Summary

In Chapter 4, “A Cartwheel”, Dr. Eger begins with some historical information, saying that in the summer of 1944, the Hungarian Prime Minister stopped obeying Nazi demands, but by that point hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews had already been executed. She then moves the narrative back into her present-tense story of Auschwitz, describing how she and Magda are put in separate lines for transport. One of the women in the same lineup says that it is a line of death, and the author (“Dicuka”) refuses to accept this. “…if this moment, this very one, is my last on Earth, do I have to waste it in resignation and defeat? Must I spend it as if I’m already dead?” (48). Suddenly, and in desperation to stay with her sister, “Dicuka” distracts the guards by doing...