When the reader first meets Maria in April 1945, Auschwitz has already been evacuated—before being liberated by the Red Army—but the war is not over, as it did not end until May. She returns to Auschwitz for a final chess game against Fritzsch, seeking to confirm what she discovered during her imprisonment—that Fritzsch murdered her family. After the Soviets liberated Auschwitz in January 1945, the Red Cross cared for prisoners and took them to hospitals and displaced-persons’ camps. Auschwitz did not officially become a museum until 1947, thanks to the efforts of, among others, Kazimierz Smoleń, a survivor. Following liberation, many former prisoners returned to the camp seeking family or friends. In other cases, “diggers,” as they were called, came seeking valuables, so a protective guard—made up of, among others, former inmates interested in preserving the camp as a historical site—was eventually set up to watch over the camp and its artifacts. When that guard was established, I’m not certain, but I was compelled by the piece that mentioned prisoners seeking family and friends—or, in Maria’s case, news of the circumstances surrounding their deaths, because she already knows their fate.

As for whether or not there was a time when the camp was completely abandoned, the simple answer is I’m not sure, so this is a fictionalization on my part. From a dramatic perspective, I wanted this pivotal scene to take place in Auschwitz for obvious reasons. This is where Maria and Fritzsch met, where she lost her family, and where she went through a horrific, life-altering experience that left her with crippling PTSD, which is severely triggered by returning, far more than she bargains for. Also, with Karl Fritzsch described by eyewitnesses and historians as a man fond of psychological torture, I was certain he would like nothing more than to bring Maria back to Auschwitz to further remind her of what she’d suffered at his hand. Finally, considering that there was a gap between Auschwitz’s liberation in January 1945 and the end of the war in May, it left me wondering if, during that time, maybe a few prisoners like Maria had recovered enough to return seeking family or friends, but maybe the protective guard had not been set up yet, and maybe former inmates had not thought about preserving the camp and its artifacts, thus giving Maria and Fritzsch the ability to return to this space without interference.