Beifeld did not have long to recuperate after his return to Budapest before the situation of Hungarian Jews took a dramatic turn for the worse. In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary, and within weeks, the ghettoization and deportation of the Jewish community commenced. While a precise chronology of what happened to Beifeld in 1944 is not available, it is known that he was deported to a concentration camp (probably in the fall of that year) and was ultimately liberated in Dachau.

Beifeld most likely assembled this album of original drawings and narrative text in the period between his return to Budapest in 1945 and his emigration to Australia either in 1948 or 1956. All but a few of the 400 images, which are carefully labeled as based on sketches drawn in situ, appear to have been created at the time of his labor service in the Soviet Union, and the text is based on notes he made at the time. Some of the drawings were made on the backs of military postcards that were mailed to friends and retrieved afterwards.