How did a young Bundist activist fall so in love with France in the 1930s that she was willing to sacrifice her vocation as a painter, a student of Gromaire and familiar with Montparnasse, to share the life of her husband, a Russian emigrant who became a poultry farmer in the North? How, only just having been naturalized French, did she come to enlist at the start of the Second World War as a military nurse for the Red Cross to end up in the Camp d'Agde as an enemy alien? How did she come to take in a group of 44 Jewish children, organize their transfer to the Italian occupation zone, and build a home for them in Izieu? How did she become involved in the Resistance and ultimately assist returning deportees at the Hôtel Lutétia in Paris at the end of the war? And how, after all that, do she manage to rebuild your life as a painter?
Sabine Zlatin answers these question in her memoir. At the age of 85, she sat down to write her story from her pre-war life as a painter to the infamous events of April 6, 1944 when the Lyon Gestapo under the orders of Klaus Barbie raided the Izieu house arresting the 44 Jewish children and their carers, the majority of whom would be murdered in Auschwitz. The memoir also includes Zlatin's testimony from the Barbie trial and reflections from a former Izieu teacher and one student who survived.