What is the larger context for the story, and how does the story clue us in to that larger context?

The novel is set during World War II, when the German-run Vichy government in France rounded up Jews and deported them to death camps. The novel tells us, in the parents' speaking Polish, and in the father's trepidation about being seen, that the family is Jewish and they fear for their lives. The betrayal by French police--whom the family thought would not arrest them, indicates the larger betrayal of the French by the Vichy French collaborators.