The Storyteller

Josef begins narrating his own story. He will not answer to the name of Reiner Hartmann anymore. He says that “inside of each of us is a monster; inside of each of us is a saint” (110) and it only matters which one a person nurtures more. Josef (Reiner) and his younger brother Franz grew up during the Weimar Republic in Germany, and their early childhoods were dominated by the hyperinflation of the Deutsche Mark, which left many formerly middle-class families struggling to get by. Hitler and the National Socialist party peddled hope to the downtrodden Germans by uniting them against a common enemy: the Jewish people. As a boy, Franz excelled in school while Josef struggled. In 1934, Josef and a reluctant Franz joined the Hitler youth. Josef was praised for his enthusiasm and athletic ability. Even though he knew what he was doing was wrong, he delighted in the feeling of finally being admired.

Ania narrates the next section of her story, describing her first week working with Aleks. She learns about his life—he too is an orphan and he moves towns often because Casimir makes people uneasy. They discuss the recent attacks. Some have speculated that the killings are the work of a monster, but Ania says that “the only monsters [she has] ever known were men” (122).

The story switches back to Sage’s perspective. After hearing Josef’s detailed accounts of life in the Hitler youth, she believes his confession. She calls Leo to relay the new information and then visits Minka again. As they bake loaves of babka together, Sage again implores Minka to talk about her youth. In response, Minka hands Sage a notebook. She tells Sage that the story it contains is the one which “kept her alive” (129).

The notebook contains the Ania story which has been threaded throughout the novel in snippets—Ania is a character invented by a young Minka. As she reads, Sage realizes that Josef and Minka’s lives will eventually intersect at Auschwitz, and it makes her hate him even as she picks him up for their grief group. During the meeting, Sage asks whether horrible people should ever be mourned. She brings up the example of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Josef is furious. Pulling her aside, he orders her to never speak like that in public again because his confession was meant only for her. Sage responds that he is seeking forgiveness without the punishment he deserves.

Josef’s outburst reminds Sage that at one point, he ordered people around in a concentration camp. She renews her resolve to turn him in to the authorities. In the car on the way home, Josef apologizes and says that the reason he has not died yet is that he is bound to relive his mistakes every day.

In Minka’s story, Ania is attacked by an unknown creature while walking through the woods. The next thing she remembers is being carried home by Damian. Aleks is waiting inside the cottage and he stitches up her wounds.

Josef continues narrating his origin story directly to the reader. When he turns 17, he is promoted to the HJ-Streifendienst, a special unit tasked with upholding discipline within the Hitler Youth. He recalls that his indoctrination into Nazi ideology was like a religious conversion. On a visit to Castle Wewelsburg, he is singled out by Heinrich Himmler, the head officer of the SS, who encourages him to reach his full potential. Josef enlists in the SS, joining the Totenkopfverbände, or Death’s Head Unit. On the eve of his departure, a German official is assassinated and Hitler gives all Germans free reign to retaliate. Josef goes to Paderborn, where Franz’s Jewish friend Artur lives, and participates in Kristallnacht.

Josef recalls the first person he ever killed, a young boy he shot in 1939 while traveling through Poland with the Death’s Head Unit. Soon after that day, Josef along with several other members of the Death’s Head Unit begin rounding up and executing people on an eight-hundred-strong “death list.” After a year in the Death’s Head Unit, Josef is desensitized to murder and used to getting whatever he wants. Before shipping out to SS officer training school, he briefly visits home. He finds Franz still living at home and studying to be a professor, having burned his own summons to the SS. One day, Josef catches Franz sneaking school books to Artur. He orders his brother to cease contact with Artur and threatens to report Artur’s whole family to the SS if Franz doesn’t comply. He then intimidates Artur’s family into leaving town and he and Franz never speak of them again.

Josef graduates SS training in 1940 as a second lieutenant in the Nazi party’s combat branch, the Waffen-SS. He leads a company through the Ukraine, performing Reinigungsaktionen (cleansing actions), killing countless Jews and disposing of their bodies in mass graves. He dissociates from his actions by thinking of his victims as subhuman and gets drunk after every day of killing. One day he is caught sleeping with Annika Belzer, the girlfriend of his head officer Voelkel, and is promptly kicked out of this unit.

In Minka’s story, Aleks gives Ania a twisted roll of cinnamon bread, just like her father used to make. The dough is tinged a fleshy pink.

The narration switches back to Sage, who asks Josef how he could kill so many innocent people. Josef replies that a person can make themselves believe and do anything when they have to. Despite her horror at his actions, Sage still does not want to kill Josef. Josef tells her that after catching him with Annika, Voelkel had him transferred to a penal company on the Eastern Front, where he was shot while protecting his commanding officer. He recovered but was left with a permanent right-hand tremor and reassigned to guard the women’s camp at Auschwitz. Upon arrival he found his brother Franz already working there.

The next segment of Minka’s story is told from the perspective of Ania's unnamed attacker in the woods. After carrying out the attack, the predator wipes the blood from its mouth and weeps with guilt.

Shaken by Josef’s tale, Sage drives to Adam’s house but turns around after seeing him with Shannon, his wife. Sage goes home and bakes brioche bread to distract herself from the question of whether Josef met her grandmother at Auschwitz. In the midst of baking the doorbell rings. It’s Leo Stein; He wants to talk about the Josef Weber case. Sage lets him in and is surprised when he is unfazed by her scar. For the next few hours, she passes on everything Josef told her. Leo tells her that if they can prove Josef was a guard at Auschwitz, that will be enough for a murder conviction. They need either insider information from him or an eyewitness who can confirm he worked at the camps. Sage thinks of her grandmother.

In the Ania story, Damian shows up to the cottage and warns Ania that Aleks is an upiór. He dumps a sack of barley grain out on the counter because an upiór must count every pile of grain it sees. That night, Ania watches Aleks at work in the kitchen and notices that he has organized all of the grains with “military” precision. When Aleks catches her spying on him, she asks him outright if he is an upiór, and he asks her if it matters. They kiss before Damian and his soldiers kick down the door.

Leo takes over narration, explaining that he went to visit Sage to see whether she was under a delusion, like many of the callers to his office are. Not only is she clearly sane, but he finds her extremely attractive despite her scar. In the car on the way to Minka’s house, they debate the topic of forgiveness. Leo believes the only people who could absolve Josef Weber of his crimes are his victims, who cannot forgive him because are dead. He says that “some stains never wash out” (188) and some people are unforgivable. Sage disagrees, believing that one should at least try to see Germans as individuals and forgive those who ask for it. Leo tells her about teshuvah, a course of action that Jews can use to atone for their sins. In order to complete teshuvah, one must be truly sorry, and Leo doesn’t believe that this is the case for Josef. Minka is unwilling to talk to Leo until he describes visiting Dachau with his father. His emotional story finally gets her to open up.