Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss antisemitism, the Holocaust, murder, and physical and sexual violence.

Lengyel states that she feels responsible for the deaths of her parents and sons. She then gives a description of her family and her life leading up to her imprisonment in the Nazi extermination camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1944, Lengyel lives with her husband, Miklos Lengyel, their two sons, Thomas and Arvad, and her parents in the city of Cluj in Transylvania, Hungary (located in present-day Romania). Lengyel is the first surgical assistant at the hospital that Miklos manages.

Lengyel and her family hear rumors of Nazi extermination camps, including the fact that prisoners are being gassed to death in specially designed vans, but cannot believe that the Germans are capable of such atrocities.

Miklos is interviewed by the Schutzstaffel (SS) twice; he and his family are Jewish. The second time, he is detained. Lengyel receives word that he is to be deported to Germany in an hour. Hurriedly, she packs and decides to accompany him. Her parents decide to accompany their daughter and son-in-law as well, and they bring Thomas and Arvad.

The family, who are assured that there will be no danger to them in accompanying Miklos, are shocked to see armed guards surrounding the train station and a train of cattle cars.