The word "Holocaust," from the Greek words "holos" (whole) and "kaustos" (burned), was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the ideological and systematic state-sponsored persecution and mass murder of millions of European Jews (as well as millions of others, including Romani people, the intellectually disabled, dissidents, and homosexuals) by the German Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945.
In 1943 Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, teenage Hanneke—a 'finder' of black market goods—is tasked with finding a Jewish girl a customer had been hiding, who has seemingly vanished into thin air, and is pulled into a web of resistance activities and secrets as she attempts to solve the mystery and save the missing girl.
World War II has just ended and concentration camps have been liberated. 18-year-old Zofia is free but traumatized and malnourished, without a home, money, possessions or family. She is determined to find her missing brother and make a new life for herself. This is a beautifully written historical novel that portrays a young woman who comes to terms with the past, her scars and slowly picks up the pieces of her shattered life.
