Pauline Cheviller

The Paris opera house is about to give a performance of Carmen, when a young usherette is killed in one of the boxes. Faustine must prove her fiancé’s innocence before it’s too late.

In the backdrop of the Nazi occupation of France, taken to the hospital for a broken leg from an accident, twelve-year-old Maurice Gutman is narrowly spared from the mass roundup that will take his family from him and leave them imprisoned in a distant death camp. At the hospital, Dr. Daviel diagnoses him with tuberculosis and imposes a long treatment, perhaps a humane ruse to prevent him from being deported. Over the course of two years, while living with the hospital staff, Maurice and eight other young boarders unforgettably experience friendship, solidarity and extraordinary courage. These are the children of luck.

When Ilan Halimi is kidnapped for ransom because Jewish and supposedly rich, his family and the police start a race against time to save him from the tortures of the "gang of barbarians".