White Bird: A Wonder Story

The Prologue is preceded by a George Santayana quote which surmises that those who do not remember the past will inevitably repeat its mistakes.

In the present-day (the year 2019), Julian FaceTimes his grandmother—Grandmère—for help on a humanities school project. They chat about his new school, and Julian mentions regretting some of his past actions, wishing he could have a do-over. Grandmère resonates with this feeling but tells him that “we are not defined by our mistakes…but by what we do after we’ve learned from them” (4).

Julian tells Grandmère that he wants to write his essay about her childhood during the second world war; he will record her and would like her to tell her story in detail. Although Grandmère finds this difficult, she agrees to do so, because she wants Julian’s generation to know what happened.

Part 1 opens with a line from Muriel Rukeyser’s poem “Fifth Elegy: A Turning Wind”: “The birds know mountains that we have not dreamed…” (9).

In 1930s France, Grandmère was a little girl named Sara Blum who lived in a small village with her parents, Max and Rose Blum. Sara’s father, “Papa,” was a surgeon, and her mother, “Maman,” a university teacher. The family lived a comfortable life, likened by Sara to a fairy tale,” with an admission that she was a bit “spoiled.”

The village, the fictional Aubervilliers-aux-Bois, is surrounded by the Mernuit forest. The forest was a scary place in the winter, with legends about wolves that roam the woods. However, bluebells magically bloom in May. Sara and her parents picnicked in the woods on spring weekends, where her father played a game with her, throwing her in the air as she pretended to fly. Sara feels “as happy and carefree as a bird” (16). Successive panels of illustrations on the same page depict first Sara rising into the air as Papa throws her up, then a white bird in the sky in her stead.

In 1940, France surrendered to Germany in the second world war that was underway; this split the country into the Free Zone and the Occupied Zone. Sara’s village fell in the Free Zone, and her life continued as usual for a while. Being Jewish, the “illusion of normalcy” soon came to an end for her. Illustrations depict flags carrying the Swastika symbol beginning to appear in increasing prominence in public places (18-19).

The government passed anti-Jewish laws which included banning Jews from certain public places and jobs and keeping tabs of Jewish residents. Maman lost her job and Papa’s sister, who lived in the Occupied Zone, wrote them a letter expressing her desire to flee to the Free Zone. However, the Vel d’Hiv roundup took place in July 1942. Tens of thousands of Jews and children were arrested and held in a stadium in Paris under terrible conditions, before being deported to different interment and concentration camps. After this, Papa’s sister was never heard from again.

In November 1942 the Germans occupied the Free Zone as well. Sara still avoided thinking about the restrictions now placed on her, in a bid to “desperately […] hold on to a sense of normalcy,” even as an illustration depicts her standing outside a store carrying a sign that reads: “Les Juifs ne sont pas admis ici” (“Jews are not permitted here”) (22).

Despite the changing times, Sara’s school, the École Lafayette, continued to be a “haven” for her. Based on principles of the Enlightenment, it was a co-educational institute that welcomed children of all faiths. Sara was an excellent student in all subjects except math. Instead of paying attention to her teacher, Mademoiselle Petitjean, she spent her math classes doodling in her sketchbook. A panel depicts a white bird hovering over Sara’s sketchbook as she draws in it (25). Despite this, Mademoiselle Petitjean was always kind to Sara. One day, as Sara rushed to leave the math classroom at the end of the school day, she dropped her sketchbook on the floor. Her classmate, “Tourteau,” picked it up to return to her.

“Tourteau” means “crab” in French, and Tourteau received this nickname due to his limp, which was the result of having contracted polio as a child. Tourteau’s father was a sewer worker—an “égoutier”—and Tourteau was rumored to smell like the sewers. Owing to this and the limp, Tourteau was shunned by all the other children, including Sara—even though she knew that he did not actually smell, as she sat next to him in class.

Despite sitting next to Tourteau in class for years, the first time Sara ever spoke to him was when he returned her sketchbook. Although she was not very nice to him, she knew there were others who treated him worse, actively seeking him out to torture him. One of these people was Vincent, a handsome and popular boy a few years older than Sara, whom all the girls had a crush on. Having seen the interaction between Sara and Tourteau, Vincent asked her about it. Sara explained the situation and showed Vincent her sketchbook, which prompted him to comment that she was a “pretty good artist […] for a Jew” (32-33).

This was Sara’s first personal experience with anti-Semitism, and it left her shaken and humiliated. Sara’s friends tried to comfort her, reminding her that Vincent’s father worked for the Nazis; nevertheless, Sara was unable to forget the encounter. It is a sign that she can “no longer pretend that [her] life was normal” (34). Accompanying illustrations depict multiple Swastika flags and anti-Jew slogans in the background, as Sara rides home from school.

When Sara told her parents about the incident with Vincent, it reignited an argument between Papa and Maman about leaving France. Papa wanted to leave, as he believed France to be too unsafe for Jews. Papa and Mama were foreign-born French citizens, who opened them up to persecution. He wanted to disappear like the Rabbi Bernstein and his family did. Maman, however, was reluctant. She believed that, since they held French citizenship and were not religious Jews, they would be fine. She wanted to wait for the danger to settle, warning Sara to stay away from Vincent, in the meantime.

Later that night, Sara asked Papa why people hate the Jews; Papa asserted that not everyone did—it was just the people who have “darkness inside them” that do so, for “they cannot see our light. Nor can they extinguish it” (39). Papa made Sara promise that she would continue wearing her winter boots to school, even though it was already April. However, Sara broke this promise the very next day, putting on her pretty red shoes instead, as soon as Papa left. Despite everything going on, Sara still cared about wanting to look “fashionable.” However, “that was soon to change” (40).

The day started like any regular day, though colder than usual. Sara had art class followed by math and left her sketchbook in the art room so she was not tempted to doodle in class.

Math class was interrupted by the director of the school, Pastor Luc, who whispered something to Mademoiselle Petitjean; the children knew that something was wrong. After Pastor Luc left, Mademoiselle Petittjean asked a couple of students, including Sara, to collect their things and follow her out of the room. She told them that the Nazis conducted a roundup of Jews in the village and were on their way to collect children from the school. A “maquisard” (a guerrilla fighter in the French underground) was to escort the Jewish children into hiding in the woods. Sara left her coat behind, so Mademoiselle Petitjean gave Sara her own scarf.

There were 12 children whom the waiting maquisard took running into the woods. However, Sara stayed behind. Reluctant to ruin her red shoes in the snow and still believing that she would be going home, Sara slipped away unnoticed and hid in the belfry. The Nazis soon arrived.

The Nazis and the gendarmes (officers of the French Armed Forces) arrived in two trucks, and Sara finally realized that she would not be going home that day. Pastor Luc told the Germans that the children on the list did not come to school that day. Vincent shouted the truth about the maquisard from a window, and the soldiers ran into the woods.

The soldiers managed to round up all the children and the maquisard as well, the latter of whom they shot dead immediately; the maquisard’s last words were “Vive L’Humanité!” (“Long Live Humanity!”). The children were led onto one of the trucks with the false promise that they were being taken to their parents. When Pastor Luc and the teachers were unable to persuade the soldiers from taking the children away, Mademoiselle Petitjean insisted on joining them.

Sara later learned what happened next from her friend Ruth, who was the only survivor of that group: The children were first taken to one camp, which was too crowded; they were then led to another one much farther away, through the countryside. The younger children could not keep up and got left behind as night and snow fell; Mademoiselle Petitjean chose to stay behind with them. Although no one knows what exactly happened, none of them were ever seen again.

Still hiding in the belfry, Sara was consumed by thoughts about the fates of the maquisard, the children, Mademoiselle Petitjean, and her parents. She overheard some gendarmes who stayed behind planning to look for the missing children, like Sara, who did not board the truck. Suddenly the door to the belfry opened, and Tourteau appeared.

Tourteau led Sara safely out of the school through the sewers, giving her the coat off his back to keep her warm. He took her to Dannevilliers, a poor village far away from Sara’s home, where he lived. Instead of taking her to his house, Tourteau took Sara to a barn. He believed his neighbors to be Nazi conspirators and did not want to risk them seeing her.

The barn was in complete disrepair, inhabited by bats, mice, and cobwebs. Tourteau helped Sara hide in the hayloft and reassured her that her parents must be alive and hiding, just like her. Before Tourteau left to tell his parents about Sara, she asked how she could thank him for saving her life; he suggested that she call him by his real name—“Julien”—which is the name that Sara eventually gave her own son, who gave it to his son in turn.

Julien returned with his parents—Vivienne and Jean-Paul Beaumier—who brought food and warm clothes with them. They comforted Sara and cleaned up the barn for her, as she fell asleep. Sara dreamt that she was flying to a faraway place; she saw her Maman, and Maman saw her, glad to know that her daughter was safe. An accompanying illustration depicts a white bird flying across countryside and train tracks, before being spotted by Maman (73).

Sara was woken up by Vivienne, who promised to return the next day. She warned Sara to never leave the hayloft, for fear of being spotted by anyone else. As Vivienne urged Sara to stay strong until she was reunited with her parents again, Sara breaks down crying in Vivienne’s arms. Sara believed her dream to mean that she would never meet her Maman again. Panels depict Maman being escorted from her home to a train station by officers; a full-page illustration sees a white bird sitting atop a telephone wire at Auschwitz on a snowy, moonlit night, accompanied by the words “They put her on a train to Drancy, and then from there to Auschwitz. That is where she died” (75-76).