The holocaust was during World War II in Germany and the areas it was controlling. There were concentration camps full of were Jews, gypsies, communists, homosexuals, and any other person Hitler finds as a threat to his power. Some people didn't even know why they were there, the Nazis just picked them up one day and brought them with the Jews. There are no words to truly describe how inhumane and cruel these camps were on their prisoners. The holocaust was a very dark chapter of human history that we need to remember and never repeat. This memoir recounts Bela Kertesz's (now Bill Kertes) upbringing in a well-to-do Jewish Hungarian family residing in Rumania during the period between the world wars through 1944 when he was conscripted into forced labor. Following a harrowing escape and a long period of evading capture, he finally came home to find that his physician father and grandmother, among other members of his family and friends, were killed in concentration camps. After the war, he made his way to Budapest where, by sheer chance, he met his wife to be, Marika, and they were married shortly thereafter. They managed to slip into Austria where they lived in displaced person camps for the next four years, a time during which their son, Josef, was born.