Three questions to Dominique Missika, author of a shocking portrait of Gabrielle Perrier-Tardy, 21, who spent a year watching over this class of 44 Jewish children arrested in April 1944 in Izieu. Coming from elsewhere, they were French first. When they got into the German truck, they sang: "you will not have Alsace and Lorraine" to give courage and reassure the little ones. It was the first day of the Easter holidays, the young woman was not there. They will not come back from Auchwitz. She will never recover.

Why did you become interested in this teacher who herself feared advertising?

Precisely because she is a woman of the shadow and that she was a little forgotten. I wanted to show how unique and unique his destiny is. She does not know that her students are Jewish. His only concern then is to teach them to read and write correctly. Overnight, his life goes into horror. She meets the MAL. And nothing prepared him there. She will be forty-three years to be able to say how much she was attached to these children.

What is the trigger that will make her testify in 1987 at the Barbie trial?

At this moment, she realizes that the whole world discovers this story of which she was one of the first actresses. And she says to herself that on behalf of the children, she must testify. She took the step, writing a letter asking to be present in court and tell who her students were. At the same time, it relieves her to see that she is not the only one who has suffered. She reconnects with her past and sharing it is for her a deliverance.

How did you work to recreate with such emotion the drama of these 44 children who were killed just because they were Jewish?

I went there and put myself in Gabrielle's shoes, interviewed the neighbors who knew her, and followed the bicycle route to get to school. Moreover, we realize that the Germans could not do it alone, that there was denunciation. What is miraculous is that today nothing has changed. The classroom is the same with her desks, homework and drawings she gave. She regretted not having kept more. You have to go to Izieu where the memorial is open all year. It does not come out unscathed but it is important not to forget this dramatic roundup of children that took place in April 1944, two months before the landing.