame Perticoz brings baskets of food out to us as we work in the fields, meat pies and jugs of cold cider. I worked with Farmer Perticoz almost every day of that summer, but at harvesting we are joined by Monsieur Miron and most of the older boys. We stand shoulder to shoulder, and Farmer Perticoz makes a great ceremony of thumping us on the back for an honest day’s work.

I love everything about the farm, even the things that drive my brother Joseph crazy—like the wisps of hay that get up his nose, or the thick, acrid smell of the barn, or the sweat that trickles down your back as you bend over a shovel digging potatoes. I love the smell of freshly turned earth, and the wide-openness of the fields, bright green and biscuit-coloured under the August sun, turning shades of russet and sepia as the air grows chillier. Joseph makes me notice the colours because he wants to paint them, but I just lap them up. I just want to be part of them, part of the landscape.

When Joseph and I lived in Paris with our parents, I used to love the fall markets around Les Halles: a heaving, hollering place, busy with buyers, bargains, and rats. There was stall after stall heaped with thick ropes of garlic, pyramids of blushing pears and apples, mounds of potatoes and curly-leafed cabbages, and glossy aubergines. I always talked to the farmers. I wanted to know how long it took to grow an aubergine, how many pumpkins made up a patch, which apples were for eating and which for cider, and how many kinds of squash were there, anyway.

When September arrives, I have to go to school in Belley. Marie-Antoinette has arranged everything and I can’t disappoint her, but my heart will always be on the farm. Well, les carottes sont cuites, as the saying goes, but I’ll sneak back here every chance I get. Farmer Perticoz is always happy to see me. He’ll wink when his wife scolds me and calls me a naughty truant. Then he’ll take me out to the barn and we’ll talk about the planting for the spring, or chop logs, or maybe polish the bridles for the horses, and he’ll give me a swig of his homemade wine. In a day or two, he’ll take me back to school, but I bet he’ll never say goodbye because he’ll know that in a few weeks, I’ll be back.

SEPTEMBER 1943

IT WAS A GORGEOUS MORNING. Behind the clouds, the sun had begun to rise, turning the clouds orange-grey, like fire behind smoke. The clouds gradually thinned, wafting away to expose deep blue patches of sky. In a castle far away where Benito Mussolini was being held captive, German soldiers mounted a daring rescue. The Italians rebelled and signed an armistice with the Allies. The Germans responded by swarming into the French Jura like highly trained Dobermans, pushing the traitorous, treacherous Italians out. The earth shook from German boots, dogs howled, and bells fell silent. The Occupation of every inch of France was now complete.

For a few days, Sabine and Miron told themselves it didn’t matter. The House was so well hidden. The road from the village of Izieu to the house was overgrown and untended, deliberately so. The children all had new names on new sets of identity papers. The snows of winter would choke the mountain roads, turning them into icy slides. Surely the mountains and the twisting roads and the distance from Lyon would protect them.

The war would not last forever. Another winter would seal the frozen fate of the Germans on the Russian Front. Allied planes were hammering German cities. Americans and Canadians had taken Sicily and were even now churning their way up Italy from the South. Everyone knew, even the children, that there was going to be an Allied landing in France, and the rumour went around that it would be a massive invasion of British, American, and Canadian soldiers fighting shoulder to shoulder. It was difficult to imagine such a majestic force massing so far away, tensing its muscles to strike, and even more incredible to believe that it would actually arrive.

But this was daylight courage. At night, a sob burned in Sabine’s throat and she swallowed it angrily. She would need to be stronger than this in the months ahead, she told herself, for there was much to be done. At night, she rehearsed her plans with Miron.

“We have to do something. Maybe move the children somewhere safer.” Sabine looked across the bed at Miron sitting with his elbows on his knees.

“No place is safe now. We can try to move some of the older children across the border, but the danger will be greater without the Italians to help us.”

Sabine climbed over the bed to him and rubbed his back. Then she circled him with her arms and leaned her head against him. “We’ve got to think. There must be a way to protect them.”

They were both prone to thinking their way out of predicaments as if the combined force of their intellects could control an unpredictable world.

“We might have to split them up,” Sabine sighed.

“That will break their hearts. Let’s not rush to any decision and in the meantime pray for snow to block the roads.”

“Tomorrow I’ll go into Belley,” Sabine decided, for if reason failed her, she was sure her friends there would not.

They were quiet for a while, lying now in each other’s arms, curled together.

“Germans here,” Sabine suddenly gasped.

“I know.”

They took what comfort they could in each other. They were in this together, come what may. They both loved the children with a lion-like force. Whatever distance might appear between them evaporated when Barouk sang or Joseph painted or Coco learned a new word. The children delighted them in myriad ways every day. They had built the House of Izieu together and the only person in the world who felt as much worry as Sabine was right here by her side. She wanted to keep the children together, but knew that would be a dream too far.

The next day, Sabine sat in Pierre-Marcel’s office looking braver than she felt. She’d seen no soldiers, but the swastika flying over the municipal offices had shaken her. Marie-Antoinette welcomed her warmly, but she was ill prepared for her friend’s news.

“Léon Reifman is back in France.”

“What? How? Why?”

Pierre-Marcel shrugged. “There was chaos at the borders when the Italians retreated. Some wanted to cast their lot with the Germans, some wanted to get away from them. Anyway, Léon has new papers, Swiss ones, and he’s on his way now to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.”

“The Protestant mountain?”

“Indeed. He thinks he might be able to map out an escape route and take some of the children from Izieu to Switzerland.”

“Which ones? How will he choose? How can I choose?”

“I’m guessing that would depend on the route, if he finds one. How rigorous it would be, how fit or agile the children would have to be and so on. You’re going to have to face it sometime, Sabine—splitting up the children.”

“Yes. I know that, but so soon?”

“Well, not today or tomorrow,” Marie-Antoinette assured her. “We’ll wait to hear back from Léon. In the meantime, he’s contacted his sister, Suzanne. As you know, she’s a doctor and she’s willing to move into the House of Izieu so long as she can bring her young son.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” Pierre-Marcel interjected. “Should you need a doctor now, it would be dangerous to approach Dr. Bendrihem again.”

“Yes. Of course. We’ll make room for them somehow. But what will the German occupation mean for you? And for this office?”

“Vichy still exists in theory, though the strings of the puppets are now exposed for all to see. I’m guessing this office will lose some of its authority or at least be put under some form of scrutiny.”

“You mean no more extra ration cards or sets of papers,” Sabine guessed.

“I think that’s probably the case. But, Sabine, the people of the French Jura are no friends of the Germans. They will still turn to me and to Marie-Antoinette as their leaders, and that may be to our advantage. They know what we stand for, and more than ever, I think they’ll stand with us.”

“Here’s something that will cheer you up.” Marie-Antoinette spread a map over the desk, ignoring Pierre-Marcel’s attempts to move his papers out of the way. “See if you can find Izieu.”

It took Sabine several minutes to do so, even though she knew where to look. Very small towns appeared in very small print.

“As you know, the Germans are headquartered in Lyon. That’s almost ninety kilometres away over mostly dirt roads, and you’d need to have a map. Sad to say that over the last few weeks there’s been a nip in the air, and people all over the French Jura have had to burn their maps just to keep warm.”

She looked up, very pleased with herself, and deliberately knocked Pierre-Marcel’s arm just as he was taking a sip of water. The glass slipped from his hand and Marie watched as the liquid spread slowly over the map, soaking into the paper.

“Oh dear. I’m so clumsy. Sorry, Pierre. Let me clean this mess up.”

Marie scrunched up the map into a soggy ball and winked at Sabine. “I’ll just get a rag to mop up the desk. Excuse me a moment.”

Pierre-Marcel stared after her retreating figure before turning to Sabine. “She’s incorrigible,” he said flatly, shaking his head.

“Thank goodness,” Sabine replied, finally laughing. “Oh, I know they have maps in Lyon, but that performance certainly made me feel better. You will take care of her, won’t you? Make sure she doesn’t do anything rash in front of the Germans.”

He bowed slightly. “I’ll do my best. She’s her own woman.”

“That she is,” Sabine said, thinking to herself that Pierre-Marcel truly didn’t have any idea how complex Marie-Antoinette really was, her abiding love for him both unresolved and unacknowledged.

Once a month there was a celebration with a single birthday cake, because with forty-four children now in the House of Izieu there wasn’t enough sugar in all of France to mark each child’s day individually. This month, Philippe had made an apple cake with honey from one of the neighbouring farmers, his last handful of brown sugar dusting the top.

Suzanne Reifman and her son, Claude, arrived in time for the birthday celebration. Her hair was dark and thick, but as she turned away from Miron to greet the other adults, he saw that it shone with glints of red in the sun.

“She’s very pretty,” Miron whispered to Sabine, as if he hadn’t been expecting that.

“I’d say she’s confident, even brave. You must be, to be a woman and qualify as a doctor. Léon hasn’t told us much, but I know she lost her husband right at the beginning of the war and yet she’s kept that child safe.”

Ten-year-old Claude had curly hair like his uncle Léon, and a big grin on his face as he spied the cake.

The seven children born in October got the first slices, and afterwards opened handmade cards written by the other children. Marie peeked at the messages and saw they were all variations on a common theme.

My dear Suzanne, I wish you a very happy birthday, and hope next year, you’ll be with your parents.

Dear Georgy, I’m writing this little note to make you happy on your birthday. Hoping you rejoin your parents, and the war gets over.

Dear Lilianne, HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I’m wishing that on your next birthday, you’ll have your parents back.

Dear Théo, On your special day, I know you must miss your parents, and Paulette, too. I hope you see them soon.

To my dear friend Esther, My warm wishes for your twelfth birthday. You are a good big sister to Élie and Jacob and your parents will be proud of you. May you be with them soon.

Dear Paula, I wish you a happy day and know your parents do, too. May all your future birthdays be celebrated with them by your side.

Dear Herman, Best wishes, little brother, on your tenth birthday. I made this special drawing of a tiger just for you. Keep it forever.

When the last crumb of cake had been eaten, Phillipe and Marie pushed the long dining tables under the window to make a space for storytelling, for it was too cool now in the evenings to linger on the terrace.

“Tell us about Paris,” Nina urged Marie.

“Oh, Paris was wild in the twenties. We used to go to Montmartre to watch the ladies from the Moulin Rouge. They wore nothing but feathers with spangles on their—”

“Marie!” Miron cautioned.

“As I was saying, spangles on their dresses. We called them the Queens of the Night because some of them were—”

“Oh, look,” interrupted Miron. “Here’s a book from Marie-Antoinette about the legends of Belley. Why don’t you read to the children from this, Marie.”

Marie glared at Miron but took the book anyway. “Oh, this one sounds good,” she began. “The old folk of Belley tell tales of an enchanted lake. They say that at the bottom of this lake there was once an old convent and that on certain nights the lights of the convent still glimmer.”

“Lights wouldn’t work under water,” Hans protested.

“These are enchanted lights. And on certain windy days, the waves on the lake look like nuns’ wimples.”

“What are wimples?” interrupted Senta.

“You know, those things they wear on their heads. Now, do you want to hear this story, or not?”

“Story, please,” several children said at once, nudging the interrupters.

“All right, then. It says here that on very silent nights, if a person listens closely the sound of chapel bells ripple up from below the surface of the water.”

Marie looked up sharply, but though several tongues were bitten the children remained silent.

“Cattails and white water lilies with pink centres encircle the lake and its glassy circle reflects the sky, as if it were the very mirror of heaven. Young girls have been known to dive into the lake in search of the convent, novitiates in search of God. They never return.

“But once, a young girl from Belley disappeared into the lake and she did return several days later, only she had no memory of where she had been, or of what she had seen, or even of her name. For a long time afterwards, people insisted they saw her in a dress as white as ice walking through the fields at night to dip her fingers into the lake water and, if you were very quiet and didn’t move at all, but stayed low to the ground by the lake rushes, her dress might brush against you as she passed and you’d be blessed from that day forward.”

Marie closed the book and looked up from her reading.

“What happens next?” Nina asked. Her blonde hair was so fine that wisps of it always escaped her braids and floated about her head.

“That’s the end of the story,” Marie said.

“Well, that’s very unsatisfactory,” Nina insisted. “We ought to know at least if the girl ever remembered anything.”

“No. That’s the nature of legend,” Esther argued. “We’re meant to wonder. There are mysteries in the world that can’t be explained.”

“Well, there’s no mystery here. That’s just a superstitious story,” Nina complained, “meant for people without a brain in their heads.”

“Satisfied?” Marie asked, as she handed the book back to Miron.

MARIE DEHAN, COOK

OH, THE STORIES I might have told those children. Some of them thought my son was a pirate. The truth is my son is too handsome for his own good. Women used to hang about our bistro in Paris like stray cats, but instead of shooing them away like he should have, he’d take them dancing and break their hearts.

Oh, the Parisian ladies adored him all right, but it wasn’t in his power to grant even the smallest of their wishes, because Philippe can only love men.

When one poor, obsessed woman learned his secret, she hit him with a bottle of champagne she’d planned to use to seduce him, which is how he lost his eye, and which seemed as good a reason to leave Paris as any, especially with the Nazis growing too fond of his food and more and more suspicious of his fatal attractions.

Sometimes running away means you’re headed in exactly the right direction. So we ran to the Jura where I spent my girlhood. There’s nothing like it—the fresh scent of the countryside blowing into your lungs, and a fresh start. Fields of wild narcissi in the spring, and huge forests of beech, oak, chestnut, and every kind of evergreen. There are men here who can spot a violin tree hidden among hundreds of others. The famous Stradivarius violins come from spruce trees that grow slowly, in a straight vertical up to the sky.

We hadn’t been here hardly a month before we ran into Philippe’s old friend, Perticoz. He told us about the Settlement and before we knew it we were running into the arms of these children.

They sure can make a racket with their wild games of kickball and tag. The mix of accents when they all begin to talk at the table can make your head spin. German, Austrian, French, Polish, Belgian, Algerian, and Romanian. It’s like eating with a huge flock of different kinds of birds, blackbirds and starlings and gulls and swifts, all singing at once, the verbal chorus of Europe.

But they can be quiet, too, the darlings, as quiet as mice, as silent as cats on padded paws. They do well at their lessons, because schoolwork, in comparison with living, is so much easier. They’re not intact in the way other children are. There is a surface, and then a gap between it and their inner lives, shattered like broken cups.

In them, I recognize my son, who lives with that same gap, and who finds among them, uncomplicated love.

CLAUDE LEVAN-REIFMAN, TEN YEARS OLD

I NEVER LIKED THE DARK.

I remember my father, a good Catholic, used to ask the archangel, Gabriel, to protect us from storms and woe. That was one of his favourite words, woe, and he would say it like he was talking to a horse to make me laugh. One night, after a heavy rain, there was a golden light in the sky.

“See? That’s Gabriel,” my father said. “He’s made of light.”

He went inside then, but I stayed and watched the light fade and knew the angel had turned away from us.

My father was arrested the next morning, in the hours before the light returned.

My mother and I vanished and our lives were full of woe—my father’s word but he wasn’t there to make the truth of it lighter. I look for the sun in my mother’s face, but it is full of clouds, and for a long time she only wore clothes the colour of night.

Then after many months, my uncle wrote to us and arranged for us to come here, to the House of Izieu. I call it the House of Light—sunlight, moonlight, the shimmer of the stars, the sparkle of the river.

That first day, my mother and I stood by the window at sunset and watched the sky turn soft red and orange, melting into gold.

“Look,” my mother said, smiling and pointing at the flood of colour. “The wings of Gabriel have come back to us.”

I never really believed in Gabriel, but something has come back to us. For the first time I realize a memory can make you happy, instead of sad.

LILIANE GERENSTEIN, ELEVEN YEARS OLD

I ADMIT I TOOK A LOT of the blessings of my old life for granted. I went to a fancy school. I had lovely clothes. Gifts fell at my feet—a silver hairbrush from my father, dolls with porcelain faces and velvet dresses from my aunties. On one birthday, my mother knit a blanket for me that was so white and soft she said when I fell asleep I would dream of baby lambs in spring meadows.

All of that is gone now and I should have paid more attention.

I learned to be grateful for things at the House of Izieu. It’s like a summer that stretches on forever, only with lessons. It’s a gift that appears out of thin air when you least expect it, like a star you’ve been staring at, but only gradually see in the centre of your sky.

We have group birthdays at Izieu and when my month came, Philippe baked us a huge apple cake. Before I might have complained I was getting pretty sick of apples—applesauce in the mornings, apples for snacks, even apple slices in the soup once—but I loved that cake because I knew Philippe had stayed up until midnight to bake it for us. And I got cards from all my friends they’d made themselves and decorated with bits of old ribbons or leaves or feathers, and I think they are every bit as nice as silver and velvet.

I often wonder aloud to Léa what twist in my life path brought me here. Was it pure luck or God? I told her that when I was little, I used to look for God, for signs. Since God is Light, I thought he might be easier to see on rainy days when everything is reflected in water and I would hunt for a flash, or a shine, or something shimmering somewhere. Léa always listens and this is what she taught me: you’ve got to be on the look out for luck, just as much as for God. You’ve got to be ready to grab onto luck before it gets away. So, at the House of Izieu, I hold on fast.

NOVEMBER 1943

THAT WINTER, THE MOON WAS WHITE.

A cold wind pushed against the windows and through the trees, shaking the branches. The sunlight, when it appeared from behind clouds, was thin and brittle.

The barn was freezing. Sabine and Miron clung to each other under a huge pile of blankets while their breath curled like smoke into the frigid air. “Should we move the cow into the bedroom to help keep us warm?” Miron suggested.

“Better for us to move the bedroom into the house,” Sabine replied.

“It was a joke. Where exactly would we sleep in the house? On the stairs? On a mattress in the classroom?”

“All right. I see your point. We don’t need the cow. Just think of something warm.”

Several silent minutes passed.

“Miron? Are you thinking about palm trees and sandy beaches?”

“No. I’m thinking about snow. Lots and lots of snow, making the mountain roads impassable and the House of Izieu unreachable.”

But the next day, and the day after that, everyone at the House of Izieu was talking about snow under clear and heartless blue skies. Those children who had grown up with snow became self-appointed experts, while the youngsters who’d never experienced it clamoured for information.

“What is it feeling like?” asked Barouk.

“Soft when it’s falling and hard when it’s packed,” Otto declared.

“Packed? Why pack snow?”

“Not in a suitcase, silly. The best kind of snow will hold a shape. You can pack it just by scooping up handfuls and pressing your hands together. That’s how you make snowballs. Or we can make snowmen.”

“Snowball fights!” Fritz shouted. “We can have teams. Boys against girls.”

“No, you can’t,” Sabine warned. “You boys outnumber the girls.”

“Do snowballs hurt?” Élie worried.

“Nah,” Fritz promised. “They break apart when they hit you and you’ll have a thick coat on and won’t feel a thing.”

“There are other ways to play in the snow, Élie,” Sabine promised. “You can make snow angels. I’ll teach you how.”

“But if you stick your tongue out and touch it to anything metal, you’ll freeze right there and have to wait until spring to get your tongue back,” Majer said gleefully.

“Majer,” Sabine glared, while Élie quickly covered her mouth, “promise me you won’t try that.”

“When I was a boy in Russia,” Miron said, “it was the custom among some people to roll newborns in the snow to harden them against the ferocity of winter.” This announcement was met with an uneasy silence.

“Thank you for that, Miron.” Sabine said finally. “Since we have no newborns that’s not a custom we need to worry about.”

“Is snow very, very cold?” Jean-Claude wondered.

“Well, yes, all at once. But a single flake will melt in an instant and no two flakes are exactly alike and each flake is beautiful,” Miron said, trying to make up for his old mouldering tale about Russian babies.

“My father once gave me a snow globe,” Sabine remembered.

“What’s that?” Richard asked.

“Imagine a globe made of clear glass. Inside the globe, there was a miniature house surrounded by fir trees, the tallest one topped with a tiny gold star. If you shook the globe, snow would whirl around the forest and then fall gently to the ground.”

For a moment, Sabine wished that miniature house could be the House of Izieu, tucked safely inside a glass globe.

“Why didn’t the snow melt?” Richard asked, interrupting Sabine’s thought.

“Oh, it was just pretend snow. White sand or tiny bits of paper.”

“Well I wish the real stuff would come soon.” Richard pronounced.

“Me too,” several children sighed at once.

The frost came first, tracing lacy patterns on panes of glass. The light at the mouth of the barn was crystalline, as if miniature particles of frost were suspended in it, sharpening the edges of the door and brightening the air. When Miron and Sabine rose and walked across the lawn toward the house, the grass was stiff and crunched beneath their feet. The turned over earth of the garden lay exposed to the cold, and became as solid as cement.

The next night brought ice, glazing the branches of the trees, and transforming them into glistening sculptures. In the morning, Pierre poured kettles of hot water onto the handle of the stone fountain’s pump to loosen the icy grip of the deep freeze, while the children watched the steam rise in cloudy ribbons and snapped icicles from the balustrade of the terrace.

The day before the storm came, the sky was purple and smelled of wind, though the air was perfectly still.

“It’s coming,” the children whispered to each other.

At first, the snowflakes were slow and lazy, white moths floating down to land on upturned cheeks and outstretched tongues. The children exclaimed and wondered, their faces flushed and their eyes bright, cold and happiness conspiring to make them look so beautiful.

Then the wind stirred the flakes into a white, whirling mass, until the sky was thick and churning. The children ran inside and stood at the windows, watching the world rapidly disappear.

A long season of enchantment began. Nothing was as it had been before. The snow seemed to alter the contours of the land, creating new valleys and ridges, turning the tallest of pines into stately white pillars. The light had a bluish tint, casting mauve shadows. The cliff faces softened, the roads vanished, and the pinnacles of the mountains glittered so brightly Miron had to shade his eyes to look at them. He reached for Sabine’s hand and squeezed it tightly. He could almost feel her body loosen as the tension in her muscles relaxed. The House of Izieu was buffeted, impervious. Snow had become its armour.

Farmer Perticoz raided the storage in his barn for sleds, and the children, bundled up in an assortment of mismatching boots, coats, mittens, and scarves of every colour, ploughed through the snow to the top of the hill that overlooked the house.

Arnold, on his stomach with little Sami on his back, steered the first sled from the highest point, down the steepest slope, at alarming speed. Sami, screeching and laughing, finally fell off, tumbling down the last two feet. He was up in a flash, already scrambling back to the top of the hill as fast as his short legs could pump. As the sliding, whizzing, and shrieking filled the morning, the older boys showed the younger children how to steer by leaning or dragging their boots in the snow. Soon the slope of the hill was as slick as a glass slide.

As the days passed, snow angels decorated the meadows, and snowmen patrolled the terrace. Trails of footprints on pristine snow looped in aimless circles of play, or disappeared into newly carved tunnels, or drifted down to the green river, its edges brittle with ice.

There were thrilling sleigh rides with Farmer Perticoz and dozens of snowball fights, star-flooded nights and ice-blue skies. November was hot soup and toast, coats steaming near the wood stove, and dreamless sleeps under warm blankets.

In December, trails of wood smoke from the chimney guided the postman on his skis to Sabine’s front door, where he placed a parcel and a letter from Pierre-Marcel, written on official stationery, in her hands.

Dear Madame Zlatin,

I hope all is well at the Settlement.

As Christmas approaches, I am pleased to inform you that the good citizens of Belley, Izieu, and several neighbouring villages have donated a sum of money and goods (here enclosed) to help the refugee children celebrate the festive season.

Obersturmführer Werner was most impressed by this generosity.

Thank you for your invitation to attend your Christmas Eve dinner. While Obersturmführer Werner sends his sincere regrets, I will be most pleased to attend.

Sabine read the words not written as intently as the words that were, and carried the letter to Léa.

“Clearly, your friend is warning you. The Germans have learned of the Settlement and believe the children are Christian, no doubt with Pierre-Marcel’s encouragement. We must have a public Christmas. I think we should also assume our mail is being read.”

“Exactly what I thought. But what will the children think?”

Léa’s face brightened as she thought of a solution. “We’ll tell them that Christmas will be like the summer pageant, a kind of play. And we can still celebrate Hanukkah privately, with a special meal, and later, stories at bedtime. What’s in the package?”

“Flat tins of sardines, a kilo of sugar, some butter, seven packs of colour pencils, eight knit sweaters in various sizes, and a one hundred franc note.”

“Good. I’d say we’re off to a promising start.”

And so began the celebration of a very public Christmas at the House of Izieu. When Miron drove a sleigh full of children to the market, they wished everyone they knew, and plenty they didn’t, Joyeux Noël, for each child had learned the phrase in French to perfection. They thought it was outrageous fun to chop down a fir tree, drag it into the house, and decorate it with paper stars and strings of dried apple while its boughs dripped melting snow onto the classroom floor. The office of the subpréfet of Belley received forty-four Christmas cards, all with the obligatory drawings in children’s crayon of Christmas trees, angels, jingle bells, holly, stars, wreaths, mangers, shepherds, Three Wise Men, or Père Noël.

Sabine wrote letters to everyone she knew in Montpellier, and soon packages began to arrive and were quickly hidden in the barn. Philippe, dressed for an expedition to the north pole, skied into town for supplies, or perhaps not to any town but to some secret cache or contact, because Sabine never saw a single receipt despite all the boxes and bags he brought home and carefully hid in the larder or behind innocent jars of homemade applesauce.

“Where did all this come from?” Sabine finally asked.

Philippe’s only reply was a wink.

“What do people eat at Christmas?” she wondered, “and will there be enough for guests?”

“Leave all that to me,” Philippe assured her.

So invitations were sent to all the friends of the House of Izieu.

As the day of the party drew closer, Sabine dreaded the departure of Mademoiselle Perrier whose return to her own home for the holidays meant that lessons would be suspended at a time when the children were already fizzing with excitement. She suddenly felt like that old woman living in a shoe with so many children at loose ends she didn’t know what to do. But, as it turned out, the children were no trouble at all, disappearing into the classroom behind closed doors, busy with their own seasonal conspiracies.

Plans and schemes were everywhere. Miron spent all his spare time in the barn and came to bed covered in sawdust. Pieces of thread were tangled in Léa’s hair and she had the pink eyes of a white mouse from sewing so late into the evenings. Meanwhile, Mina and Suzanne neglected their daily chores to indulge in a sudden passion for knitting.

Sabine thought everyone had gone crazy letting themselves be caught up in a pretend Christmas because all these tidings of hope and mercy would surely vanish in an instant if a single jackboot crossed the threshold. She had little tolerance for the gaudy fuss of the holiday, and found the whole enterprise disquieting. What were they thinking, hidden Jews performing Christmas like some kind of play? She couldn’t help but feel that the natural order of things had been turned upside down. She felt twitchy, like an animal before a storm, and expected nothing less than disaster.

But Sabine was wrong. When the eve of Christmas finally arrived, Pierre-Marcel in full dress uniform and Marie-Antoinette in a fur-lined cloak arrived with it, pulling up to the house with a flourish in a horse drawn sleigh filled with presents, the three boys who attended the boarding school in Belley, and the lovely Marcelle. The children were drawn to her as though she radiated light, and she greeted every one with a kiss or hug or handshake, depending on their age or preference. The reunion made the house so warm it seemed the air was turning to mist, and the younger children hopped from foot to foot, giddy with pleasure.

While Miron greeted Madame and Farmer Pericoz, Pierre-Marcel drew Sabine aside and whispered that his wife, Noelle, and Mayor Tissot had arranged the best surprise of all, a dinner for the German officers stationed in the area which would keep them full and drunk and listless for days to come.

There was an hour of carol singing, a bit ragged because the children didn’t know most of the words, and the adults were distracted by the siren call of smells wafting from the kitchen. Then, finally, it was time for the traditional meal, le réveillon de Noël, served proudly by Philippe and Marie, with a few menu substitutes necessitated by circumstance. A simple duck pâte took the place of foie gras, and grilled sardines stood in for more luxurious seafood. But the roast capon with chestnut stuffing could have been the star of any French table, followed by the best cheeses of the Jura, Mont d’Or and Morbier.

Five-year-old Émile’s mouth formed a perfect ‘O’ when he saw what Philippe had prepared for the final course: seven Bûches de Noël, rolled cakes in the shape of Christmas logs covered in chocolate ganache, enough for everyone to have a slice of their own.

After dinner, everyone crowded into the classroom where the desks had been pushed against the walls and Pierre-Marcel took charge of the distribution of presents, beginning with his own offering of bars of chocolate for the children. The treats had cost him a small fortune and a stab of conscience because he’d been forced to pretend that the unsavoury characters that had sold it to him were not part of an outlawed black market ring. Despite all his trouble, he was still upstaged by Marie-Antoinette who unveiled a carton of four-dozen oranges, a fruit so rare in the dead of winter in the midst of war that it might just as well have been exotica from another planet. Her laugh, when she saw the look of amazement on Pierre-Marcel’s face, was as close to the peal of a Christmas bell as anyone in the Jura was likely to hear that night.

The children received their gifts with enthusiasm. The knit bears and rabbits with button eyes were fiercely hugged, and the rag dolls were instantly rocked. Théo had carved small squirrels and birds for the youngest children and a cat for Max, while Léa had embroidered scarves for the older girls. There were paints for Joseph, sweaters for the older boys and, from Farmer Perticoz, the promise of a piglet for Henri. Sabine’s surprise for Théo was a letter from Paulette that had arrived two days ago from Montpellier still smelling faintly of roses.

No one wanted the pretend Christmas to end because it had turned out to be the real thing, provided religion, which had caused so much trouble in the world, was set aside. Even Sabine believed that night that the world might be saved after all, if only all children were treated tenderly. But when Marcelle found Coco curled up and sound asleep under one of the desks, his cheeks sticky with melted chocolate, the guests knew it was time to leave. When Léa and Mina finally put the children to bed that night, they smelled of cake crumbs and sugar.

A few hours later, all the goodbyes said and all the dishes done, Miron turned to Sabine. “Did you have a good time tonight?”

“Best Christmas ever,” she replied.

“You’ve never had Christmas before.”

She laughed, a full-throated musical riff. It had been a long time since Miron had heard her sound so happy. “Come. Let me show you what I’ve been working on in the barn.”

They crossed the lawn hand-in-hand and Miron led her to a gleaming wooden sled for the boys and a multilevel dollhouse for the girls.

Suddenly, Sabine felt like a teenager again, impulsive, unpredictable, and drunk on mischief. “Let’s take the sled for a run,” she coaxed, “before we set everything up for the children.”

So, while the House of Izieu slept under a Christmas moon, Sabine and Miron went sledding, swooshing down the sloping lawn, landing in a tangle of arms and legs, and kissing the snow from each other’s face.

It was sometime in mid-January, after the House had settled back into its comfortable routine, when little Jean-Claude Benguigui first called Miron Papa. Miron crouched down and put a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You know I’m not your father, Jean-Claude. I’m sure your real papa misses you.”

“But I don’t remember him. And Yvette calls her new family mama and papa.”

For a moment, Miron didn’t know what to say. For many of the youngest children, the war stretched backwards into their earliest memories and forward into their unknown futures. How do you tell a five-year-old that the people who shielded him from the world, the people he trusted most, hoped to turn him over one day to parents who’d become virtual strangers?

“You must talk to your older brothers, Jean-Claude. They can tell you stories about your father to help you remember.”

“But I don’t want to remember.”

“Why? Why don’t you want to remember your own father?”

“Because he might not come back. If I remember and he doesn’t come…”

“I see. We all share that problem here. But I promise you that someday, whether your father returns or not, you’ll want to know all about him. Even your baby sister will want to know.”

Jean-Claude looked hard at Miron. It was clear he’d heard this advice before, but he was too young to understand that those memories that cause misery could also bring consolation. Adults often spoke in riddles. He shrugged, looking entirely unconvinced. “In the meantime, can I call you Papa? You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

Miron smiled. “I’m here to stay. But call me Papa Miron, just to keep the record straight.”

Jean-Claude nodded and ran off, seemingly content with their bargain. But Miron was reminded of how fiercely children live in the present. Time was suspended for them at the House of Izieu where all that mattered was cocoa at breakfast, lessons in the morning, and if the day was fine, maybe a hike or a game on the lawn. Maybe the war would last forever, or maybe it would end tomorrow.

The adults, however, were aware of distant concussions and smudges of smoke in the peerless blue sky. The Allies were coming, and the Germans were going. The ending was inevitable, but Miron prayed for sooner rather than later.

Though the weather began to soften, February was not a kind month. When Georgy caught the flu, Jacob slipped into the infirmary to show him his new comic book, and a few hours later Jacob kissed his sister, Esther, good night. Esther read a bedtime story to Rénate and Liane, and by the next morning, half the children were flushed and feverish.

Suzanne Reifman moved quickly to quarantine the infected children in the upstairs of the house, but the virus proved difficult to contain and seemed immune to Marie’s hot chicken soup, even though it was guaranteed to lift the spirits and drive sickness from the body. Several children gagged on the broth and before nightfall several others had begun to vomit.

“I need help,” Dr. Reifman declared. “I need real medicine.”

Sabine and Miron agreed it was too risky to send a child alone to Dr. Bendrihem in Glandieu because German soldiers could be anywhere. Sabine set off alone, while Miron readied himself for a trip into the mountains to confer with Philippe’s mysterious contacts.

It took hours to slog through the snow, and by the time Sabine reached the village, she was exhausted. She took shelter in a café from where she could see the doctor’s blue door and ordered a cup of faux coffee to give herself time to recover from her journey. Through the window she watched three German soldiers on a slow patrol along the street, but no one entered or left through the doctor’s door.

An hour crawled by and Sabine knew she couldn’t delay any longer without drawing the attention of other customers. How many cups of bad coffee could one woman drink? Her plan had been to enter the doctor’s office with at least one other person to seem less noticeable, but apparently no one else in the village had so much as a minor cold to complain about to a doctor.

She rose to her feet just as the waitress who had been serving her approached. “Sit down,” she whispered. Sabine sank back onto her chair, for her legs were suddenly weak.

“Your bill, Madame,” the waitress said in a louder voice. “Just check the total.”

As Sabine scrambled for change, she read the words written under the addition, Meet me at the back door.

The waitress swept up the coins and the bill. “Thank you, Madame.” Her face and her voice gave away nothing.

Sabine had no choice but to leave the café. Should she trust this stranger or go straight to the doctor’s office? As she entered the street, her eyes were riveted on the backs of the German soldiers. Could she reach the doctor’s door before they turned around? Acting purely on instinct, Sabine ducked down the alley and found herself at the back of the café.

The waitress was a thin woman, tall, though not as tall as Sabine, in a faded print dress and a black coat. She stared at Sabine with hooded, storm-grey eyes. “Follow me.”

“Wait. Who are you?”

“A friend. Keep up unless you want to be arrested.”

Shaken, Sabine followed the woman down the alley and through a maze of lanes to the back door of a small, ramshackle house. “In here,” the woman said, holding the door open for Sabine.

The interior of the house was full of shadows, as ominous as the overcast sky, and Sabine dreaded crossing the threshold. At that moment, someone inside lit a candle, and in its halo Sabine could make out the face of a young boy, a boy she recognized from somewhere. “Hurry up, please. It’s starting to rain,” the waitress urged. “This is Gérard, the doctor’s son. His father was arrested in January.”

The door swung shut behind Sabine and she could hear the turn of a lock.

“I recognize you,” the boy said. “You came to see my father once. You’re from the Settlement.”

“You are?” the waitress said. “Thank god. I’m Lucie Feiger. I’ve been hiding Gérard ever since his father was taken by the Gestapo. If you’d approached the doctor’s door, you would’ve been taken, too.” She lit another candle as she was talking. “I’m afraid we can’t turn on the lights. The front of the house has been boarded up. So far, the Germans think it’s vacant. My husband was also rounded up. This is where we lived.”

The bad news broke over Sabine like a cold wave. “What happened?”

Lucie glanced at Gérard and then back at Sabine. “Another time. Can you help us?”

There would be no medicine found here for the children, and no travelling back to them until the weather cleared. At least the hideaways were dry inside the house, and Lucie had food from the café. While the rain poured down, while the wind rose in the east, Sabine would think of a plan, she’d have to, because she could no more abandon a child in need than she could stop the rain with just a wave of her hand and fly back to the House of Izieu.

In the end, the rain began to melt the snow, and Sabine’s return journey, though cautious, was easier than she’d supposed.

“I’ve brought no medicine,” she told Suzanne, “but at least we have more help with Lucie and Gérard. How are the children?”

“Rallying slowly, but the sisters, Rénate and Liane are gravely ill, weakened no doubt by their months in Rivesaltes. Perhaps Miron and Philippe will have more luck.”

“They’re not back?”

“Not yet.”

It was midnight, and the wind was battering the trees, when Miron finally appeared at the mouth of the barn. His face was pale and his hair was drenched from the rain. His eyes, usually so expressive, telling Sabine all she needed to know about what he was feeling, were empty and dark. He looked exhausted, and without asking any questions, she took his face in her hands and kissed him.

He responded eagerly, but then rested his forehead against hers. “A man was killed,” he murmured.

“A soldier?”

“A resister. We buried him, but there’ll be questions. Shots were fired and we heard dogs.”

She wanted to tell him to stop talking, that she shouldn’t know about this, but it was as if he had something inside him that had to pour out.

“I think Philippe knew him. I had to drag him away from the grave. It was all I could do to get him back home. That big man, Sabine, he sobbed like a boy.”

She put her arms around him, felt him shudder. He leaned into her and pressed his face into her neck. “We brought back the medicine,” he murmured before falling into bed.

Sabine lay awake for a long time watching Miron sleep, listening to the inevitable melting of the snow, knowing that their dream of keeping the children together was coming to an end.

Montpellier was grimmer than she remembered. The leaves of the palm trees were a bleached-out green. The streets were grubbier. The faces of the few people she saw on the street had an ashy cast. Coils of barbed wire were strung along the beaches like thorny snakes. Only the sea was unchanged, an impervious, arrogant blue.

There were many more soldiers here than in the Jura, but even they looked dispirited. With her false identity papers, Sabine travelled unchallenged. At first, she found it astonishing that other people judged her to be calm and capable even though she was still spiralling from the arrest of the doctor, and she guessed this was because of how she looked: tall, almost mannish, with a plain and solemn face. She seemed as utilitarian as an old pair of brown shoes a bit worn down at the heels as everyone’s were because the war had eaten up most of what the world had to offer, including leather. With her hair scraped back, and no make-up to soften her square face, she could be mistaken for a nun, maybe, or a head mistress, but certainly not as a woman with secrets to hide. And so, Sabine kept her secrets to herself and few suspected she had any to tell.

She went first to her good friend, Berthe Mering, the soul of charity who lived in a small house well below her means in order to avoid drawing attention to her fortune. A devout supporter of the Red Cross and the OSE, she greeted Sabine with open arms and bad news. “The headquarters of the OSE in Chambéry was raided two days ago by the Gestapo and the staff were rounded up,” she said. “The entire organization has gone underground. This must be the work of Klaus Barbie who has jurisdiction over the area.”

The mention of Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, was like an ice cube slipping down Sabine’s spine. “Did the Gestapo seize the records?” she asked.

“I know what you’re asking—did the Gestapo find the names of the children—but I don’t know the answer. The staff has been careful. Coded lists of names were sent to an OSE office in neutral Geneva and many other financial records were hidden off the premises. They couldn’t be destroyed outright because when this war finally ends the records will be the only way for parents to trace their way back to their children. But, Sabine, if the staff are questioned—”

There was no need to finish the sentence. The word questioned hung in the air, a euphemism for whatever horrors occurred in the sinister cells of Montluc prison in Lyon.

Sabine felt the first stings of panic, as if a frantic bee were trapped in her stomach. “Then we haven’t a moment to lose. We must assume the Germans know about the House of Izieu.”

“Remember the name will be recorded as The Settlement for Refugee Children from the Hérault. If the Germans even have that name, they will speak first to your friend, Monsieur Wiltzer.”

“Pierre-Marcel will tell them the House has a history as a Catholic boarding school and summer camp.”

“Yes, of course. But if the Germans become suspicious, they may also want to speak to Monsieur Jean Fridrici, your contact in the Hérault.”

“You’re right. I’ll go to him first, and then to the Paillarès family who will help me find Marius, and then to the Abbey.”

“No, my friend. First you’ll eat and sleep, because anyone can see the lines of worry on your face. If I poked your shoulder right now with just a single finger you’d surely fall down from exhaustion.”

Over the next few days, Sabine met with all her friends and old contacts. They offered her whatever they could, which was always less than what she needed. Since the beginning of the war, OSE and its myriad networks had hidden over four thousand children, spread far and wide among various homes and institutions, and among the families of farmers, craftsmen, labourers, teachers, fishermen, or shop owners, poor or well-to-do, urban or rural. But placements were becoming more difficult to find, and the transporting of children in any number, more dangerous.

A day before her scheduled return to Izieu, Sabine, with the help of Marius and his decrepit truck, had a clandestine meeting with Léon Reifman in the deserted sanctuary of Palavas-les-Flots. They embraced and if they noted any changes in the other’s face wrought by desperation, they failed to mention them.

“I’ve arranged placements for all but eighteen children,” Sabine said.

“I can take only six,” Léon said. “I can get them into Switzerland.”

“Which six? How in god’s name do we decide?”

Léon plunged his face into his hands and then looked up. “Let’s try to keep siblings together.”

Sabine nodded. “Max and Herman,” she said, remembering a promise she’d made long ago to a frightened boy waiting in a hotel room with his little brother for a mother that never returned. “Maurice and Liliane, and Paula and Marcel. Some of the older siblings can stay at the Perticoz farm or the boarding school in Belley. How soon can you come?”

“We still have to wait for the snow to melt, for the roads to become passable.”

Sabine closed her eyes. For now, the roads were no more than grey pencil lines between mounds of snow, but those lines would soon widen. March, she knew, was unpredictable, either fair or fierce. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “I’m guessing. Early April?”

“Easter,” Léon suggested. “I’ll come at Easter when the schools are on holiday and take the children with me when I leave.”

Sabine looked away and bit her bottom lip. “I hate this,” she murmured. “I hate even thinking about breaking up the House of Izieu. How will I tell the children that once again they’ll be uprooted?”

Léon reached for her hand and squeezed it hard. “You have no choice,” he said. That was all the comfort he could offer.

When Sabine arrived home to the happy news that all the children were healthy again, she called the adults together and told them everything she’d done and everything she’d learned in Montpellier. “There’s nothing I want more than to stay together, but we mustn’t underestimate the danger. We have until Easter. Then everyone must go.”

Her revelations were met with a long and unhappy silence. The isolation of the House of Izieu was so seductive. Couldn’t they stay? Perhaps the Germans would leave them alone. Wasn’t it just as perilous to try to leave? But no one spoke these thoughts aloud.

“You still need places for a dozen children. Émile can live with me,” Léa offered.

“I’ll contact my parents.” Suzanne said. “If they’re well enough to travel they can come at Easter, and Claude can leave with them.”

“There’s someone I know who’ll take in Gérard,” Lucie promised. “I can take him there next week, but I’ll come back and help out until Easter.”

Mina Friedler said nothing at all. She and her daughter would be together, but she had no idea where they might go.

Finally Miron asked the most difficult question of all. “When do we tell the children?”

Some were in favour of telling them the very next morning so they would have time to adjust, but the others argued that no amount of time could prepare them for leaving the House of Izieu, and they should have one last carefree month together. Miron suggested that if Sabine left the House a day or two before the children, she could greet them when they reached Montpellier and soothe their anxieties. In the end, the adults agreed on this latter course—one more carefree month.

March was like a fresh breeze that swept away worry, or at least made it easier to disguise. The first flowers of the season began to poke out from the ground, and the sun shone almost every day. Spring fever quivered in the air and even the tips of the trees seemed to tremble, anticipating their first burst of green. As a precaution, a bell was hung in the barn and another at the Perticoz farm, and if anyone saw or heard anything suspicious, the bells would ring. The children were told to scatter if they heard those bells, and run into the woods or head for the best places they’d found after months of playing hide-and-seek. If the older children were wary of such instructions, the youngest welcomed the bells as part of a new game.

Though she had much to do in preparation for leaving, Sabine spent as much time as she could with the children as they tumbled in play or chased kites in the gusty March winds, but she could not prevent herself from looking up now and again to study the landscape and the horizon. From village to village, from valley to mountain, the snow was steadily disappearing and the mud drying. Sometimes, she caught Miron or Léa in the midst of the same sort of surveying gaze, and she noticed springtime made the children noisier while the adults communicated in sighs and coded glances.

Finally, when the forest paths were clear and the meadows green, Miron organized a hike into the foothills of the mountains for nine boys and four girls who didn’t mind getting dirty or sweaty. Little Sami refused to be left behind, and Miron didn’t have the heart to deny him, even though he knew he’d soon be carrying the boy on his shoulders. They sang as they marched along through the forest, stopping now and again to admire a chorus of birds just beginning to make their nests, or a brave squirrel standing erect and sniffing at the new softness in the air. The world seemed to be pulsing with life, sap bursting from the hidden veins of the trees. After a steady climb, they left the forest behind and reached an upper meadow, where they found clumps of cowslips and marguerites.

The heat of midday was evaporating the morning dew, releasing a light mist that lay like a veil over the landscape. So high up, it seemed they were the only people for miles around, and as they climbed higher, the base of the foothill disappeared in a thick fog, and they imagined they were on an island surrounded by a white ocean.

But they were not alone. From across the meadow, a young teenager was waving and running towards them. “Hello,” she hollered, finally stopping in front of Sami. She bent over and put her hands on her knees to catch her breath. A camera dangled from a strap around her neck. “Hello,” she began again. “You’re from the Settlement, aren’t you? I’m Marie-Louise Bouvier, Madame Perticoz’s niece. I visit their farm often.”

There was a buzz of introductions before Sami’s high-pitched voice rose above the clamour. His small index finger was pointed directly at Marie-Louise’s neck. “Is that a camera? Will you take pictures of us?”

There was a short cough from Miron, and Sami, reminded of manners, began again. “Please, mademoiselle.”

“Yes, please,” several of the other children chimed in.

“It’ll be my pleasure,” Marie-Louise replied to a round of applause.

The children laughed and jostled each other with their shoulders, but eventually something like a line emerged, a formation of shorter girls and boys at the front, taller boys at the back. They smiled on cue, easy effortless smiles, and stared into the camera that would hold this day for them forever, while destiny shuffled the cards of their future.

At the exact moment the children were grinning into the camera, Marie-Antoinette arrived at the doorstep of the House of Izieu, calling for Sabine, and looking nothing like her usual self, her hair wild from the spring winds and her green eyes wide with alarm. Quickly, she pulled Sabine into the barn.

“They’ve sent Pierre away. Transferred him to some other office in France. I don’t know why. There was no warning. He’s just gone.”

Sabine felt something inside herself crack like ice too thin to hold a weight. She did not move her hands or open her arms. She did not try to touch Marie-Antoinette or offer her comfort. She understood there was no possible consolation for such terrible news. Their protector was gone.

For her own part, Marie-Antoinette thought it would have been a healthy sign if she were angry at Pierre-Marcel for not saying goodbye, but she couldn’t even manage that. Given the unshakable love she’d felt for him for so many years, all her heart and mind had room for was sorrow, a sense of personal abandonment, and a rising fear for the fate of her friends.

“What will you do?” she whispered.

“The only thing we can do. Empty the house. I only hope we haven’t left it too late.”

“When?”

“Easter. As soon as the holiday is over.”

“I’ll come. I’ll take as many children as you need. Noelle will leave Belley with her children and join Pierre. I’ll keep the house for them. It’s big.”

“Dear Marie-Antoinette. What of your own safety? What of your job?”

“They didn’t send me away,” she sniffed. “I’m just a woman, just a secretary. I’m counting on them to underestimate me.”

“All right. Come on Easter Sunday. That’s the day we’ll tell the children and the next day—”

Sabine’s tongue tripped on the words. The next day would be the wrench of separation, the plunge back into strangeness and fear, the end of the House of Izieu, as brief as roses or a single line of poetry or the sweet notes of a birdsong, already fading before you can recognize them. She couldn’t finish the sentence.

The two women embraced, without speaking another word.

As Easter approached, Gabrielle Perrier made preparations to leave for a short visit to her family, and the children were released from the classroom chores. Amid the bedlam that invariably results when children begin a holiday from school, Marie approached Sabine. “It’s Philippe,” she began tentatively. “He’s not himself, not since that shooting in the mountains. They say men weep only for love.”

“What can I do to help?” Sabine offered, appalled that she had not even noticed Philippe was enduring a private sorrow.

“Well, I think, and I’m sorry to ask, but I think we should leave before the children do. He’s not a coward, mind, but saying goodbye to all those youngsters … it’s too much.”

“I understand. Both of you have been so generous. I can’t tell you how grateful Miron and I are.”

Marie waved away Sabine’s thanks. “It wasn’t anything, not for us leastways. You and your man have good hearts. If the house weren’t shutting down, you’d have had to drag us away. It’s a shame, a great shame, I say.”

“Yes,” Sabine nodded. Shame was certainly one of many ways to name what was happening in the world.

On April 1, 1944, Sabine packed her suitcase and sat down on the edge of her bed to lean against her husband’s shoulder. “I wish you didn’t have to go,” he murmured into her hair. “When is the car coming?”

“Marie-Antoinette promised to be here by eight in the morning. I expect she’ll be here by nine. I’ll have time to have breakfast with the children. Now remember, Suzanne’s parents are arriving tomorrow, and Léon’s arriving on the sixth, and he’s picking up Max and Maurice from the boarding school in Belley on the way.”

“Where are you going to stay? No, don’t tell me. That way, no one can force me to betray you. I’ll meet you at the train station in Montpellier in just a few days. Me and Théo, Rénate and Liane—your new and much smaller family.”

“Do you think we’ll ever come back here?” Sabine wondered.

“I’m sure of it,” Miron replied, drawing her close until there was no room for anything else and the imminence of her departure seemed far away.

The next morning, the air was mild and the sky was the colour of pearls. Marie-Antoinette arrived intentionally late, with just enough time to drive Sabine to the train station. She knew her friend would be suffering. Best not to linger. For once, she did not talk in the car or try to lighten the mood. In a series of quick glances, she noted the white knuckles of Sabine’s clenched hands and her bowed neck. When finally Sabine looked up, Marie-Antoinette thought she had the expression of a soldier about to embark on a mission filled with uncertainties and breathtaking risks.

The two women said goodbye, promising to keep in touch, and when Sabine was finally settled on the train, she sighed and closed her eyes. She could summon the House of Izieu from ordinary air the way an alchemist summoned gold from lead, but she could not rewind time or undo its fate.

On Maundy Thursday, April 6, 1944, at around eight-thirty in the morning, the children were having breakfast. Miron was in the kitchen with Léa and Lucie, who had kept her promise by delivering Dr. Bendrihem’s son to safety and returning to the House of Izieu to help with chores. They heard nothing but the splashing of water as they did the dishes and the constant chatter of the children coming from the adjoining room.

Léon had been upstairs visiting with his newly arrived parents, Éva and Moise, and his sister, Suzanne, and was just coming down when he saw three men in civilian clothes disappearing along the corridor that led to the breakfast room.

“Run,” Suzanne urged. “It’s the Gestapo.”

Within seconds, two convoy trucks sped into the yard, and fifteen soldiers rounded up the children and loaded them into the trucks like sacks of potatoes. Too late, Farmer Perticoz came running and was warned by a shout from Miron to stay back and hide.

If the people in the town of Izieu had looked up, they would have seen a cloud of dust on the horizon, stirred up by a convoy of trucks, moving like a slow, small whirlwind. And if they had listened closely, they would have heard over the grinding of the truck’s gears, the unmistakable sound of children singing. But it was a holiday, and good people were busy with their own affairs, perhaps catching an extra hour of sleep, or preparing for the meal to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ.

At a crossroad, one woman was brazen enough to stand in the road, refusing to budge, forcing the convoy to stop. She talked at length to a small dark man in a good dark suit, and one small boy—her nephew, she insisted, and she had the papers to prove it—was lifted down from the back of one truck. He was, she protested, not Jewish.

Marie-Antoinette heard about the raid in a frantic phone call from Farmer Perticoz and abandoned her desk immediately, without asking for permission or offering an explanation. She found a German staff car with keys in the ignition and borrowed it. She drove recklessly on the mountain roads, heedless of branches scraping the sides of the car, or potholes that chewed up the tires. In her heart, despite all the stern talk she’d heard from Pierre and her own keen intelligence, she’d believed that nothing terrible could befall a sanctuary where such innocence flowered. She was in a state of shock.

When she reached the top of the hill that overlooked the House of Izieu, she turned off the ignition and let the car coast. When gravity would take it no further, she got out on shaky legs and slowly walked to the front door.

The unearthly silence of the place almost drove her to her knees.

She called out and her voice, in her own ears, sounded like china crashing to the floor.

She forced herself to enter the house, once filled to the brim with forty-four children. She stared at the empty space as if the soldiers had torn through the fabric of the air, leaving it hanging in rags behind them. She looked everywhere, under every bed in the dormitory, up the ladder into the attic, across the yard in the barn. Miron and Léa were gone. The children were gone, and the air in every room echoed their absence.

Finally, Marie-Antoinette stuffed a cardboard box with crayon drawings, school notebooks, letters, and photographs, anything she could find to prove the children existed. She packed up dolls, and small carvings in the shape of animals, and birthday cards. When she carried her burden outside, she heard Tomi whimpering. The poor dog had worn himself out running from place to place in search of the children and consolation, finally collapsing in a dejected heap.

Marie-Antoinette picked him up and said goodbye to the House of Izieu, leaving the door wide-open because everything precious was already gone, and because only the rush of the wind and the battering of the rain—certainly no human hand—would ever be able to scour it clean of the unspeakable evil that had crept up in the dawn and spilled its ugly shadow everywhere only hours before.

The telegram from Marie-Antoinette reached Sabine when she was in the chapel with Abbé Prevost making the final arrangements for the orphanage to take in twelve boys from the House of Izieu.

Family ill, contagious disease.

The House had been raided, the children and adults arrested. The knowledge, coded in simple words, descended with effortless terror like the blade of a guillotine.

Sabine crushed the telegram in her hand and let it drop to the floor.

Abbé Prevost was alarmed at the instant change in Sabine. She was breathing quickly and anguish was rising from her in waves, anguish he could smell, like a sour mix of bitter lemons and creosote. He reached for the telegram and shook his head.

“The children are ill? How unfortunate.”

“No Father.” She forced out the words. “The House has been cleared out.”

The priest still did not understand. Sabine shuddered and tried again. “The Germans have arrested everyone who was there.”

“Were they all together?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

“My God,” he uttered, crossing himself.

Sabine was utterly still. She looked strangely emotionless, though her brain was spinning, as if it had been concussed by a crushing blow. It was the numbness that follows an injury before the pain begins to cut slowly and relentlessly through the dense analgesic fog.

That numbness allowed her to function mechanically for the many hours she worked tirelessly to try to save the children and their supervisors. She rushed from place to place, from person to person. She appealed to the Red Cross in Montpellier, to old friends from OSE, to her old driver, Marius, and the subpréfet, Monsieur Fridrici. They could do nothing. She could do nothing.

Finally, she appealed to the Vichy administration for the release of the children, at the very least. She presented her identification papers, in the name of Jeanne Verdavoire, and waited for a long time to be seen by some official who might have the power or the heart to show clemency. Eventually, she was admitted to what seemed to be a huge filing room with industrial lighting, manned by a single official whose name was never offered to her. He had a leonine head and a bony face.

As the man turned away from her toward the open shelving to look for documents of the arrest, an arc of white light from a hanging light fixture swept across his face. For a moment, he looked as if he wasn’t in colour, but black and white like a photograph, something flat and two-dimensional with neither thickness nor substance. She wondered for a terrible moment if he was real at all or a spectre.

But the light swung back, and he was standing in front of her, solid and immovable.

“There’s no record. There’s nothing I can do.” His voice was without inflection, a droning sound, emotionless.

Sabine stared at him, incredulous. She brushed the sweaty trails of hair from her forehead with the back of her sleeve, and tried again.

“But there must be something you can do, someone you can call. They’re only children.”

“Madame. There is nothing I can do. It wasn’t a Vichy arrest, but a German one. If you persist, you know what will happen to you?”

Sabine knew this was a question laced with poison.

“You know what will happen to them if no one intercedes, don’t you? You know, and still you’ll do nothing.”

His eyes seemed to darken, to turn the colour of muddy earth.

“Get out,” he flared. “Get out or be arrested.”

Sabine lifted her chin and held his gaze long enough for him to know exactly what she thought of him, and then she walked away and found the first train she could to Paris.

The city was not as she remembered it. This Paris was scowling and gloomy under leaden skies, which perfectly suited Sabine’s mood. She went immediately to the head office of the Red Cross where she met with the director and begged her help.

“Certainly, Madame. We will do whatever we can, but we must be quick. When was the sanctuary raided?”

“The morning of April sixth.”

“A moment, please.” The director left her office, but returned less than ten minutes later, her face grave.

“I’m so sorry, Madame, but I must tell you that the children arrived in Drancy on the eighth of April.”

Drancy. Sabine closed her eyes and wished she didn’t know what was whispered about Drancy, but she did. Drancy, filthy, and crowded, existed to feed the trains travelling east to certain sunrise and probable death. She shook her head, as if she could shake off such bad news. She would not think about the children on those trains, or the prayers that fluttered in that cramped space, their wings beating the stale air.

“I must go to them,” she murmured, and rose unsteadily from her chair.

“No. You must not. I’m calling Dr. Abrami right now. He’s the head of Broca Hospital. Let him try to intercede.”

So Sabine waited while Dr. Abrami confirmed that the children, Miron, Léa, Suzanne and her parents were all confined in Drancy. Both the doctor and the director were working furiously to have at least the youngest moved to the hospital.

“We have some time,” the doctor assured her. “It’s routine for internees to be held for about two weeks before deportation.”

But only a few days later, the director informed Sabine that thirty three of the Izieu children and four of the adult supervisors had been sent on rail convoy seventy-one to Auschwitz, and the rest were soon to follow. The haste was never explained.

Dr. Abrami left Drancy empty-handed, but for a single letter written in crayon, addressed to Sabine.

My dearest Sabine,

We are heading for the unknown. Morale is good. The children, parents, Coco and I are all together. Going through Lyon, Drancy, and finally to Metz, I think. See you soon, my dear friend. Hugs and kisses from the little ones and the grown-ups.

Suzanne.

Sadness gathered within her and she could feel it like a cloud in her lungs. The pit of her stomach ached. The hollowness in her chest grew so large it scarcely left room for breath. She hadn’t known that emptiness could weigh so much the earth seemed to be pulling at her, dragging her into darkness.

She became terribly ill.

If Sabine had locked herself away from the world for the rest of her life, those who knew her would have understood. But this was not her way. She would not let those innocents vanish, their space in the world simply closing over like water in the fountain at Izieu when she lifted out her hands.

Sabine fought on and fought back, because the story wasn’t over yet.