

They Went Left
By:
Germany, 1945.
The soldiers who liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp said the war was over, but nothing feels over to eighteen-year-old Zofia Lederman. Her body has barely begun to heal; her mind feels broken. And her life is completely shattered: Three years ago, she and her younger brother, Abek, were the only members of their family to be sent to the right, away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone else—her parents, her grandmother, radiant Aunt Maja—they went left.
Zofia's last words to her brother were a promise: Abek to Zofia, A to Z. When I find you again, we will fill our alphabet. Now her journey to fulfill that vow takes her through Poland and Germany, and into a displaced persons camp where everyone she meets is trying to piece together a future from a painful past: Miriam, desperately searching for the twin she was separated from after they survived medical experimentation. Breine, a former heiress, who now longs only for a simple wedding with her new fiancé. And Josef, who guards his past behind a wall of secrets, and is beautiful and strange and magnetic all at once
But the deeper Zofia digs, the more impossible her search seems. How can she find one boy in a sea of the missing? In the rubble of a broken continent, Zofia must delve into a mystery whose answers could break her—or help her rebuild her world.
"A Note on History and Research."
ISBN: 9780316490573
JLG Release: Aug 2020
Awards & Honors
2021 Sydney Taylor Young Adult Literature Honor Book
Praise & Reviews
Starred or favorable reviews have been received from these periodicals:
School Library Journal*
School Library Journal
Book Details
ISBN
9780316490573
First Release
August 2020
Genre
Fic
Dewey Classification
F
Trim Size
5 3/4" x 8 1/2"
Page Count
384
Accelerated Reader
Level 5.1; Points: 13;
Scholastic Reading Counts
N/ALexile
N/AFormat
Print Book
Edition
Hardcover edition
Publisher
Little, Brown BFYR
Potentially Sensitive Areas
Violence: Sexual Assault/Rape , Sexual Content: Strong Sexual Content/Themes , Violence: Suicide , Violence: Strong Violence , Discrimination: Religious , Violence: Death , Violence: Genocide
Topics
Holocaust survivors, Brothers and sisters, Polish Jews, Jewish Holocaust (1939–1945), History of Europe, 1945, German occupation of Poland (1940–1945), World War II (1939–1945),