Dr. Eugene Paslov commentary: Novel a reminder that we must never lose our humanity

My daughter recently gave me a book. She frequently shares her reading material with me because we both enjoy good books. She described it as a "chick book," which I understand to be material that has themes and plot lines that appeal to women. But she also knew I'd be interested in another plot line of the book - the Holocaust.

The book is "Sarah's Key," by Tatiana de Rosnay. The novel concerns an American woman living and working as a journalist in Paris in the 1990s and married to a Frenchman. The protagonist has a 10-year-old daughter, Zoe, and there is a compelling plot line that explores the cultural tensions between an American woman and her arrogant French husband. They deal with the problems of aging and of the 45-year-old woman becoming pregnant. The husband doesn't want the new baby because he's facing aging with dread. This portion of the story is well crafted ... the denouement emotionally satisfying.

But it is another character, 10-year-old Sarah, that I want to focus on. This portion of the novel concerns the Vel' d'Hiv roundup of Jews in Paris on July 16, 1942, an actual historical event. Sarah was one of 13,000 French Jews, 4,000 of them children, herded into a huge stadium and eventually put into cattle cars and shipped to death camps.

The horror of the roundup and the treatment of these French citizens was exacerbated by the fact that, although ordered by Nazi occupiers, it was carried out by regular French police and citizens who loaded the Jews into the cattle cars. French concierges in Paris turned in Jewish families to the police in order to re-rent apartments to non-Jews for higher rents.

Even today it is difficult for the French to acknowledge the Vel' d'Hiv roundup, so antithetical it is to their history and culture. French President Jacques Chirac's 1995 address to the nation acknowledged that "France, home of the Enlightenment and the Rights of Man, land of welcome and asylum, France committed that day the irreparable. Breaking its word, it delivered those it protected to their executioners."

The two plot lines are creatively linked (as are Zoe and Sarah). De Fornay's novel reminds us that in history the line between humanity and brutality is thin. Ordinary citizens can cross over, unaware. We must be constantly vigilant of hate's ugly presence. The Holocaust's striking call, "Never forget" must be honored and its history remembered, lest we too forget and cross the thin line.

• Eugene Paslov is a board member of the Davidson Academy at the University of Nevada, Reno and the former Nevada state superintendent of schools.