Chapter 38, The Ironing Board Summary

Rose arrives from her husband's reburial and funeral. Léonie accompanies Rose to the attic to help with the ironing. Rose tells Léonie what happened in France during the war, how the Germans rounded up the Jews, with one particularly "grande rafle" in Paris (169). She tells Léonie how the Jews were kept in a stadium near Paris under horrible conditions and how prisoners were sent on to the concentrations camp at Drancy and then to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Rose describes the railway freight cars that were used to transport the prisoners and how the journey lasted for three days with most people standing up without food or water. Rose explains how people sometimes escaped, and how she and her husband Henri had sheltered a young couple and their daughter from...