Review: They Went Left
They Went Left by Monica Hesse Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Meira Drazin Eighteen years old in 1945 when the Gross-Rosen concentration camp is liberated, Zofia Lederman’s body and mind are left shattered. But she cannot forget or give up on her promise to find her little brother Abek—the only one from her family beside her not to be sent to the left when they arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau three years before—no matter what. So begins Monica Hesse’s THEY WENT LEFT, with Zofia first setting off for her former home in Sosnowiec, Poland and then across Poland and Germany to a displaced persons camp, where everyone is trying to piece together a future from a broken past. Although I personally write contemporary Jewish literature for children, I am very thankful that Holocaust literature is still being written by authors, bought by publishers, and read by new generations of young people. And I welcome in particular books such as THEY WENT LEFT that seek to shine a light on aspec