by Monica Hesse
Germany invaded Sosnowiec in 1939, and life changed immediately for the Jewish people who lived there. They were banned from work and from attending schools and made to live in a ghetto. They were used for forced labor for the Nazi regime. First, forced labor in the streets—snow shoveling, road cleaning—and then, forced labor in factories because Sosnowiec, being an industrial city, had many factories that the Germans took over for their own production.
Finally, Jews were used as forced labor in concentration camps. In August of 1942, thousands of Jewish families were ordered to report to the soccer stadium, where they were told they’d receive new identification but they were instead sorted into lines and then deported to camps.
I read somewhere that one of the reasons writing fiction about the Holocaust is so complicated is because the atrocities were so vast and so horrific that writing about true things can end up sounding like fiction. Our minds simply don’t want to process that these things happened; we assume the author must be exaggerating for effect. I’ll say only that the details I included about the camps were true. Including the “singing forest” of Buchenwald, where tortured prisoners were left to scream and die. Including the chaotic arrival scenes, where prisoners described having their infant children ripped from their arms and slaughtered by hand. In the middle of the war, a small group of young women with sewing skills were taken from Birkenau, forced into slave labor at a textile factory called Neustadt, and then later forced to march, in the winter, to the concentration camp Gross-Rosen to evade the approaching Allies. I patterned Zofia’s imprisonment off that journey.
Before the war, the Jewish population of Sosnowiec was twenty-nine thousand people. After the war, only seven hundred returned.
And what they returned to was, in many cases, a persecution that was less systematic than it had been under Nazi occupation, but no less hateful. Anti-Semitism was still rampant; the war didn’t end people’s prejudice.
Several incidents from Zofia’s return to Sosnowiec were inspired from Polish survivor accounts: Sala Garncarz wrote of trying to board a train to her family’s home of Sosnowiec, only to have the conductor tell her that Jews weren’t welcome on his train or in his country. When she finally reached her family’s apartment, it had been taken over by strangers who showed no sympathy. Michael Bornstein recounted the story of being woken from bed as a young child by the sound of drunken men banging on the door because they’d heard a Jewish family had returned. The family was saved only because Bornstein’s cousin had spent the war hidden in a Catholic convent: She could recite enough prayers to convince the men that the family was Christian.
Postwar Europe was still a terrifying place to be Jewish. In 1946—a year after the war ended—in the town of Kielce, Poland, forty-two Jews were murdered by an angry mob of police and civilians. Massacres like these weren’t isolated, and they all had the same intent: to make it clear that Jews were not welcome to return. And so, after enduring years in death camps and concentration camps, survivors now found that their nightmares still hadn’t ended. Poland no longer felt safe, and many set about starting over in new homelands. In the months and years after the war, a web of displaced-persons camps sprung up around Germany. Some of the people who went to them had no other choice: Their own homes had been demolished or had new families living in them. Their own families were gone. Their homelands had become foreign places to live. In search of safety, they came to these camps, located in convents, office complexes, and sometimes in the very concentration camps they had just been liberated from.
Foehrenwald was a real place, on the repurposed grounds of the I.G. Farben pharmaceutical factory, famous for making Zyklon B. It was one of the most prominent camps, holding thousands of people at the peak of its existence, and incorporating trade and language schools. The Kloster Indersdorf was also a real camp, for children, run out of a convent and populated by children who needed to be retaught to eat and sleep peacefully. An estimated 1.5 million children died in the Holocaust.
I used Foehrenwald and the Kloster Indersdorf as rough templates for They Went Left, but changed some details and also incorporated details from other camps. There were several, for example, that functioned mostly as training farms for young Jews who planned to emigrate to Israel and were learning to work the land. One of the most famous was Kibbutz Buchenwald: A group of prisoners took the patch of land that was meant to be their destruction and instead turned it into their salvation. Many of them did ultimately take ships, some sanctioned and some secret—Aliyah Bet—beginning in the fall of 1945.
The first book I read about displaced-persons camps was The Rage to Live: The International D.P. Children’s Center Kloster Indersdorf by Anna Andlauer, a moving testimony of postwar life for children. For other accounts of postwar life, I recommend The Hidden Children: The Secret Survivors of the Holocaust by Jane Marks; We Are Here: New Approaches to Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany by Avinoam Patt; Life Between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany by Zeev Mankowitz; Kibbutz Buchenwald: Survivors and Pioneers by Judith Tydor Baumel; and the documentary The Long Way Home, directed by Mark Jonathan Harris.
I am again indebted to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC, and especially to its priceless collection of oral histories. To name a very small few: Bella Tovey, Sonia Chomicki, and Zelda Piekarska Brodecki all gave richly textured descriptions of what it was like to grow up in Sosnowiec during the occupation. Hana Mueller Bruml described the liberation of Gross-Rosen. Regina Spiegel spoke of learning to become a seamstress at Foehrenwald. Writings by Henry Cohen, who served as Foehrenwald’s director in 1946, described life in the camp: the fact that there was a library, for example, and a Jewish police force, and that residents were allotted three ounces of canned meat a day. He also wrote of black markets, camp tensions, and other facets of the time and place that I didn’t have a chance to illuminate.
And, a story I have thought of again and again while writing this book: Alice Cahana spoke of her sister Edith. She spoke of how the two of them, as teenagers, survived selection together at Auschwitz-Birkenau when the rest of their family was sent to the gas chambers. She spoke of how she and Edith managed to stay together through the entire war, when they were transferred to Gross-Rosen and finally Bergen-Belsen. They celebrated liberation together. And then, Edith, weak and sick, was taken away in an ambulance to recover. Alice watched the ambulance drive away with her sister, and she never saw her again. She never saw her again, but never stopped looking.
The USHMM has an online database that allows researchers to look up Holocaust victims by various criteria: by name, by age, by the camp they were placed in, or by the city they were born in. All my characters’ first names came from these records, from the lists of real people who were born in Sosnowiec, or who were imprisoned in Dachau and Auschwitz, or who were, like Zofia, eighteen years old in 1945, trying to start life anew with ravaged hearts on a ravaged continent, in a ravaged period of time in which the entire world seemed to have gone crazy.
Besides those accounts, I’ve read probably a hundred Holocaust memoirs in my lifetime, and I know I carried pieces of each of them into this. I know, for example, that the idea for a prized bottle of Coca-Cola came from Thomas Buergenthal recounting his first sip of the strange foreign drink after surviving Auschwitz as a young boy. I know that Gerda Weissman described the surrealness of a neighbor asking to borrow ribbon so she could sew a swastika onto a flag. I offer a blanket debt of gratitude to any survivors who found ways to tell their stories, and for the journalists and historians who facilitated that storytelling.
I filled this book with sadness because there was plenty of sadness. I ended this book with hope because, improbably, there was plenty of that, too, in the camps for displaced persons: romances, babies, new starts, new life. Some of my favorite photos to look at while researching They Went Left were the photos of weddings that happened in displaced-persons camps. I looked at image after imag
e of optimistic brides and grooms, dressed in whatever clothes they could make or borrow, surrounded by the new friends they had made into a family, getting ready to face the future together.
I don’t know which is more unfathomable to me: the base evil and cruelty of the Holocaust, or the undying hope that survivors managed to take out of it. I don’t know which is more unfathomable, but I do know which we should aspire to.
Acknowledgments
This book, like many of my creative projects, came into existence because of my agent, Ginger Clark. Over the course of a single afternoon, I sketched out via email the vaguest concept of a plot. She kept writing back— And then what? What about this?—until the characters became people and the vague outline became a story I was desperate to tell.
Lisa Yoskowitz has been my editor through three books now, and by this point I should cite her as a coauthor. Her incisive notes make every paragraph better; I feel lucky every day to work with her and with the rest of the team at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Magdalena Cabajewska patiently answered my many questions about the intricacies of the Polish language.
My seamstress-equestrian mother, Dawn Dannenbring-Carlson, fact-checked my descriptions of sewing and horses.
My dear friend Rachel Dry gave thoughtful feedback on an early draft.
My husband, Robert Cox, gave me love, laughter, and everything else.
Discover Your Next Great Read
Get sneak peeks, book recommendations, and news about your favorite authors.
Tap here to learn more.
Bring the YA (book) party to your inbox with NOVL:
theNOVL.com/enewsletter
Booked all week.
theNOVL.com
Instagram.com/TheNovl
Twitter.com/TheNovl
Facebook.com/TheNovl
CASSIDY DUHON
Monica Hesse is the bestselling author of Girl in the Blue Coat, American Fire, and The War Outside, as well as a columnist at the Washington Post. She lives outside Washington, DC, with her husband and their dog. Monica invites you to visit her online at monicahesse.com and on Twitter @MonicaHesse.
PRAISE FOR Monica Hesse
Girl in the Blue Coat
The Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Mystery Novel 2017
An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2016
A Booklist Best Young Adult Book of 2016
A 2017 Indies Choice Awards Finalist for Best Young Adult Book
A YALSA 2017 Best Book for Young Adults
A New York Public Library Best Book for Teens of 2016
A Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People Selection 2017
A 2017 Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Book of the Year
A 2018–2019 California Young Reader Medal nominee
2018 All Iowa Young Adults Read
“Girl in the Blue Coat is a powerful, compelling coming-of-age story set against the dark and dangerous backdrop of World War II. It’s an important and page-turning look at the choices all of us—including young adults—have to make in wartime. A beautiful combination of heartbreak, loss, young love, and hope.”
—Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale
“A tapestry of guilt and acceptance, growing responsibility, and reluctant heroism, Hanneke’s coming-of-age under heartbreaking circumstances is a jarring reminder of how war consumes and transforms the passions of ordinary life. Every devastating moment of this beautiful novel is both poignant and powerful, and every word feels true.”
—Elizabeth Wein, New York Times bestselling author of Black Dove, White Raven; Rose Under Fire; and the Printz Honor–winning Code Name Verity
★ “Riveting… a gripping historical mystery.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
★ “[An] affecting novel… that skillfully combines reality with fiction. Her characters come alive, and… Hesse’s pacing infuses her story with thriller suspense, enriching the narrative with dramatic surprises both small and large.”
—Booklist (starred review)
★ “This fast-paced story is alternately touching, heart-pounding and wrenching—but always gripping.… a heartrending, moving story.”
—VOYA (starred review)
“Taut and intelligent… the historical setting is rendered the way only an expert can do it.”
—The Washington Post
The War Outside
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018
A 2018 BCCB Bulletin Blue Ribbon Title
A 2019 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Pick
A 2019 Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People
A 2019 Notable Book for a Global Society
“Once again, Monica Hesse delivers an incredibly compelling and beautifully researched novel. The War Outside vividly brings readers into an underrepresented and dark period of American history. A must-read for fans of historical fiction.”
—Ruta Sepetys, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Monica Hesse… takes a setting we think we understand and shifts it in an important way.… A tightly plotted exploration of the consequences of fear.”
—The New York Times Book Review
★ “Superb.… A satisfying and bittersweet novel, perfect for those who enjoyed Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief.”
—SLJ (starred review)
★ “An extraordinary novel of injustice and xenophobia based on real history.”
—Booklist (starred review)
★ “A moving book that successfully describes an unjust aspect of U.S. history.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
★ “Keeps readers guessing through the final pages.”
—The Bulletin (starred review)
★ “Teens and adults interested in WWII books, especially situations that haven’t been written about extensively, will want to experience this story.”
—School Library Connection (starred review)
“Monica Hesse’s The War Outside pierces the heart with its exceptional story of family, friends, and country.… Riveting and meticulously researched, this story reverberates with authentic voices as it explores adolescent growth under dreadful circumstances.”
—BookPage
“Timely.… [Hesse] again uses a well-researched historical backdrop to tell a powerful coming-of-age story.”
—The Washington Post
“Hesse’s books are like time machines—vehicles that help us explore our past.”
—Mashable
