Bubi returns unexpectedly from Budapest after witnessing German tanks and swastikas flying in the city.

Somorja's Jewish community is loaded onto peasant carts and transported to a crowded ghetto in Nagymagyar.

Markus receives a midnight summons requiring him to report at dawn for transport to a labor camp.

Hungarian guards order ghetto residents to surrender all books and documents, which are burned in a public bonfire.

Jews are herded into windowless, overcrowded cattle cars and transported toward Auschwitz for four days without food or water.

At Auschwitz, Dr. Mengele notices Bitton-Jackson's blond hair and reassigns her and her mother to the group selected for work.

Women at Auschwitz are forced to undress publicly, have their heads shaved, and are given shapeless gray prison dresses.

Ten days after arriving at Auschwitz, guards select Bitton-Jackson and her mother for transport to Plaszow labor camp.

At Plaszow, inmates are threatened with decimation after seeking shelter from rain, but an influx of civilian prisoners distracts the guards.

Plaszow is evacuated and women are transported back to Auschwitz on an airless, exhausting multi-day journey.

Bitton-Jackson sneaks back into the SS selection line to join her mother on transport to a German factory.

Bitton-Jackson finds the name "Leah Kohn" stitched inside the coat she has been given at the Augsburg factory.

Bitton-Jackson and her mother discover Bubi is in a nearby Dachau camp and find him skeletal and battered.

American soldiers liberate the surviving concentration camp inmates at a train station in Seeshaupt.

The Friedmann family learns Markus died at Bergen-Belsen two weeks before liberation and decides to immigrate to America.

These events trace the central arc of Bitton-Jackson's Holocaust experience, beginning with the German invasion of Hungary and the Friedmann family's rapid displacement from their hometown. The family moves from Somorja to a ghetto, then through Auschwitz and the brutal labor camp at Plaszow before being returned to Auschwitz a second time. A chance encounter with Dr. Mengele saves Bitton-Jackson and her mother's lives, setting in motion their desperate struggle to survive forced labor and repeated selections. After months at a German factory where conditions improve, the family reunites near Dachau as the war draws to a close. Liberation by American soldiers is followed by the shattering news of Markus's death and the family's ultimate decision to rebuild their lives in America.

The core journey from German occupation to liberation and immigration.

Jewish residents are ordered to surrender all valuables, including Bitton-Jackson's beloved birthday gift, a yellow Schwinn bicycle.

Markus buries the family's most valuable jewelry in the cellar and insists every family member know its location.

The town crier announces a yellow Star of David requirement; Bubi defiantly wears the star as if it were a medal.

Bitton-Jackson attends school wearing her yellow star, receives an honor scroll, and shares a brief farewell with classmate Jancsi Novák.

Jews are forbidden from all public spaces and from interacting with Christians; Bitton-Jackson's sense of isolation becomes overwhelming.

Laura and Bitton-Jackson visit the Jewish cemetery and say a tearful farewell to elderly neighbor Mr. Stern before deportation.

Christian neighbors Mrs. Kálmán and her daughter Márta bring a live goose, flour, and eggs to Bitton-Jackson at the ghetto gate.

After arriving at Auschwitz, Bitton-Jackson reunites with cousins Hindi and Suri and her Aunt Celia in the barracks.

A riot erupts on Bitton-Jackson's first night at Auschwitz, and a girl who screams for her mother is taken outside and shot.

At Plaszow, Bitton-Jackson witnesses SS guards interrogate and execute dozens of civilian prisoners in the camp square.

SS officers tattoo Auschwitz inmates with identification numbers; Bitton-Jackson is assigned the number A-17360.

A bunk collapse in the Auschwitz barracks partially paralyzes Laura, and she is sent to the infirmary.

Bitton-Jackson enlists three neighbors to help smuggle her partially paralyzed mother out of the infirmary before a deadly selection.

Factory director Herr Zerkübel assigns work tasks based on physical appearance, giving the fairest-skinned women the most complex duties.

Bitton-Jackson and her mother stand on a refugee ship's deck and see the Statue of Liberty rising from the morning haze.

These events focus on the smaller but deeply significant moments surrounding Bitton-Jackson's deportation and imprisonment. Before leaving Somorja, Jewish residents are stripped of their possessions, marked with the yellow star, and forbidden from public life, while acts of Christian kindness like Mrs. Kálmán's gift of food stand out sharply against the surrounding cruelty. In the camps, dehumanization intensifies through shaved heads, tattooed numbers, and violent separations, but Bitton-Jackson finds brief pockets of connection by reuniting with cousins and her Aunt Celia at Auschwitz. The brutality of camp life escalates through a first-night riot at Auschwitz and the mass execution of civilian prisoners at Plaszow. Bitton-Jackson's fierce loyalty to her mother drives her to enlist neighbors in a daring rescue from the infirmary before a deadly selection. The pool concludes decades later as Bitton-Jackson and her mother catch their first sight of the Statue of Liberty, marking the threshold of a new life.

Hidden acts of resistance, human kindness, and the steady loss of normal life.

Hitler's radio broadcasts leave Bitton-Jackson with a recurring nightmare of Germans playing football with Jewish heads.

Living in the ghetto surrounded by fellow Jews, Bitton-Jackson feels truly happy to be Jewish for the first time.

Bitton-Jackson sleeps through her father's pre-dawn departure and watches his cart disappear through the ghetto gate, unable to say goodbye.

Bitton-Jackson hides her poem notebook inside her blouse when guards demand all personal documents and books for burning.

On the eve of deportation, Aunt Serena smashes her china and crystal rather than allow the Nazis to take them.

Hungarian guard Pista Szivós befriends Bitton-Jackson on the journey to Dunaszerdahely and promises to keep her poem notebook safe.

At Auschwitz, Dr. Mengele separates Aunt Serena from Laura and Bitton-Jackson and sends her to the left; she is never seen again.

At Plaszow, Bitton-Jackson watches her mother calmly eat worm-infested soup and realizes old standards of life cannot govern survival.

After the exhausting return journey to Auschwitz, Laura loses her will to live and Bitton-Jackson takes on the role of parent.

An SS guard discovers Bitton-Jackson communicating with her mother through a hole in the infirmary wall and forces her to kneel on gravel for 24 hours.

An SS woman violently attacks Laura over a handkerchief; Bitton-Jackson shoves the guard and is beaten to the ground but survives.

Laura fashions Sabbath candles from a carved potato and smuggled oil; the camp commandant discovers her but chooses not to punish her.

Bubi tells Bitton-Jackson there are no family members left to find and reveals the truth about those sent to the gas chambers.

A German civilian mistakes the newly liberated Bitton-Jackson for an elderly woman; she says she is 14 and has lived a thousand years.

Returning home after the war, Bitton-Jackson decides she no longer wants her poems back, knowing reclaiming them would dishonor the collective dead.

These events chart the inner turning points that define Bitton-Jackson's transformation during the Holocaust, from a dreaming young poet to a hardened survivor carrying the weight of history. The seeds of her ordeal are planted early in nightmares stirred by Hitler's broadcasts and in a communal awakening of Jewish identity inside the ghetto, before physical and emotional losses accelerate with deportation. Acts of quiet defiance, such as saving her poem notebook, are balanced against crushing separations, most painfully losing Aunt Serena to Mengele's selection at Auschwitz. In the labor camps, Bitton-Jackson's survival instincts sharpen as her mother's resilience first models and then collapses, forcing Bitton-Jackson to become the family's emotional anchor. Small acts of faith sustain the women until liberation, when Bubi's revelation about the gas chambers and a German civilian's mistaken perception of her age crystallize the full weight of what has been endured. After returning home, her choice to leave her poems behind signals a final, irreversible reckoning with loss and survivor's responsibility.

Key decisions, discoveries, and emotional turning points across the Holocaust experience.