Introduction

The discovery of a valise of old letters written to his Armenian grandfather from an Auschwitz survivor starts Avi Arutiyan on an odyssey to uncover the mystery surrounding his grandfather’s unsolved death. From the killing fields of Anatolia to the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Avi’s quest opens a door into intersecting paths and dark secrets of three families, stretching back to 1915.

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Excerpt

In the glass cage, the little man listened, unmoved. He didn’t consider himself guilty. Not in the sense of indictment. You see a man alone, isolated and despised, and you want to pity that man. But not him. I couldn’t understand him human-to-human; he was somehow from a different place. He had all the physical characteristics of a human being and yet he was different. What did the extermination even mean to him? He didn’t remember where, when and how many he sent to their deaths. But he remembered nice dinners he had. From the Wannsee conference that planned a mass murder, he remembered having cognac by the fireplace. Here was Adolf Eichmann, in the dock, very ordinary, very harmless. But when he had the power… If they won the war, what would he have looked like? ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. What is the meaning of a “grey zone”? Which of the book characters, fictional and historical, would you place there?

2. Why “what must we do now?” is the first question in David’s diary? What choices was he referring to? What would you have done?

3. Why did Hannah Arendt refer to Adolf Eichmann as “banal”? Do you think he was?

4. Why did David refuse to take the needle in Grottaferrata? And why was he ready to accept it later?

5. Why was the Holocaust surrounded by silence until the Eichmann’s trial? What changed?

6. Why was David so upset by the results of Milgram’s experiments? Fifty years later – do you think the results would be different?

7. The book quotes Stanley Loomis: “There is no crime, no murder, no massacre that cannot be justified, provided it be committed in the name of an Ideal.” Loomis was writing about the French Revolution. Do you think the quote is applicable to the Armenian Genocide? Holocaust? Cambodian killing fields? Our time?

8. Why does the story of Rudolf Kasztner play such a prominent role in the book?

9. Why did the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, Dashnaks) resort to Operation Nemesis? Do you consider it justified?

10. The Frankfurt Auschwitz trial – success or failure?

11. Eleos rejects the “lesser evil” arguments and points a finger not only at the criminals but also at those that stood by. Do you agree with that? Do you think it’s fair to accuse Pius XII of an “astonishing moral failure”? to accuse Allen Dulles of having no sympathy for the Armenian victims? Do you think that the CIA and the MI6 were justified in hiring criminals with anti-Communist credentials?

12. What do you think should be the role of morality in politics? Why does a character say: “Short-term, realpolitik. Long-term, more bloodshed”? Do you agree with him?

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