In the Prologue, Lobel states, “I was born in Krakow, Poland. In a wrong place at a wrong time” (xi). The wrong place and time relate to World Word II and the Holocaust, during which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi political party in Germany invaded many countries in Europe and committed genocide, imprisoning and killing millions of Jewish people, political dissidents, and other minority populations such as Romani people, people with disabilities, and gay people.

During World War I, Adolf Hitler served as a runner in the German army, so he relayed messages. After Germany lost the war, he worked for the army and investigated subversive political parties like the one that would eventually become known as the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party. Hitler quit the army and became the party leader. The Nazis weren’t socialists, and they lacked a coherent ideology. In The Coming of the Third Reich, the historian Richard J. Evans says Hitler achieved success “by telling his audiences what they wanted to hear” (Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin, 2003, p. 171). Evans argues Hitler “reduced Germany’s complex social, political, and economic problems to a simple common denominator: The evil machinations of the Jews” (Evans 172).