World War II

World War II is recalled as part of Shmuel Ash’s family history, where covert service against Nazi agents becomes entangled with suspicion, betrayal, and the failure to clear a dead man’s name. The story of his grandfather Antek does not present wartime resistance as a simple division between loyalists and traitors: Antek aided both the British and Jewish resistance, yet the latter killed him as a suspected double agent.

Family History and Wartime Work

Shmuel remembers his paternal grandfather, Antek, as an immigrant from Latvia who arrived in 1932 and was recruited by the British secret police because of his skill at forging documents. During World War II, Antek supplied the British with dozens of counterfeit Nazi documents, which they used to hunt agents and spies behind enemy lines. The forged papers were practical instruments of counterintelligence, but they were also part of a more complicated allegiance: Antek had joined the British service in order to pass confidential information to Jewish resistance groups and forged documents for them as well.

Suspicion and Death

In 1946, members of the resistance Antek had helped assassinated him, suspecting that he was a double agent collaborating with the British. His death came not from an enemy operation but from the mistrust generated by his secret work across overlapping causes. The account offers the suspicion that led to his killing, not proof that he had betrayed either side; its force lies in the mismatch between his concealed assistance and the accusation that made him a target.

Memory and the Traitor's Name

For years, Shmuel’s father struggled to clear Antek’s name and remove the stigma of treachery. Shmuel recalls the family history while considering how people who depart from an accepted line can be branded traitors, even when their actions are more complicated than the label allows. Antek’s wartime story therefore gives the novel’s recurring argument about betrayal a painful familial precedent: secrecy leaves his loyalties open to suspicion, and his death does not settle the question for those left behind.