chpt 1

I think the point is to give the reader an exposition for the rest of the novel. The book opens as Jews are experiencing mass deportation from Prague in the early 1940s. Kovaly's family are forced from their home and sent to the Lodz Ghetto in October 1941 and shortly after were sent to the infamous death camp Auschwitz. Heda was immediately separated from her parents. They were sent to the gas chamber to be executed on arrival. She also marched from Auschwitz to a nearby camp, improbably even more brutal than Auschwitz. That camp was Bergen Belsen, a work camp where the prisoners are literally dead men and women working. Kovaly develops a survival instinct at a young age.