Samuel arrived at the camp at 19 years old and was forced to assist in the mass murder of men, women, and children.

Samuel was one of 150 Jewish prisoners who planned an escape from the camp. They stole weapons and set the camp on fire as they fled into the woods at night. Samuel was shot in the leg but kept running. After escaping, he was able to remain inconspicuous in the countryside due to his non-Jewish features. He eventually made his way to Warsaw, where he joined the Polish underground and fought against the Nazis in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

Kalman remembered being herded into cattle cars and taken to Treblinka in October 1942, where he had an encounter that saved him from dying with the others. When the train stopped, he saw someone familiar who told him, 'Tell them you're a bricklayer.' Then an SS guard asked where the bricklayer was, and Kalman pointed to himself. He was taken as a slave laborer at Treblinka. He recalled these moments as hellish and horrifying. He was one of the Jewish prisoners forced to dig up mass graves and burn the bodies. On August 2, 1943, he escaped with other Jewish prisoners, fleeing into the woods at night. After running for 15 minutes, he looked back and saw everything burning, feeling an overwhelming sense of disbelief that he had made it out. He avoided capture and hid in the Polish countryside for nearly a year after escaping.

This quote from Samuel expresses his overwhelming sense of despair and abandonment during the Holocaust. He explains that the constant presence of death made it feel as though there was no sign of mercy, and the only contrast to human cruelty was the calm nature of the "beautiful Polish sky."

Kalman says this to express the unimaginable horror he endured during the Holocaust. He describes the Nazis as inhuman to emphasize the disbelief that such cruelty could be inflicted on people.