Eva Mozes Kor’s story begins in Northern Transylvania, a Romanian region that became a focal point of geopolitical conflict during World War II. The major Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan), who fought against the Allied Powers (the UK, USA, Russia, and China) in the war, were accompanied by various smaller powers, including Hungary and Romania. Like Germany, Hungary had suffered from national instability following World War I and shared a desire to overturn the peace settlements. They were the first country to join the three Axis Powers, signing the Tripartite Pact in 1940, which marked their alliance.

In 1939, Romania's position was complicated by divided loyalties between Nazi Germany and pro-British interests, tensions that deepened following the Nazi invasion of Poland. The country had also seen a growing turn toward fascism, most visibly in the rising influence of the Iron Guard, a far-right, antisemitic paramilitary group that features in Kor's memoir. In June 1940, the Soviet Union occupied parts of northern Romania, weakening and destabilising the Romanian government. Hungary seized on this vulnerability to press its own territorial claims, prompting Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to intervene as arbitrators—an arrangement formalised as the Second Vienna Award in August 1940. Through this settlement, Northern Transylvania was transferred to Hungary, dramatically altering life for the region's Jews, including Kor's family.

Following Germany's direct occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the situation deteriorated rapidly. Under German direction, a new collaborationist government implemented a brutal and efficient programme for the Final Solution. In less than two months—from May 15 to July 9, 1944—Hungarian authorities deported nearly 440,000 Jews, almost all to Auschwitz, making this one of the most rapid and devastating chapters of the Holocaust. Romania's trajectory shifted sharply in August 1944, when a coup led by King Michael I overthrew the existing leadership and realigned the country against the Axis Powers, backed by most of the army, opposition politicians, and communist-led civilians.