Jane Yolen chooses as her most poignant setting, the death camp of Chelmno, situated just outside of Lodz, Poland. Under the German name of Kumholf, at the time of the holocaust, the camp was an enigma - no one other than those who ran it & those who were brutally murdered there knew of its existence. Those that were brought there were under the impression that it was a work camp & upon their arrival were told that they were going indoors to have showers. There the Jews followed corridors with signs marked "To the Shower" & "To the Doctor" only to end up shunted into vans, enclosed & cramped, where they were brutally gassed to death. It is said that the Nazis at Chelmno had an average of 1000 murders a day, killing in total up to 152,000 people from 1941 to 1944. The dead were then transported in the vans to a nearby forest and were buried in mass graves dug by forced Jewish labourers. It is here in this forest that Yolen has her Avenger rescue Ksyisnka from a mass grave.