Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Poland, 1942-1945

The majority of the novel takes place within the walls of Auschwitz, a network of concentration and extermination camps in Poland. Thousands of male and female prisoners, mostly Jewish, were brought to the camp for labor, experimentation, and extermination within the gas chambers. Over the course of the novel, the concentration camp is developed architecturally, and new blocks and crematoriums are added. This setting is depicted as dark, chilling, and unbelievably violent.

Auschwitz Two-Birkenau

Birkenau is the camp within the Auschwitz network that the characters in the novel are sent to. It acts as both a concentration and extermination camp, and thousands of Jewish men and woman are tortured and killed here. The characters must fight to survive each day as they labor surrounded by electrified fences, under the watch of SS officers, and undergo inspection and experimentation by Doctor Mengele. The prisoners live...