The family went to Kanitz's paternal grandfather's home. His grandparents, Shamu and Gisella (Weiss) Kanitz, had been taken to Auschwitz and their home had been ransacked, so there was nothing inside, and no food available anywhere. "There were dead horses lying in the streets, and people were carving them up where they lay and taking the meat home. And that's what we lived on ... we ate horse, we ate donkey, we ate, I don't know what else we ate." The Kanitzs discovered that 100 members of the extended family had been killed.