Eva Bentley, nee Wahrmann, was born in Budapest to a Jewish family with a 500-year history in Hungary. She mentions some of their significant contributions to religious and political life. Details of antisemitic incidents with a teacher and her fellow students at public school are given, as well as a description of the stressful experience of attending an elite, experimental Jewish Gymnasium. She describes the hardships of living under the Horthy regime, the Szalasi and Arrow Cross persecutions and the abuses of the Russian occupation.

After the German occupation in 1944, Eva and her family had to move into a “yellow star” house; her stepfather was deported to a labor camp. She gives a graphic account of an SS massacre, when she was shot and her mother bayoneted. They survived in a primitive Jewish hospital facility. She describes a number of instances of aid by non-Jews, including clergy and Hungarian police, who saved her and her family. A Christian uncle saved her aunt and 29 other Jews in hiding. After liberation by the Russians, Eva was married and she immigrated with her husband to the U.S. in 1956.