Summary

With the approach of the end of the war, the Germans begin slowly to attempt to hide their war crimes by burning the bones of the dead and kill off the remaining Jews so they cannot tell the story of their imprisonment and torture. The Jewish partisans offer the option of escape, though only a small portion of Kovno accepts the invitation. Those who remain in Kovno are corralled and jammed like cattle into train cars without food, water, or toilets. Everett philosophizes on the meaning of consciousness and the place of human beings within the wide universe. He goes on to give a short biography of his mother and father, detailing their courtship and his sense of them after their deaths. He goes on to give the story of his father’s role in World War I as an instance of the culminating moments of...