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Istanbul is the largest city in Turkey. It was historically called Constantinople. Oscar Sladek and his family pass through Istanbul and the Bosphorus connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on their voyage from Romania to Israel in 1949.

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A strait that cuts through the city of Istanbul, the Bosphorus connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and is considered a boundary between Europe and Asia. Oscar Sladek and his family sail down the Bosphorus on their way from Romania to Israel.

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Oscar Sladek and his family immigrate to Caracas from Israel in 1957. Other members of their extended family have settled in Venezuela, and they decide to join them there. For one year, Oscar enjoys great success as a musician, but the instability precipitated by a political coup in 1958 in Venezuelan government leads him to decide to move to the United States.

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A town in western Slovakia that was home to one of the largest Slovak Jewish communities before the war. In 1939, an old age home was converted into a refuge for Jews, which was run partially with support from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. In 1941, 230 elderly Jews were housed there. In 1943, the Slovak government established a camp in Nové Mesto nad Váhom called “Central Jewish Old People’s Camp in Nováky with transitional headquarters in Nové Mesto nad Váhom,” primarily for the purpose of housing elderly Jews who were deemed to be a drain on resources in the labor camps in Slovakia. After the German takeover of Slovakia in 1944, all residents of the camp were deported to Auschwitz via the transit camp at Sered. Oscar Sladek's grandparents went there voluntarily in the spring of 1944, expecting to receive senior care. Later that year, after the Germans took control of Slovakia in the wake of the uprising in August, they were deported to Auschwitz, where they perished.