The memoir begins in 1941, in Sighet, a village in northern Romania under Hungarian control. 12-year old Eliezer, the only son of orthodox Jewish parents, is absorbed in his studies of the Talmud, a text of Jewish religious law and theology. Eliezer is deeply devout and wants to study the Cabbala, the mystical doctrines of Judaism. Despite his father’s objections, he finds a mentor in Moché the Beadle, the custodian of the local synagogue, who befriends the boy and instructs him in the Cabbala’s theological philosophy. Their evening studies end when Moché, along with all other foreign Jews, are expelled from Sighet.

Several months later, Eliezer sees Moché sitting in front of the synagogue. Moché tells Eliezer that the deported Jews were delivered into the hands of the Gestapo when their train reached Poland. The deportees were made to dig huge graves and then were summarily executed by the Gestapo. Wounded in the leg, Moché escaped and made his way back to Sighet to proclaim the atrocity and warn the Jewish community. The Jews of Sighet refuse to believe his story, dismissing him as a pathetic madman.

By the spring of 1944, Germany’s defeat seems imminent and the Jews in Hungary safe from the reach of the Nazis.