Follow Holocaust survivor Israel Arbeiter as he returns to Poland for the final time to look for items buried in 1939 in the basement of his old home as the German army advanced. He also visits the Treblinka death camp where his parents and younger brother were murdered, and to other camps, most notably Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 'Izzy' used the motivation of his father's final words to him to stay alive.

Her beauty saved her life and condemned her. Cilka is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, in 1942. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, notices her long beautiful hair, and forces her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly given, equals survival. After liberation, Cilka is charged as a collaborator for sleeping with the enemy and sent to Siberia....

"In March 1942, at the age of 25, kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger was deported from her hometown in Slovakia along with 998 other young women. They were some of the first Jews to be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Very few would survive the next three years until liberation. The SS soon discovered that by putting prisoners in day-to-day charge of the accommodation blocks and even the camps at large-so called Blockalteste and Lageralteste...