A few important characters in Beach Music lived in Poland during World War II. Their stories play a significant role in the plot, even though the main events of the novel are set in the 1980s.

In 1939, Adolf Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland in the first European battle of World War II. Shortly thereafter, the Soviet Union also invaded Poland, thus dividing Poland in half between German and Soviet control. The Soviet Union and Germany had a peace agreement until 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, forcing its leader Stalin to join the Allies. Many Polish citizens died under both German and Soviet occupation.

It is estimated that Nazis and Nazi sympathizers murdered 90 percent of Polish Jews during the Holocaust; some of the most infamously horrific extermination camps—Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibor—are in Poland. Many non-Jewish Poles and prisoners of war were also murdered in these camps.

In Poland and other countries Nazi forces occupied during World War II, German authorities moved Jewish populations into enclosed districts or neighborhoods. These districts were called ghettos. Living conditions in the ghettos were harsh; residents were subject to debilitating poverty, poor sanitary conditions, starvation, and overcrowding. The Nazis appointed Jewish councils, called Judenrat, to administer the ghettos.