It is a painful and life-changing experience to read Michael Lavigne’s account of the holocaust seen through the eyes of a dutiful Nazi bookkeeper at a concentration camp who escapes the Russians by posing as a Jewish prisoner. Contemptuous of Jews by upbringing and indoctrination, he slowly morphs into a religious Jew himself, who spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the atrocities he took part in.
Whether by design or not, this man’s son is also a Michael. He slowly learns of his father’s dual identity and comes to accept the love that is finally made clear to him.
For the reader as for Michael, the atrocities of the camps and the later sufferings of the Israelis in their first war with the Arabs are terrible reminders of the extremes of human cruelty.
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