Ben Zyskowicz has bad memories about the Red Army, which had interrupted Ben's father's civil service in the labor camp, whose entrance read "Arbeit macht frei". Ben was still a gleam in his father's eye then, if the father had been allowed to complete his service in that kind of work place, Ben would not be now suffering from migraines.

Ben Zyskowicz's father Abram Zyskowicz was his only relative that survived the Nazi's concentration camps alive. His father died when Ben Zyskowicz was six years old.